Chloe, I feel like you have become a lightning rod for all the suffering in the world and on Sundays you ground all that white hot grief that the rest of us don’t allow in. I hope you are taking care of yourself. The writing here is exquisite as always. This line in particular:
“The spaciousness which the wave so generously leaves in its wake is always worth the labour of the meeting.”
Egads, Chloe. Your writing always arrives at the moment I most need it. I won't try to be cute. That's all I've got except that I am eternally grateful for your words and every ounce I squeeze out of them. Honestly! I cannot overstate the impact. Thank you.
"I picture these nebulous pockets of grief, moving from person to person, door to door, tireless in their pursuit of a temporary occupant..." Such an unusual thought, Chloe, this idea that the heavy grief I endure was not of my own creation, but rather is an entity that we all host from time to time, that rests a while in individuals, sometimes for a short while and sometimes forever. I am somehow comforted by the thought that I am grief's "host" rather than grief's victim. You always give me much to consider.
I’m so glad you found the idea comforting, Sharron, I expect that there’s much which we believe to be ours but is in fact far more amorphous. Thanks so much for reading.
This is a beautiful reminder that I’ve been too armored lately and out of sorts from the disconnection. I love the image of grief waves needing a body to hold and express them. And this: “the more I accept and forgive things for being just as they are, the better able I am to witness, and withstand, beauty.” Two poems come to mind. I’ll share below.
Julie, yes, I often need the reminder myself. Thank you so much for the poems, Rilke never fails to momentarily evaporate me, in the nicest of ways. That poem, especially.
Julie, one of my favorite quotes is also my Rilke and very similar. (Princesses and dragons will get you there via google) The idea that beyond fear is where we find freedom and love.
❤️🐉 “Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet (1929)
Some wisdom catches us because it is insightful or unusual or beautifully put -- but this slipped under my skin as a way of seeing the world, or of not being afraid to see the world as it actually is. It's a hypothetical, but it seems to point in the right direction - if only because we want to see ourselves act with beauty and courage.
Well said. Letters to a Young Poet always reminds me of this quote that my mother sent me early in my 1st year of college: “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
I was so moved by it that I went to the campus bookstore and bought a copy - the first "grown-up" book I ever gifted myself. At the tender age of 17, it was like declaring, this is who I am and what I care about.
Chloe, thank you from the depths of my grief seasoned heart. I have read your post over and over today. After the second reading, I subscribed to your Substack. I am truly blessed and in awe and wonderment of your words. I find so much consolation in you sharing this personal and, yes, sacred encounter.
For I have dropped down on my knees and welcomed home this Visitor time and again over these past four years. Weeping and sobbing and entering that altered state where no reason or logic resides. Awhile back somehow some fiber in my being gave permission to letting my heart break wide open. I remember the first time — it was during my third therapy session. (My wife of 25 years had died suddenly two months previously). From that moment on, the floodgates of sorrow we’re let loose — and everything, everything I thought I knew about sorrow and death and beauty became transformed.
And I read your words and I say, Yes! — she knows, she has been there, and she is another Grief-walker. We are kin. We are pushing back against the tide of a grief phobic culture. What we do is is subversive and in protest, it is what keeps the heart alive and heals us. And the heart expands and becomes vast and spacious. Then I learned this grief walking has the capacity to hold and revere all the unexpressed sorrow of my ancestors. That this is one of my callings.
And, I too, have many sacred places on the land that I live and have loved more since Barbara passed. This forrest that surrounds my house, this great red oak, this stand of tall white pine, this granite rock outcrop, the cairn that I built over my wife’s grave…
And the barred owl that called out in the dark hot summer nights, the fox that denned under our cabin bedroom in winter, the pair of wood thrush that sacrificed their lives in the making of our Third Embodiment…
Oh, Mark. Hello, brother. I’m so glad to meet you. Those moments when our hearts are irreparably burst open, so raw, so confusing, and it changes everything, so there’s that to deal with…It’s an ordeal! But one I wish everyone would experience. It’s big work, grieving on behalf of our long-dead relatives, but we have the distinct privilege of being in the physical, and having heard the call, and so we roll up our sleeves :) I’m happy to know that you’re surrounded by the ancient, the sacred and the wise, and that those qualities also inhabit you. I honour you, too, friend ♥️
Yes, Chloe, as Mary Oliver asks us, what will we do with this one wild and precious life? Or what I ask myself everyday, what will I do with this glorious day? How will I be in it?
My goodness Chloe. Today I decided to listen to you read while I followed along with the post.. You really have a way of capturing the manic, the fanciful, the melancholy thoughts that depression and its offshoots invade the mind. It is a gift to hear you reading.
Chloe, I am thankful I came across this article when it was shared in Notes. Your ability to capture the essence of grief touches a place buried within, an intimate space deep within my heart that nobody else knows, except now you!
This is the essence of how to live. Life is a paradox.
I try and write about this but it just doesn't come out like your stunning eloquence. It ends up with me sounding like I am just an emotional wreck! Whereas, I am trying to show the freedom that comes when we embrace all of our emotions.
“Light is in both the broken bottle and the diamond.” Mark Nepo
Jo, you are so dear and kind and I so appreciate you. I'm yet to read your writing, but I imagine it to be beautiful, just like your comments. I have a suspicion that whoever came up with the phrase "emotional wreck" was one of the architects of the shame prison which we can so often find ourselves incarcerated in. Just emotional is fine, and it's a very justifiable state :) I see your efforts towards wholeness and I'm on the path with you. Thank you, Jo. You are excellent company 💜
Chloe, I feel like you have become a lightning rod for all the suffering in the world and on Sundays you ground all that white hot grief that the rest of us don’t allow in. I hope you are taking care of yourself. The writing here is exquisite as always. This line in particular:
“The spaciousness which the wave so generously leaves in its wake is always worth the labour of the meeting.”
I very much appreciate the way you see things, Ben. You’ve a very special eye. Thank you. David & the Birds are taking excellent care of me ❤️
Egads, Chloe. Your writing always arrives at the moment I most need it. I won't try to be cute. That's all I've got except that I am eternally grateful for your words and every ounce I squeeze out of them. Honestly! I cannot overstate the impact. Thank you.
Debbi, I am so happy that it reaches you. I think we both have some mysterious force to thank for the timing of it :) Thank you for being here
"I picture these nebulous pockets of grief, moving from person to person, door to door, tireless in their pursuit of a temporary occupant..." Such an unusual thought, Chloe, this idea that the heavy grief I endure was not of my own creation, but rather is an entity that we all host from time to time, that rests a while in individuals, sometimes for a short while and sometimes forever. I am somehow comforted by the thought that I am grief's "host" rather than grief's victim. You always give me much to consider.
I’m so glad you found the idea comforting, Sharron, I expect that there’s much which we believe to be ours but is in fact far more amorphous. Thanks so much for reading.
Sensational, intense writing. It makes me feel that if Emily Dickinson were alive today, she'd be called Chloe Hope.
Crikey, Jeffrey. Not sure how to respond to that, other than with sincerest thanks 🙏
"Crikey" is perfect 😊
"... If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry...."
- Emily Dickenson
Or Chloe Hope.
This is a beautiful reminder that I’ve been too armored lately and out of sorts from the disconnection. I love the image of grief waves needing a body to hold and express them. And this: “the more I accept and forgive things for being just as they are, the better able I am to witness, and withstand, beauty.” Two poems come to mind. I’ll share below.
The Guest House
by Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi, translated Coleman Barks
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
Julie, yes, I often need the reminder myself. Thank you so much for the poems, Rilke never fails to momentarily evaporate me, in the nicest of ways. That poem, especially.
Yes, it’s special to me.
The knight
by Rainer Maria Rilke
The knight rides forth in coal-black steel
into the teaming world.
Outside his armor everything is there: sunlight and valley,
friend and foe and feast,
May, maiden, forest and grail,
and God himself in a thousand forms
to be found along every road.
But inside the armor darkly enclosing him
crouches death. And the thought comes
and comes again:
when will the blade
pierce this iron sheath,
the undeserved and liberating blade
that will fetch me from my hiding place
where I’ve been so long compressed –
So that, at last, I may stretch my limbs
and hear my full voice.
from “Book of Images”
Julie, one of my favorite quotes is also my Rilke and very similar. (Princesses and dragons will get you there via google) The idea that beyond fear is where we find freedom and love.
Oh! I know that one! Thanks for the reminder. Looking for it now.
❤️🐉 “Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet (1929)
Some wisdom catches us because it is insightful or unusual or beautifully put -- but this slipped under my skin as a way of seeing the world, or of not being afraid to see the world as it actually is. It's a hypothetical, but it seems to point in the right direction - if only because we want to see ourselves act with beauty and courage.
Well said. Letters to a Young Poet always reminds me of this quote that my mother sent me early in my 1st year of college: “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
I was so moved by it that I went to the campus bookstore and bought a copy - the first "grown-up" book I ever gifted myself. At the tender age of 17, it was like declaring, this is who I am and what I care about.
I still have it, all these years later.
Wow! Thanks for sharing this poem Julie.
You’re most welcome. It’s a touchstone for me.
Chloe, thank you from the depths of my grief seasoned heart. I have read your post over and over today. After the second reading, I subscribed to your Substack. I am truly blessed and in awe and wonderment of your words. I find so much consolation in you sharing this personal and, yes, sacred encounter.
For I have dropped down on my knees and welcomed home this Visitor time and again over these past four years. Weeping and sobbing and entering that altered state where no reason or logic resides. Awhile back somehow some fiber in my being gave permission to letting my heart break wide open. I remember the first time — it was during my third therapy session. (My wife of 25 years had died suddenly two months previously). From that moment on, the floodgates of sorrow we’re let loose — and everything, everything I thought I knew about sorrow and death and beauty became transformed.
And I read your words and I say, Yes! — she knows, she has been there, and she is another Grief-walker. We are kin. We are pushing back against the tide of a grief phobic culture. What we do is is subversive and in protest, it is what keeps the heart alive and heals us. And the heart expands and becomes vast and spacious. Then I learned this grief walking has the capacity to hold and revere all the unexpressed sorrow of my ancestors. That this is one of my callings.
And, I too, have many sacred places on the land that I live and have loved more since Barbara passed. This forrest that surrounds my house, this great red oak, this stand of tall white pine, this granite rock outcrop, the cairn that I built over my wife’s grave…
And the barred owl that called out in the dark hot summer nights, the fox that denned under our cabin bedroom in winter, the pair of wood thrush that sacrificed their lives in the making of our Third Embodiment…
I honor you, Chloe, and your sacred journey♥️
Oh, Mark. Hello, brother. I’m so glad to meet you. Those moments when our hearts are irreparably burst open, so raw, so confusing, and it changes everything, so there’s that to deal with…It’s an ordeal! But one I wish everyone would experience. It’s big work, grieving on behalf of our long-dead relatives, but we have the distinct privilege of being in the physical, and having heard the call, and so we roll up our sleeves :) I’m happy to know that you’re surrounded by the ancient, the sacred and the wise, and that those qualities also inhabit you. I honour you, too, friend ♥️
This is lovely and genuine.
A good host to birds, a good host to grief, and a beautifully wise and haunting writer. Thank you for being you, Chloe. You are a gift!
Thank you, Susan! I am constantly trying to improve my hosting skills!
I really don't think you need to improve anything. <3
Yes, Chloe, as Mary Oliver asks us, what will we do with this one wild and precious life? Or what I ask myself everyday, what will I do with this glorious day? How will I be in it?
The best of questions! And what an insane buffet of potential answers!!
You are from another time and place. Peace to you, Chloe. From the depths of my heart. ❤️
All love to you, dear Al. Thank you ❤️
Thank you. Thank You. For being there for the rest of us.
Fifi, thank you for being there, and here, too.
I am learning to balance myself to better witness and withstand the beauty of your writing.
Goodness, Bill, what humbling thing to read. Thank you.
Just astonishingly true. Thank you 💚
Thank you, Mike! 💜
My goodness Chloe. Today I decided to listen to you read while I followed along with the post.. You really have a way of capturing the manic, the fanciful, the melancholy thoughts that depression and its offshoots invade the mind. It is a gift to hear you reading.
Thank you for listening, Jo! I'm mostly clueless as to whether or not people do, so I'm grateful to know.
I don't always. I'm not usually a listener, but yours is special.
Chloe, I am thankful I came across this article when it was shared in Notes. Your ability to capture the essence of grief touches a place buried within, an intimate space deep within my heart that nobody else knows, except now you!
Well done on this brilliant piece💕
Donna, what a beautiful reflection, thank you so much. I'm so glad it found you. 💗
Just so so beautiful Chloe.
This is the essence of how to live. Life is a paradox.
I try and write about this but it just doesn't come out like your stunning eloquence. It ends up with me sounding like I am just an emotional wreck! Whereas, I am trying to show the freedom that comes when we embrace all of our emotions.
“Light is in both the broken bottle and the diamond.” Mark Nepo
Thank you again Chloe. 💜
Jo, you are so dear and kind and I so appreciate you. I'm yet to read your writing, but I imagine it to be beautiful, just like your comments. I have a suspicion that whoever came up with the phrase "emotional wreck" was one of the architects of the shame prison which we can so often find ourselves incarcerated in. Just emotional is fine, and it's a very justifiable state :) I see your efforts towards wholeness and I'm on the path with you. Thank you, Jo. You are excellent company 💜
💜💜
You're a wonderful writer, this is a gem.
Katya, thank you