From the day we are born, I believe we all roll in on a river of deep, unconditional love – and I am not just talking about the love of our mother, I am talking about a love that is our direct link to every atom in the universe – an eternal love. As any quantum physicist will tell you, we are all made of stardust. For this reason, I do not believe that anyone is born innately evil or with any kind of hatred in their bones. In the words of Marianne Williamson, ‘Love is what we are born with, fear is what we learn.’ Like Marianne, I believe the only thing in life that is real, is love. Everything else in an illusion.
When I was a young girl, I was obsessed with Whitney Houston. When her first album hit the shelves, I was six years old. My mum would play her music on repeat, and just like the rest of the world, I was captivated. But it wasn’t just her beauty, angelic voice, amazing leather jackets and huge hair that drew me in, it was the love that poured through the lyrics of every song. Have you ever noticed that almost every song she ever wrote or sang was about love? Nearly every, single one. She was love incarnate, and it drew millions in like bees to honey. As a teenager, I desperately tried to hold on to this love, even when the world was preaching hate. Love spilled on to the pages of my diary entries. I created poems about love, and I would navigate towards people that looked like love – felt like love. Like a hungry wolf in winter, I would seek it out in every situation, instinctively knowing it was essential for my survival. And that is no dramatic statement. It is a fact that babies deprived of love will quite literally die – and the current epidemic of loneliness sweeping the globe is proving that we are all at risk. I’m certain that this is why those who stay well connected within their communities seem to live longer. And I’m not talking about your Facebook community, I’m talking real, human connection. In the same way we need air to breathe, food to eat, and water to drink – love is the life force that charges every cell in our body, and without it our cells will slowly die.
As the years passed, the society and culture I grew up in (the one that seemed obsessed with fear, judgement, and hate) taught me a different type of love. The conditional kind. The one where if you do what others expect of you; you will be rewarded with love. And if you don’t, it will immediately be withdrawn, catapulting you into the rough seas of disappointment and failure. It’s the same kind of love we see in the movies. The cookie cutter version of romantic love. The glossy magazine type of love, the one with the perfect kiss on a lamp lit street, fake orgasms, and the happily ever after. This kind of love left me feeling confused, on edge and in desperate fear of abandonment. It happens to the best of us – and before we know it, we become cut off from our true source of love. Over time our deep, flowing river of unconditional love becomes littered with large rocks, creating disturbances in our lives – and the joke of it is, we put most of them there.
In February 2019, an unwanted visitor moved into my life – her name was grief. She put a deposit down in 2011 when my brother was diagnosed with cancer, but when he died eight years later, she moved in – permanently. At first, she was a squatter of sorts. A smallish girl, wearing a black headscarf, partially covering her face. She made me feel uncomfortable, and I did not make her welcome – in fact, I did everything I could to kick her out. At first, I tried to gently coax her out with chocolate and wine, and when that didn’t work, I tried brute force. I made as much noise as I could through my work, and on a few occasions, I even tried to starve her out. But like me she had a stubborn streak – she wasn’t for moving. I started to wonder – why was she here? What were her intentions? Then one day, out of pure desperation I decided to call a meeting. Perhaps she had something to say? And she did – most of it I didn’t want to hear of course. She gently lifted her headscarf, looked me straight in the eye, and softly whispered, ‘you don’t recognise me, do you’?
I moved in closer. Surely, it couldn’t be, could it?
I couldn’t believe my eyes. Grief was love in disguise.
It has been said that the grief we feel when someone dies is love with nowhere to go. Trapped love. Once I understood that grief wasn’t there to harm me, I finally felt safe enough to quit the fighting talk and begin to develop what would turn out to be a deep friendship – one built on the love I shared with my brother. As I allowed grief to flow through me, she gave me the strength to be vulnerable and open my heart to the possibility that there may be a life waiting for me after his death.
Since that day, grief and I have returned to the river of unconditional love. Together we have lifted the large rocks from the water and repurposed them, no longer creating disturbances in the water, they are now stepping stones leading me through life. As we sit on the grassy bank admiring our hard work, I know she is my direct link to Syd and it’s how I will always know he was alive.
I’ve decided she can stay – rent free.
Recent Comments