Grief Is the Way Back
Person hugging a tree in a forest, symbolizing emotional healing, connection to nature, and the somatic experience of grief and remembrance. Forest shadows and natural light evoke a sense of grounding, tenderness, and inner return.
Grief isn’t a dysfunction. It’s a doorway.
It doesn’t show up to ruin your life. It shows up to remind you that you’ve had one. That you’ve loved, that you’ve lost, that something once mattered deeply enough to leave an echo.
And if you let it, grief will take you home. Not back to who you were, but back to what’s real. Back to your body. Back to the ground beneath you. Back to that quiet pulse under the noise. The one that says: you are still here. the world is still alive. and this matters.
It may not make sense, but it will be honest.
That’s what grief does. It brings you back to the places that were never meant to be abandoned.
A few weeks ago, I went to the coast for a solo grief ceremony. I thought I knew what I was releasing. I had named it, ritualized it, offered it back to the land. The day was tender, slow and beautiful, full of synchronicities that told me I was being held.
But the next day, I woke up in the underworld.
I don’t mean that metaphorically. I mean I was swallowed. Hollowed.
The grief that arrived wasn’t just about what I had consciously released. It was deeper. Older. It rose up through my bones in waves that didn’t ask for permission. It didn’t come with clarity. It didn’t come with language. It just came. And it took me with it.
This is what I’m learning: when I grieve in ritual, my body becomes the altar.
And my body remembers what my mind has learned to forget.
In the middle of that descent, I got an invitation to a singing circle. Grief and joy, together. A communal space where people gathered to feel, to sing, to remember. Just reading the invitation stretched me. Something in me braced. But I said yes anyway.
I didn’t know what to expect. I only knew I needed something. A thread. A breath. A place to land.
We gathered under a great evergreen tree, about thirty of us, our hearts cracked open in different ways. We sang songs for grief first—songs that felt familiar, safe even. I know how to ache. I know how to hold pain. That part made sense to my nervous system.
But then we started singing songs for joy.
And that was harder.
Something in me didn’t know how to stay open to joy in the presence of others. I felt exposed. Tender in a way I couldn’t hide. It was like joy demanded a kind of visibility that grief never did. Grief lets you fold inward. Joy asks you to be seen.
I danced at the edge of my discomfort, letting myself lean in just a little more, then pulling back when it felt too much. But I stayed with it. I let the songs move through me. I let the presence of others hold what I couldn’t yet hold alone.
And the next morning, I woke up feeling full. Alive. Like I belonged to something ancient.
And then, the grief returned.
Confronted with the reality of remembering what we’ve lost as a species.
This isn’t a new thought for me, that empire forced us to disconnect. That somewhere along the way, we were severed from our bodies, from each other, from life itself. I’ve spoken those words before. I’ve written about the rupture. But this time, I didn’t just think it. I felt it. It landed in my ribs, in my belly, in my throat. It moved through me like a memory I didn’t realize I was carrying. And in that moment, it wasn’t an idea. It was sensation. It was truth. It was grief showing me what I’ve known all along, but haven’t always been able to hold.
This is what it means to walk the spiral path: you return.
Each time, you come with more of yourself. More capacity. More presence. A deeper ability to stay with what’s real.
The spiral isn’t a loop. It’s a deepening. A path that brings you closer to the root. To the parts of you that were never broken, only buried. To the truths that live below the surface of what you thought you’d already healed.
Descent is a way of remembering. It invites you to gather what was once left behind—to feel what you now have the strength to hold. It’s not regression. It’s return.
That’s what I felt, in my body more than my mind. A pulse of knowing that had been waiting there all along. A sense that I wasn’t just feeling my own sorrow—but tapping into something larger.
This grief carries lineage. It carries memory. It carries the weight of everything that has been silenced or stripped away; rituals, land, language, songs. But it also carries the thread of what’s still alive.
And the more I allow myself to descend, the more I recognize that thread. It moves through my blood and bones. It reminds me I’m still connected.
I still feel.
Which means I still remember.
Which means I still belong.
There is a cost to turning away from feeling.
When we go numb, we lose more than just our pain. We lose contact with what makes life sacred. We lose access to our own clarity, to the signals our bodies send when something is off, or right, or deeply meaningful. We lose the ability to sense the world through instinct, intuition, and presence.
Feeling is how we orient. It’s how we know what’s true.
When we disconnect from that knowing, we stop recognizing what matters. We scroll past suffering. We override exhaustion. We stay in places that drain us. We begin to mistake survival patterns for personality, and urgency for purpose. We start living according to the loudest voice in the room, instead of the quiet wisdom within.
And that disconnection doesn’t just happen by accident. We live inside systems that benefit from our numbness, systems that need us to keep performing, keep consuming, keep producing, even when our bodies are asking for something else. The more disconnected we are from our feeling, the easier we are to manipulate. To market to. To move through the world without questioning why it feels so lonely.
But we were never meant to live this way. We were meant to be in relationship. With our bodies, with each other, with the land beneath our feet. We were meant to care. To touch. To notice. To respond.
And even if we’ve been taught to override that knowing, the hunger for it doesn’t go away. It lives in our skin. In the way our breath catches when we witness something beautiful. In the ache we feel when no one is looking.
That longing is not a flaw. It’s a sign of what still lives.
The nervous system is one of the most honest parts of the body.
It doesn’t care what you should feel. It doesn’t care what’s convenient or socially acceptable. It simply tells the truth—through tension, through breath, through how quickly your heart starts to race when something doesn’t feel safe.
It remembers things you’ve forgotten. It keeps track of what overwhelmed you, what helped you survive, what allowed you to stay connected, or what forced you to disconnect.
Your nervous system isn’t a problem to solve. It’s a compass. It knows how to open and how to close. It knows when to pull you inward, when to reach outward, when to pause. That rhythm—the rise and return, the expansion and contraction—is intelligence.
We call it regulation, but it’s really a kind of remembering. A body coming back into rhythm with itself. A nervous system learning it’s safe enough to feel again.
But so many of us were never taught how to work with that rhythm. We were taught to ignore it. To stay productive even when we’re exhausted. To keep smiling even when we’re shutting down. To push through.
Over time, that pushing becomes the norm. And the nervous system stops dancing. It locks up. It dissociates. It floods. It does whatever it has to do to keep you functioning in a world that rarely honors your limits.
And yes, it works. It helps you get through the meeting. Feed the cat. Answer the texts. Perform what’s expected.
But it also cuts you off from the pulse of your own truth. From that quiet “yes” in your gut, or that deep “no” in your chest. From the signals that tell you when something is right, when something is sacred, when something is alive.
So the work isn’t to override those signals. It’s to learn how to listen again.
Not by flooding yourself. Not by forcing openness. But by staying close. Close enough to feel what’s there, without abandoning yourself.
That’s how we return. That’s how we rebuild trust with the body.
We follow the tide. We rock. We rest. We stay.
Grief has always been part of love.
It’s not something that shows up because something went wrong. It shows up because something mattered. Because you allowed yourself to care. Because a person, a place, a pet, a season of your life etched itself into you in a way that can’t just be erased.
To grieve is to tell the truth. To say, this was sacred. this was mine. this changed me.
We don’t grieve because we’re weak. We grieve because we remember. Because something in us still knows how connected everything once was—and still is.
Grief is how we honor what we’ve loved. It’s how we mark the thresholds we’ve crossed. The identities we’ve shed. The friendships that drifted. The selves we outgrew. The versions of life that didn’t unfold the way we thought they would. The dreams that never had a chance to live.
And sometimes, we grieve what was never fully seen. What died quietly, without witness. What had no space to be named or held.
Grief makes room for all of that.
It’s not always dramatic. It doesn’t always come with tears. Sometimes it’s a heaviness in the body, a fatigue you can’t explain, a sense of being far from shore. But underneath it all, grief is presence. It’s your system letting you know that something inside you still cares.
And that caring is sacred.
We were never meant to grieve alone. We were meant to be held. Rocked. Sung to. We were meant to wail in the presence of others, and to be witnessed in the tenderness that follows.
This is what intimacy looks like. Not just joy, not just comfort, but the willingness to feel this life all the way through.
To grieve is not to collapse. It’s to belong.
If grief is the way we honor what we’ve loved, then joy is the way we live it.
But joy brings its own kind of vulnerability.
It asks us to open. To stretch toward something good without flinching. To let ourselves be seen is our aliveness.
That kind of visibility can be just as tender as grief, sometimes even more so. Especially if you’ve learned to protect yourself by staying small, by preparing for disappointment, by keeping your joy quiet enough not to draw too much attention.
Joy doesn’t let you stay hidden. It invites you into the light. It says: this is safe, this is yours, this is real.
And for many of us, that’s not easy.
Letting joy in requires trust. Trust in your own belonging, in your right to feel good, in the truth that joy isn’t something you have to earn or justify. It’s part of being alive. It’s part of what keeps the soul intact.
Joy doesn’t cancel out grief. It lives alongside it. Sometimes inside it.
Both are made from the same current. The same longing to be connected, the same capacity to care.
Grief says, this mattered.
Joy says, this still does.
It’s all part of the same river.
Care isn’t a concept. It’s something you feel. It shows up in how we pause. How we speak. How we choose to stay present with what’s real, even when it’s uncomfortable.
Embodied care has texture. It lives in the way someone adjusts their tone when they sense you pulling back. In how they linger after rupture, instead of retreating. In how they stay close to witness and be with you.
It’s not always pretty. It’s not always polished. Sometimes it’s awkward or clumsy or quiet. But you can feel it. It’s attuned. It tracks what’s happening beneath the surface, not just what’s being said out loud.
Performative care might say the right things. It might offer the right words, the proper phrases, the rehearsed empathy, but it doesn’t land. It avoids vulnerability. It stays clean, distant, comfortable. It mimics presence without ever really being there.
And the body knows the difference.
Embodied care brings your nervous system back into rhythm. It doesn’t demand anything from you. It creates enough safety that you can soften without having to explain why.
Performative care leaves you wondering if you’re too much. It makes you question whether your feelings are inconvenient. It often sounds like boundaries but feels like abandonment.
We don’t need more scripts. We need more presence.
Because in a world that’s saturated with curated connection, real care is medicine. Not the kind you consume, but the kind that restores dignity. The kind that says: I see you. I’m not leaving. I want to stay close to the truth, even when it’s messy.
That’s what we’re starving for. Just the quiet, consistent practice of being real with each other.
When we allow ourselves to feel, we come back into contact with what’s real.
Not just the grief or the rage or the ache we’ve been carrying—but the clarity beneath it. The instinct. The inner compass. The knowing that lives in the body, not the mind.
Feeling brings us back to ourselves. It restores our ability to sense when something is off, when a yes is true, when a boundary is needed. It reconnects us to our own rhythm, so we’re not just reacting to life, but responding from a place that’s rooted and alive.
When we feel, we stop outsourcing our intuition. We stop performing what we think we should be. We move in closer to what’s actually here.
And from that place, we begin to create again. Not to impress or to be seen, but because something inside us wants to be expressed. We make meals. We sing. We write. We make altars or offerings or art for the sake of aliveness itself.
This is what it means to be in relationship with life—to be responsive. Attuned. Capable of movement and rest, expansion and contraction.
Feeling brings us back into belonging. Not just with others, but with the Earth. With the trees and the tide and the breath of the seasons. We stop treating the land as background. We begin to remember it as kin.
This isn’t soft or sentimental. It’s not about feeling everything all at once or drowning in emotion.
It’s about letting the body trust itself again.
It’s about staying close enough to what’s real to live with integrity.
It’s about remembering that care isn’t just something we offer—it’s something we become.
Because a body that feels is a body that knows how to love.
And a species that remembers how to love won’t destroy what it belongs to.
You don’t have to feel everything all at once.
You don’t have to open the floodgates or go digging for pain.
You just have to stay close—close enough to notice what’s already here.
These practices aren’t about fixing. They’re about remembering. They’re about rebuilding trust with your body, one small moment at a time.
Try what calls to you. Leave the rest.
Hold something soft against your heart. A pillow, a blanket, a stuffed animal. Let your arms wrap around it. Stay. Breathe. Let your body feel the weight of being held. Often, the tears will come. Let them. If they don’t, that’s okay too. It still counts.
Place your hand on your body. Belly, chest, throat—wherever you’re drawn. Ask, “Is there anything you want me to feel?” Then listen. Not for answers, but for sensations. The body speaks in whispers.
Walk without a destination. Let your feet lead. Let the land meet you. Notice how the air feels. Let the rhythm of your steps bring you back.
Rock. Sway. Hum. Small rhythmic movements regulate the nervous system. This is what mammals do. You are a mammal.
Name something beautiful out loud. That tree. That cloud. That crack of light on the floor. Saying it out loud brings you back into relationship.
Touch something living. A tree. A pet. Your own skin. Stay with the sensation longer than you normally would.
Create something small. A drawing. A prayer. A poem. A note to yourself. Let it be imperfect. Let it be yours.
Let yourself cry. Even if the tears don’t come easily. Even if they surprise you. Grief doesn’t need a story. It just needs space.
Sing with someone. Or let someone sing to you. Let the sound move through your body.
Be witnessed. Let someone see you without needing to explain. Let yourself be real in their presence.
These are small acts of rebellion in a world that wants you hurried, hardened, and detached.
Each one is a thread, weaving you back into life.
You don’t have to be healed.
You just have to be here.
If you’re still reading this, it means you feel something.
Maybe it’s grief. Maybe it’s ache. Maybe it’s the quiet spark of remembering who you were before you learned to harden.
Hold that.
You don’t have to figure anything out right now. You don’t have to solve your life. You just have to stay with the thread.
This world needs the ones who still feel. The ones who haven’t numbed all the way. The ones who grieve because they care, and who care because they remember.
Feeling isn’t a flaw. It’s your compass. It brings you back into rhythm with what matters. Back into relationship with the land, with others, with the mystery.
It tells you when to rest.
When to rage.
When to reach out.
When to sing.
You are not behind.
You are not broken.
You are exactly where your body needs you to be.
Keep coming back. To your body. To your breath. To the wild pulse beneath all things.
This descent is sacred.
And you don’t have to do it alone.
We’re out here—
singing to grief,
tending to joy,
making beauty in the dark.
Come find us.
We’ve been waiting for you.
With reverence for what’s real,
Alexandra Winteraven🖤
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