Sometimes grief cannot be healed

Sometimes grief cannot be healed. Sometimes it can only be held and carried and you really cannot pep yourself out of the depths of a certain loss, this missing piece of your life and yourself. There is no pharmacopoeia of pain medicine for the pain of grief. You are just supposed to feel it. There is an approach in Buddhism teachings to the kinds of pain that cannot be fixed and it is called “upekkha” or equanimity — the practice of staying emotionally open and bearing witness to pain while biding in equanimity around your limitations to change. It is a form of compassion for yourself and for others. It is about staying calm enough to feel everything, remaining calm while feeling everything, and knowing that some things can not be changed or made beautiful. Equanimity is not being unaffected by what has happened, but looking at it through a calm and clear state of mind. With clarity, compassion, and a perspective that is not so self-destructive. When something cannot be changed, the enlightened response is to simply pay attention to it, to see it, to bear witness because you can. The challenge is to stay present through your own heart, in your own deep self, especially when that self is broken.
The challenge is to not get overwhelmed by the emotions and lose touch with your precious soul. The ability to see without being caught by what we see is a great power that gives rise to real inner peace.
It is crucial to find space where your grief can suck and hurt as much as it frankly does. Where it can just be acknowledged, be accepted, and at least be seen for the most horrendous thing that can happen in one’s life. Your pain needs space, it needs to spread and letting it take all space it needs, letting it unfurl it all of its directions, honey, that my dear, that is healing; and it creates space to practice equanimity.
I am finding myself in natural landscapes, places that are larger than me, larger than my grief, limitless space, that is wide, deep and vast enough to hold what is, to hold what I cannot really do all alone.