Befriending Grief

What Helped Is That I Finally Found A Purpose For This Sometimes-Excruciating Feeling.

- Joy Hosey

MY FIRST CLUE that I had an issue with sadness occurred in college when I volunteered to be a client for an acquaintance getting her master’s in counseling. I approached my first session as a “fun” excursion from studying. We met in her living room, and after settling in she simply and sincerely asked me, “So, how are you doing?” What I remember vividly is bursting into tears, followed by wracking sobs—while my mind freaked out over my embarrassing loss of control. Afterward, I shared the story as a humorous anecdote about the hidden stresses of college life. Ha-ha.

It took another dozen years before I addressed my backlog of tears—by crying a river through a good part of my 30s. At times, it was like being swallowed up by a merciless current, sucking me into whirlpools of unrelenting anguish before spitting me back to shore, sputtering with temporary relief and a mysterious longing I couldn’t quite name.

It wasn’t until my 40s that I learned to appreciate such powerful feelings as a navigational system for living a more authentic life. I saw my earlier outbursts as a longing to know my own vulnerable heart, and it took more years to understand what it meant to be internally congruent, where my mind and heart acted as allies instead of adversaries. This required me to explore and accept all my feelings, including and especially the one I denied the most: sadness.