We are a couple of weeks past the longest day of the year, yet it feels like we are in the darkest of nights. I am not even thinking any more, “What else?” We all know what happens when we anticipate a question like that.
Instead, I am reminding myself to be in the moment and to take life as it comes. Not as an act of complacency, but as an act of defiance, an act of hope, an act of transformation.
I take life as it is so that I can be the light wherever I find myself. To remind myself that in the dark, grief can festers. I don’t want to be part of the festering…as my mother would remind me: no good can come of that.
Last week I wrote about grief as a personal act. This week I am writing about grief as a communal act. Want to learn more about personal grief? Check out last week’s blog.
Communal grief ricochets off each of us and burrows deeply into the collective consciousness. This is the grief that becomes a living palatable, gritty thing. Untethered, it takes on a life of its own. It festers until we are overwhelmed. Lost in the dark, we cannot articulate the question, “if not now,” much less answer it.
How do we grieve into hope as a community? Within each of us is a kernel, no matter how small, of hope. Each of us has the potential to be the change even if it means moving through the quagmire of grief. That is the energy each of us brings — the energy that will sustain us through the grief into a new way of life.
Surrendering through the collective grief. So, how do we start? It begins by being with one another. Talking. Lamenting over what is lost. Purging grief through your tears. Being present to grief.
When those tears fall upon the ground of our collective soul, magic happens. Those tears compost for the collective garden. Within them is possibility. Drop by drop they change the landscape of our collective soul.
They feed our hope until collective hope pushes its fragile stems through that composted soil. If we pay attention, we discover how hope manifests in the words, actions of our self and others.
Because each of us in community are in different phases of grief, we share different energy with one another. Through our differences, we raise each other up. We move through our grief into hope.
I am not going to kid you. This doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time. It takes community. It takes each of us. The African proverb says that it takes a Village to Raise a Child. It takes each of us, together to grieve into hope and in doing so, change the world.
This is an invitation to join in collectively grieving through hope.
Van Hurst, ms, is an intuitive-coach-catalyst. As a contemplative coach, she uses mindfulness practices and intuition tools to create strategies for navigating the mundane and extraordinary. The result of time with Van? Being the change you want to see in the world by creating a blueprint for your life through a deeper connection to your intuition and contemplative nature.
Van is a professional speaker & author who weaves inner wisdom into all she touches. Her books are available @ www.wildefyrpress.com. Her most recent book, As Natural As Breathing: Being Intuitive, is available on Amazon. Contact Vanessa for life coaching, intuitive consultations, keynotes, and programs.
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Watch Grieving into Hope through personal and communal grief.
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