Grief and Gratitude

"The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and to be stretched large by them." - Francis Weller

It's coming up on the half life anniversary of my mothers death. As of January 27, 2016, my mother will have been gone half my life. And as I found out when I checked to see what might be happening astrologically for me during this time, it turns out she died around my first lunar node, which means this will be the second lunar node date. It's time for me to experience some more independence, to turn another corner of liberation and autonomy from my family. At this time, that feels like adding gratitude to the mix, and not just lots of grief.


It's been hard for me to combine grief with gratitude, in fact. I spend a lot of time mourning loss, rather than (in addition to grieving) having gratitude for the fact that I gained it in the first place.

Turning a point in my main memoir in which I am asking myself - why, how, what are the things that helped me survive? A core knowledge of my own basic goodness, a love that was rich and real. My relationships with my parents got distorted, confused, then lost entirely, but that core is still there.

Not everyone has that.

So I am grateful for it.
Good to recall in a season of grief.

To allow gratitude to co-exist with grief, rather than using it to obliterate grief, is important.
And it stretches me. Good for keeping me limber in the cold dark mid-winter.