Energetic Medic

Grief is not something we “get over” by following pre-prescribed stages, but a partner that we engage, argue, and weep with as the cycles unfold. Its appearance and its longing to be tended are unique for each psyche, heart, and nervous system.

The timeline for this voyage is not knowable by the psychiatric community, nor by insurance panels or well-intentioned teachers or therapists... but is formed in the stars. To rush, force, or pathologize the experience of grief is to work against nature.

The grieving process may not have an endpoint or state of completion in which we come to some final resolution, where we “finish” and land in some untouchable place, free from the unexpected visitors of archetypal image and erupting somatic aliveness.

In a world that can appear to be falling apart from the inside - and going through a reorganization beyond our current capacity to comprehend - we might come to see that the bright line between “my” grief and the grief of the “other,” of the collective, and of the earth herself is not so bright.

The heart itself is endless, and the visitors of grief may companion us in their various forms for a lifetime. Not to harm, but to reveal and to purify.

Grief is not so much a process that we “make it through,” but a non-linear, guiding shepherd and harbinger of integration. It moves not by way of straight line, but by turning, circle and spiral.

Matt Licata

Art by Myeongae Lim