image by Toni Frissell
I love this photo.
Grief is the ocean and I am the girl.
Some days are like this.
My grief is a warm ocean, a womb, and I am surrounded by it, held by it, protected.
The world is out there, but it is muffled and soft.
I don’t struggle.
I don’t panic.
I breathe.
Today is different.
Today my grief is an angry, roiling ocean with a mean riptide.
It wants to pull me out into deeper water and dash me against the jagged rocks of all my fears and failings.
I struggle, search for something to keep me afloat, tread water, panic.
I can’t breathe.
And now I wonder which came first – the angry ocean of grief or the frantic struggle against it.
Not that it matters.
It’s all here and I’m tired.
Writing helps.
xoxo,
kim
avoiding my Brilliant Writing Career 
Kim, What a beautiful poem you just composed! Yes, grief is a vast unpredictable sometimes violent ocean. Its waves can swamp us at any moment. After some indeterminate time, it seems we are eventually tossed, guided, rescued or otherwise delivered in a quite cove, where warm gentle breezes blow peace and acceptance. Who knows how we get there or when we arrive? But Life has a way of directing us from grief to a new appreciation of Itself. Until then, please keep floating and treading water… and writing!
The shoreline is my life. The grains of sand are my memories and experiences. The sea is my emotions.
This shoreline shifts and changes shape depending on the actions of the wind and water. The shape of my dunes. The flotsam that washes up. It is the STORY of Who I Am that changes with every tide, every storm.
The little person playing on the shore, building sandcastles, digging for pippies, sunbaking (occasionally) is my small-s self.
But there is something else there too. Something underneath the shifting, changing, unreliable.
Something old, solid, fixed. The bedrock. The big-S Self. Hard, volcanic, iron-laden granitey bluestone rock.
I practice connecting to the big-S Self, PRACTICE being there, so that when the ‘riptide of emotion’ sucks me out I can remember that I am bedrock too. Covered in sand, covered in water, covered with an atmosphere and climate. But there. Bedrock. Solid. Eternal.
Then I practice being there WHILE THE WATERS WASH OVER ME. I am safe. It is just the water. I am still here, underneath it. The bedrock has not shifted. The bedrock will hold.
Remember… xxxxx
@Claire P … Bedrock. Yes.
Kim, I am wishing you protection from those jagged rocks. Help for breathing. Rest from exhaustion. Continued voice, as you can. Peace in silence, else.
What lovely writing on such a sad subject. I hope you are finding relief- keep writing.
Sometimes, the tags say as much as the piece. “Cancer” and “Caregiver” answered questions raised with “grief” and “tired”. That poem is simply captivating.
B E A U T I F U L.
***Today my grief is an angry, roiling ocean with a mean riptide.***
I mourn with you, Dear Kim.