From The Middle.

I noticed it yesterday, but I haven’t sat with it until now. And that is grief. I noticed that in each of the several books that I have in one rotation or the next, the ever-present theme in each book is grief.

I actually believe that it’s just a truth that we don’t often acknowledge: Grief is a constant companion in this life. We are grieving a life we wanted. We are grieving a person we wanted. We are grieving loved ones that are now in the ancestral realm. We are grieving. We are grieving, and that is just part of the day-to-day and it’s quiet but it’s so loud and everyone is going through it. Everyone is grieving something at any given time.

I was thinking about why we try to avoid the liminal space. Limbo is uncomfortable. Everybody just wants the polished end result but the journey is what makes the story. I’ve been immersed in the story of The Odyssey lately, and why we love this story. People aren’t intrigued by the Odyssey because Odysseus goes off to battle and then comes home. The Odyssey has traversed centuries and cultures because it’s the in-between that gets people, that people resonate with the deepest. Imagine if he’d gone off to war and come straight home. How uneventful it would’ve been. The adventure lies in the suffering, the delay, the challenge.

Isn’t that profound? The best stories, all center grief. And grief is what makes up that middle part, the limbo. Those moments between leaving and coming back home. Full of grief. He leaves to be in war, in battle. He loses men. He’s always fighting for his life, praying to the gods, staving off misfortune as best he can, but people love that. Love it. Because this is a story of a hero that prevailed against all odds. Everyone loves the hero. So why do we try to fight the liminal space that creates the hero?

We avoid the middle, but the middle is what makes the hero. The middle is what makes the story. I thought that the problem was initially social media, but the truth is social media is just a miniature version of society. It’s only part of it but, social media has made us feel like we need to present this polished version, that we can only show the ending, the achievement. Only show the graduation. Only show the wedding. Only show the engagement, only show the new baby. And I think that’s where people are disillusioned, because we don’t see the struggle as honored as part of the journey to produce that end result. You’re not seeing the heartbreaks over the multiple decades and how you had to pick yourself back up so that you could eventually end up with that person that now makes you happy. You’re not seeing the miscarriages that she went through in order to get that baby. Like, we just don’t see those messy parts. We don’t see crying over that paper that you waited too long to write that’s actually much more difficult than you thought it was going to be when it was assigned to you. You don’t see the moments where you contemplate dropping out of school. You don’t see the moments where you contemplate taking your own life.

We don’t see that. We celebrate the end, we sever the story to highlight only the “culminating” moment. And not only this, but the middle? The limbo that we want to hide from the world actually prepares us with all of the things that we need to welcome that result that we want so deeply. I’m asking for wealth beyond my wildest dreams, the polar opposite of that is extreme deprivation. I’m asking for friends that I’ve known beyond this lifetime. I’m asking for a love that I’ve known beyond this lifetime. This means for a while there’s loneliness and isolation and misunderstanding. This means for a while that there’s deep heartbreak. And deep self doubt…

But the trick of it all is, you can’t get lost in what you’ve already experienced. The pain. The disappointment. The heartbreak. The lack. You can’t let your brain trick you into holding on to the only thing it knows, which is the experiences that you had. You can’t let anything trick you from out of what you truly want and what you feel you deserve.

That’s the most important thing.

My spiritual advisor told me once that the devil is so good at lying. This whole planet was created to be a school, so that the souls who incarnated here would have an opportunity to go as far as they can in their spiritual development. The whole game is to turn darkness into light. To turn pain into peace. To turn depravation to abundance. The devil will tell you anything to break you, to make you think that what you want isn’t coming, isn’t what you deserve. But that’s part of it, don’t let them trick you out your spot. Hold the vision. Hold the faith. Trust that everything that is happening is meant to leave you with proof of your own power. Ask your guides for help. You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t already great. Trust the middle. That’s where the hero is built.

Love Always,

-M.