The Partnership of Grief & Gratitude

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday with family and friends. I certainly did! I was very grateful for all of the people I got to see and spend time with. I was also super happy to be back seeing some of my old students and teaching at Hastings Yoga last week.

The theme that I shared was one that I have been experiencing quite alot over these last several weeks. It is the way the GRIEF & GRATITUDE can pair together. I shared this quote by Patricia Cambell Carlson that explains this beautifully. “Grief & gratitude are kindred souls, each pointing you to the beauty of what is transient and given to us by grace.” I also love the visual of this quote by Francis Weller and we used this in our practice. “The work is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and to be stretched large by them.”

I notice this pairing in my own live in both small and large ways. When it comes to our personal worlds, for me traveling back to NY and spending time in the place I lived for 14 years truly does bring up both of these emotions. Such gratitude for the special time in my life and the town I lived in and also gratitude for the transition we have made as that feels very right. This gratitude is very much complemented with the poignant grief of change and loss of one life stage as I see my transition into another. It is truly powerful to see how they work in concert with each other when we recognize them both.

This pairing also helps when it comes to the suffering of the world. To be able to honor both gratitude and grief together allows us to touch joy and sorrow at the same time. This is truly the path forward in this practice and reminding ourselves of that is how we ourselves practice.

When we hold grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and we stretch our hands wide we expand what is called our window of tolerance (how much we can hold and still find joy). With practice our window of tolerance grows and, with that, so does our possibility for intrinsic happiness.