ALL OF A SUDDEN, I DISAPPEARED.

“Embrace your grief, for that is how your soul will grow.”

— C.G. Jung

While thinking about what to write... A reminder that has been by my bedside for so long sits beside me once again... I look at it... It carries me unchanged from one loss to another:

“Civilizations rise and fall.Stars are born and die.The people we love come and go...Seasons pass...And we endure it all.We fall and then rise again.After a while, rising and falling become a single, unified motion.No matter what, we love.Because that is our identity.”

— Solara

Yes, losses are part of life, which is greater than everything—just like birth and death, sorrow and joy. The vessel of collective losses is much broader, deeper, and more diverse than that of personal losses, and it inevitably triggers individual ones as well. Just last month, we went through such times again; we are going through them now, and we will continue to do so.

Grief is the most natural and ancient response to loss. If you do not recognize your loss—if you have drifted far from what is natural and ancient or have developed trauma—you may be unable to grieve. Not every loss leads to trauma, but grief is inevitable, and it demands to be acknowledged. To hold something means to first grasp it. Beyond mere comprehension, we are burdened with immense losses, unresolved emotions, and—unfortunately—a profound ignorance about grief in direct proportion.

For me, grief is an existential state, yet it is also a companion to everything beautiful about being human and alive. Perhaps our lack of grieving skills, our perspectives on grief, our capacity for growth through it, and our openness and courage to welcome its guidance are all so limited and damaged that we struggle to fully experience what we do not associate with grief—abundance, authenticity, and depth.

While weighed down by this fearful realization and calling, I wanted to share a gift that has helped me immensely: Francis Weller’s The Wild Edge of Sorrow – Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief. Weller, a psychotherapist, explores the art of grieving and the apprenticeship of grief. In this work, you will find discussions on the function of grief, its symptoms and stages, grief practices, our distorted perceptions, and the importance of communal awareness. But most of all, you will discover a compassionate and lyrical language, a forgotten wisdom, and a form of soul activism that reveals grief as an alchemical process leading to love and goodness—a path of initiation and healing.

Weller describes five gateways of grief:

Personal losses
The unloved parts within us
The sorrows of the world
The longing for what we never knew
The ancestral grief passed down to us

In moments when we find ourselves suddenly unexpected, we are confronted with something greater than ourselves. To ground these experiences and continue forward in wholeness, we need something larger than ourselves—community, nature, art, ancient wisdom, and sacred practices.

With a beloved song and poem...

Wishing mercy for those who have left, patience and light for those who remain.

**“There is a ruin from which the unruined emerges.A fragmentation from which the unbreakable blooms.A grief beyond all mourning, leading to joy.And a fragility from whose depths strength is born.

There is an emptiness, vast and boundless for words—A darkness we pass through with every loss,A sacred place of becoming.

There is a cry, sharper than all sounds,Its jagged edges piercing the heart,A breaking open within us where we learn to sing—That unyielding, whole place.”**

— Rashani Rea

🔗 Listen to the song here

Ahu BİRLİK