HUG Corner: Thought for the Week 12/11/17
December 11, 2017
Healing After Loss (Martha Whitmore Hickman)
“She never told her love,
-William Shakespeare
But let concealment, like a warm i’ the bud,
Feed on her damask cheek: she pin’d in thought,
And with a green and yellow melancholy,
She sat like Patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief.”
“The picture here, from Twelfth Night, is of a woman who assumed a mask of calm tranquility, while inside, like a worm ‘like the bud,’ the feelings were eating away. She smiled through her grief – and was likened to stone.
Let it be a lesson to us! Holding tight to our feelings, trying to keep a stiff upper lip, may present a soothing image to the world. But at what cost? The cost of growing numb?
And for whose protection? Our own – that we not be considered ‘too emotional’? That we be regarded as pillars of stability and faith? For the protection of others, so they don’t have to see how sad losing a loved one can make you feel?
They know better, and so do we. And our closeness is enhanced by sharing our grief, much more so than by the misguided attempt to keep it all under control.
I will not take on a façade of false calm – and turn to stone.”