Joy begins with grief

((I realize there have been two newsletters almost back to back but this is my erratic style. I’ll be arid for a long time and then there will be a flood. Precisely why I’ll never commit to a weekly share here. That’s just not how I’ve ever experienced inspiration.))

This morning, as I write this, the air is thick and damp. There has been no breeze caressing the trees for days. They sit limp, motionless, waiting. The ‘g’ on my keyboard is sticky from the heat. It threatens to make my writing take on a different personality: mornin’, caressin’, waitin’, writin’. I, however, am not a southern belle - despite wishin’ now and again that I could transport myself into a different body, a different life - if even for a while, especially when grief comes to visit.

Sometimes the weather is a pathetic fallacy. When there is no wind in the trees, the foliage must remain in the last emotion they experienced. They must sit in it. We, too, await the wind to blow the emotions through our bodies. We’re expertly impatient creatures. We resist the pall of grief. We tell it that it is not welcome. We wish to flip the coin. But what if grief is the portal into joy? What if the coin flips itself if we do not force it?

There is a saying, ‘everyone grieves differently.’ And yes, that’s true. Some are loud, some are quiet. Some are in denial, some are buried under a heap. Some are activated by it, some get pulled into torpor. Some move through it quickly, some remain almost frozen in time. There is no wrong way - but the point is to feel it. A common thread seems to be that no matter who you are or what the grief is about, it is a sombre, sinking, momentous visitor that requires presence, embodiment, patience, acknowledgement and acceptance. Many things lie on top of it, attempting to squash or transmute the magnitude of it: anger, rage, anxiety, addiction to busyness, addictions, period. But no matter your walk of life, grief is what is revealed when you peel back the layers. It is like discovering an ocean under your basement.

Time to go swimming.

Sometimes I debate about speaking to my personal experiences - not only to preserve my own privacy but because I know this newsletter flies off to a wide variety of people, many of whom do not navigate chronic illness, disability, neurodivergence, queerness, and other ways in which I am a dark unicorn in your midst.

But today, in all the stickiness of the borderline viscous air and my keyboard, I feel compelled to share. Something I have learned about empathy and compassion is that you don’t actually need to have experienced someone else’s pain to know the flavour of it intimately. You can use your own personal history coupled with your imagination to feel your way into it. And that is a truly beautiful use of imagination and free will, if you ask me.

I am not a fair weather person - not in its literal application (I’m a stormy woman, a moody woman, ‘goddess from the dark womb of winter’ woman) or its metaphorical, relationship-based meaning. I will go with you to The Underworld and back because I’ve been there many times myself. I don’t particularly love that journey, but I wouldn’t say it exactly frightens me anymore - which is why these subjects I discuss in this newsletter are unflinching and honest.

“What news from The Underworld?” You may ask upon my arrival back into the Dayworld. Well, I’ll tell you. And maybe you’ll recognize your grief in my grief. Maybe we’ll harmonize.

If I were to go swimming in the abyss of my grief, its shape would be that of limitations. Hard limits within a world that is an absolute riotous cornucopia of technicolour experiences. Experiences I would love to someday still have, despite what limits me.

Ever since late May, when I received my hEDS diagnosis after searching for answers to health mysteries for over a decade, there has been a great deal of background processing. My CPU is overheated. I’m tired a lot more often. My brain and body feel depleted. I require more calories, more rest, more respite, more gentleness than ever. When I do work, I work from the below image, or at least attempt to conjure this vibe in my mind. The garden of my psyche has grown wild.

When I received my hEDS diagnosis, I thought I would experience a tsunami of relief. As I sat across from the doctor who told me my fate, I expected this wave to wash over me right then and there.

“You meet all of the criteria. I am happy to give you this diagnosis. Yes, you are a bendy lady - even though you feel stiff as hell,” she said. Cue a waterslide effect of spiritual hydration smashing into my every pore. Cue my world finally making perfect sense. Cue a decade of tension melting from my bones. But no - that’s not what happened at all. I just stood up, shook her hand, thanked her, and ambled out of the cozy, quiet, carpeted office in a daze. As time unfolded, the daze revealed itself as grief.

There are two ways we may interact with the emotional water inside of our bodies - one is the above hope I had in the office: a cleansing wave of relief. The other is to be soggy when you’d much rather be dry. Grief can feel like the latter. Instead of being cleansed, we feel damp, saturated, suffocated, flooded, sopping and muggy. We may feel like there is a dark cloud hanging over our heads and nowhere else, raining on us wherever we go.

Despite the bright and shiny summer setting, this is how I’ve felt in the background ever since that day in May. My life has continued on, yet there’s the cloud. I’ve been working. ((Rain.)) Managing the unfolding of my latest massive project. ((Rain.)) Taking care of myself. (Rain.)) I’ve been yearning something fierce. (Rain.)) Allowing my imagination to run and fuck and kick and howl. ((Rain.))

I wanna suck, I wanna lick
I want to cry and I want to spit
Tears of pleasure
Tears of pain
They trickle down your face the same.

I look no different than I did in May - my skin is just as soft, my green eyes with the explosion of brown and yellow in the middle are still as bright and curious, my hands are just as deft and explorative, my legs just as strong and capable.

But something vital has shifted.

And it has been reaching my awareness in sparks, fits and starts, moments when I feel like a wrung-out rag. These wrung-out moments are coming more frequently now. Or wait, are they? Or am I simply more aware of how wrung-out I’ve been for ages? Is it all catching up to me? Am I reckoning with and digesting the bulk of it now? Yes, yes. That’s it.

I’m digesting it.

The fact that I am disabled.

And of course, that’s tinged with grief.

No, disibility is not a dirty word. But it is a journey of reckoning, even if the body has been within the realm of disability for a long time. The awareness and acceptance of this comes slowly. A trickle. A babbling brook. A gentle caress of warm water down the spine.

The ways in which I peripherally identified with disability finally coming into fullness.

The ways in which I pushed through my disability, not knowing what exactly I was pushing against.

The ways I inadvertently overspent myself, overtaxed myself, overwhelmed myself because I didn’t know what kind of creature I actually am.

I assumed - as you do - that I was like everyone else. Their thresholds were mine. Their capacity was mine. Their abilities were mine. Or they should be. I ran a deficit for too long and the gap swallowed me whole.

Disability as a force is only made manifest when we deny our humanity. If we lived in a more forgiving world, where differences in capacity, death, and the natural undulation of emotion (especially grief) was normalized, none of this would be something to relegate to the sidelines, where shame and isolation fester. Disability, as we know it, wouldn’t exist.

My neighbourhood is a quiet and safe one for the most part, but only a few blocks south of here is a different energy altogether. It is a cesspool of intensity, fringe, mental illness, addiction, aggression, instability, poverty and despair. As I walk or drive through on occasion, I try to linger with an open heart. These people have been chewed up and spit out by the unforgiving nature of this world, whose only notion of ‘community’ is the economic system that ultimately drowns many who have been traumatized, abused, those who are disabled, and the list goes on. On masse we are hostile towards these people, we ‘other’ them, but they are simply doing - perhaps in excess - what we all do when the basement of our emotions gives way to an ocean of grief. We cope, we deal, we distract, we numb, we try really hard to feel but ultimately sometimes fail.

The dividing line, in so many cases, between someone who tumbles into the abyss and someone who doesn’t is the permission to fall apart, the permission to feel grief in full, and the support in navigating it. We all begin somewhere. We were all once children. There are many forks in the road, and those forks are pivotal. When I was mired in addiction as a means of avoiding my own grief, I was bolstered by those who did not wish to see me die. They brought me back from the brink. Had I not been surrounded by these people, I don’t know where I’d be. Would I even be at all?

Now that I am navigating the world of disability, it’s the very same - because grief is at the centre of it all. If I am unable to access it in full, to feel it in full, I am fucked. I will never heal, I will never completely access joy. And in order to feel my grief in full, I require support. It takes a village - it always has, and it always will. The sooner we all learn this, the better off we’ll all be.

There is a card in the major arcana of tarot that has now become my absolute favourite: Temperance. In my latest deck release, The Fertile Void, I’ve written descriptions/keywords directly on the cards. One of the descriptions of Temperance is ‘peace that has known pain.’ It is worth noting that Temperance directly follows the Death card - which is all about big, sweeping change: the death of an era, a major shift in identity, the end of a relationship, job, place of residence, etc. Really any inevitable black hole that sucks you into its event horizon and spits you out the other side as a different incarnation of yourself. There is often so much tumult and turmoil within a Death experience - but once you are on the other side and you’ve had a chance to process the pain and grief, a new kind of peace emerges.

It greatly differs from the peace of true ignorance/innocence, which is only tranquil and content because it has not yet been agitated. All it has ever known is fair weather. There was nothing to polarize it, to shake it up like a soda can. Temperance is the fruit of alchemy. Peace and joy that has known pain is not in denial of pain or suffering. It blooms because of the suffering, not in spite of it, or in avoidance of it. It is the joy of survival, of overcoming, yes - but it is also the joy of the intimacy we experience with grief.

This is why it is crucial to peel back the layers under the other protective/avoidant emotions such as anger and anxiety and just let ourselves feel it - no matter where it’s coming from. This opens up all of the channels of possibility in our minds and bodies. We cry so we can laugh. We ache so we can orgasm. We break open our rib cages so we can fill them with all of life’s offerings, no matter what they are.

Until next time,

Love and wolves.

D xx

P.S. Thinking about opening up Dear Void again, so if you have any questions for me - drop them in ye olde Tumblr ask box. See this post for rules and guidelines.

𝒟ℯ𝒶𝓇 𝒱ℴ𝒾𝒹 is an advice column for for neuroqueer, neurocurious existentialist philosophers. Once or twice a month I will be answering your questions on any of the following themes: ☾𖤓 Late-diagnosed autism + ADHD ☾𖤓 Being highly-sensitive in a overwhelming world ☾𖤓 Menopause & perimenopause ☾𖤓 Middle age, the ‘midlife crisis’, cronehood ☾𖤓 Navigating late-stage capitalism ☾𖤓 Overcoming addiction ☾𖤓 Reclaiming our bodies (as an antidote to the patriarchy + capitalism) ☾𖤓 The healing power of nature ☾𖤓 Animal familiars ☾𖤓 Sitting with difficult emotions ☾𖤓 Nervous system regulation ☾𖤓 Navigating relationships ☾𖤓 Shadow work.