There are some questions we will never have satisfying answers to.
Why does suffering exist?
Why do people hurt one another?
Why does injustice continue?
Why do terrible things happen to people who did nothing to deserve them?
I have been grieving having no answers. There are no easy answers for complex questions of why suffering exists and continues to be inflicted.
Not having answers can feel very powerless. We long for certainty. We want something to make the world make sense.
But settling into the grief of reality, of what truly is, is more meaningful than closing our eyes to the reality of suffering in our world.
Easy answers in grief lead only to empty platitudes of “thoughts and prayers”, of “they’re in a better place”. Easy answers in grief bypass the pain. And if I’ve learned anything through healing and witnessing the healing of others, it is that leaning into the mystery of pain is transformational.
It is not easy, but it is more human.
Leaning into grief, where there are no easy answers, requires softness.
Sometimes (a lot of the time), it can feel very selfish to do self-care when the world is in such upheaval. How could I possibly sit in a bath when there is so much suffering here and around the world?
And also, I know of the transformation that can come from nervous system regulation. It’s a delicate both-and, dialoguing from our Inner World to our Outer world.
Leaning into softness amidst adversity can feel dismissive, but it is Grief.
Grief asks us to stay present with what is happening without immediately trying to fix, explain, justify, or escape it.
There is a reason we reach for answers when we feel powerless. Answers give us the illusion that we can control what cannot be controlled. If we can understand why something happened, perhaps we can prevent it from happening again. If we can find someone to blame, perhaps we can restore our sense of order. If we can make the suffering meaningful, perhaps we don’t have to feel how painful it is that it happened at all. But sometimes there is no satisfying explanation. Sometimes there is simply grief.
Nervous system regulation is important in our response to suffering because when we are dysregulated, we are more susceptible to fear and urgency. We become more entrenched in our own survival and have less capacity to remain present with what is actually happening.
When we’re regulated, we can see things as they are - for better or for worse. And instead of succumbing to powerlessness, we actually have the capacity to mobilize our Selves. When we’re dysregulated, we have no energy nor capacity to create change.
Grief, is, in my opinion, underrated activism. Grief that doesn’t make the suffering about you is transformative. Grief is being fully present in the reality of suffering, not bypassing the pain. Grief is a sacred space of shared humanity and from being in grief together, we can mobilize into action. Grief is not passive - it is feeling it all.
There is a tendency to believe that if we are not doing something, we are doing nothing.
But grief is doing something.
Feeling is doing something.
Witnessing is doing something.
Allowing ourselves to be changed by what we witness is doing something.
We don’t need to immediately know what the action will be.
We don’t need to turn every experience of pain into a lesson.
We don’t need to find the perfect response.
Sometimes the most honest response is simply to let ourselves be affected.
So even though we don’t have all the answers - we can grieve.
Of course we don’t have all the answers.
We can sit in the experience of powerlessness that comes with grief and allow ourselves to be transformed through pain.
And action will come.
We may not know what it will look like yet, but we can trust our Bodies and our integrated ethics to show us how our grief can create change through people.