Having recently lost my husband and experiencing grief without bounds, I know intimately the “hangover of a night full of tears.”

“It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up, after a night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone,
and do what needs to be done to feed the children…”
– The Invitation, by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

Grief has called me on a regular basis over the past year, arriving in waves that stun in their intensity one day and leave a dull ache the next. Watching the waves of grief from a distance allows healing to begin and hope to tease the periphery of my vision. But I dip back into it periodically.  Not to the degree I experienced while watching cancer eat away the man I loved for 25 years, but still the ache in my heart pulls at me, asking me to slide into its arms and be squeezed in its grip till all the tears, all the fear and all the pain have been wrung out of me. Sometimes I allow its arms to hold me tight and other times I look it in the eye and dance away as fast as I can. Grief is a hungry man, full of promises that all will be well if we just allow him to engulf us for a while. But quite often, once his hunger has been fed, he still beckons us for more. As I allow his hunger to be fed, I will admit, my thirst for his arms lessens. But each time I enter them I worry that I will never be able to leave them. With the distance of 18 months, I find joy in the company of friends, excitement while dancing and hope as I watch my son become an amazing man. While the arms of grief would love to hold me forever, the simple joys in life beckon me to experience love, life and joy once again.

How long will you allow grief to hold you away from the joy of life?