HUG Corner: Thought for the Week 11/5/18

Healing After Loss (Martha Whitmore Hickman)

“Haste, haste, has no blessing.”

-Swahili Proverb

At first we are so busy – so much to do, people to talk with, arrangements to make.

Then come the quiet times, and in some ways they are harder to bear. Our loneliness stares out at us from the mirror. All the places we used to go to together, we go to alone. Even if we go with someone else, the gap is still there.

In defense, we may start to hurry about, hoping that by keeping ourselves so busy, maybe we won’t notice how much it hurts.

It’s good to be active, of course. We do need other people, and activities in which to involve ourselves. But don’t make the mistake of doing this to hide from grief. It will find us in the end and demand its hearing.

To inhabit the province of grief for a while is, oddly enough, its own comfort. It is, for a period, our home; it is where we belong, and we need to rest there in quiet and at leisure until we understand its spaces and its meaning. Then we can move on.

Without hurry or panic I will dwell in the house of my grief.