This is a follow up to my post on Grief.

I came from a culture that did not accept grief. The idea was that a truly strong, mature, and spiritual person would not grieve. They would maintain peace and joy through anything. I learned something from this culture: if you do not grieve then the pain turns into an invisible suffering, and that suffering eventually spills out onto others.

My generation has seen what happens when we aren’t allowed to grieve. Of course my forebears had reason to distrust grief. They had seen people who became swallowed up and lost to it. They believed the best protection against such tragedy was to stamp out grief. This led to greater tragedy.

But there is still a kind of grief that most resist subconsciously. We do not recognize when it is needed and do not allow ourselves, or others, to experience it. We downplay it. We push it away.

It is clear that grief is the correct response when we have lost something of value to us. It is more difficult to understand that grief is necessary if we are denied from ever having what we long for in the first place.

Grief for loss of what was is understood, less understood is grief for loss of what never was.

There is no grave to stand over. No catastrophe seared into our memories. No painful tearing out of our life.

It just never was and never will be.

We hoped, we longed, we agonized and yearned. But it wasn’t and won’t be. It is forever beyond our reach. It is gone. It is not ours.

Some of us get through it by replacing what we never had with an approximation. The child who never knew a mother’s love may find a “mother” as an adult. The couple who could never have children may adopt. The child denied a normal childhood may grow up to recreate some of its experiences. The blind may see through poetry or even learn to paint.

All these are good and healing, and we feel almost guilty or wrong to acknowledge that as good as these are, there is still something to grieve.

We look and see the masses all around us taking it for granted. So many get to have what we could not. They don’t know the pure agony of total denial. If we are honest we have to admit that every now and then it hurts.

Without grief it could threaten the sanity of those who don’t learn to make do. Making do keeps sanity, but grief integrates, transmutes, redeems.

How many times in this modern world have we seen someone harm others and then in the words they leave behind is seen the festering gangrenous wound of having been denied their deepest desires? They lost hope not knowing (or knowing how) to grieve what was withheld from them.

The pain comes out eventually. If it is not grieved, then it festers, flowing out when it can no longer be contained… hurting those around us. If it is grieved, it comes out during the grieving process and can be integrated. Our empathy deepens, our compassion reaches out toward the hurting.

Give yourself permission to grieve. Integrate what never was so that you are able to engage fully what is.