This Happened to Me!
Hello,
I realise that I still need to give space to the topic of last week's letter and to be with my Eloise. I notice the pressure I feel to write this week, to share something new and insightful, and yet I can't summon anything else forth, until I have given this grief, however old, its rightful space. That I cannot rush past it any longer; perhaps I tried to in those unbearable years before.
This week, as I brought back the waters from Lake Annecy to make a ritual offering to the Rivers and waterways near where I live, and introduce Eloise to these lands and this home, I broke down. Thinking about all the mothers in war zones, who gather up the scattered parts of their children, and the outrageous levels of human suffering we are witnessing in the world. There is a need to wail.
The voice that has grown louder and louder in these last few weeks is the voice I have unwittingly suppressed for many years. Privacy and humility were drummed into us as children and so, as an adult, I haven't been fully aware of how much I have held down and packed away. There is merit in containment of course, however, the silencing and limitation we can impose upon ourselves doesn't suit the demands of grief.
Like the death of Eloise there have been times when I have wanted to scream from the top of my lungs, 'This Happened to Me!'
