Breathe, beloved.
Not to turn away from the pain, but to enter it with reverence. To be here, fully, in this tender unraveling of what once was.
Grief, when it arrives, often disguises itself as emptiness. As if love disappeared with the one, or the place, or the feeling that is no longer here in form. But love cannot go anywhere. It is not of form.
It is not bound by time, or space, or even by memory. What you are grieving is not the absence of love— but the absence of how love was shaped, how it once touched you through a body, a voice, a presence, a shared breath.
The form has changed. But the love? It remains. It lingers in the silence, in the ache, in the places that now seem hollow. Not as punishment, but as proof— proof that what you felt was real, and that real love never dies.
Let yourself weep. Let your ribs ache. Let your soul call out into the night. This is the body remembering. This is the heart reorienting itself to the unseen. There is no shame in longing. There is no weakness in sorrow.
This too is part of love’s path. A sacred part. A necessary part. You are not alone. The connection is not broken— only altered. Only hidden, like the moon behind clouds.
Speak to them if you must. Light a candle. Write their name. Feel them in the breath that moves through you. And when you are ready— not fixed, not healed, but softened— let yourself rest in the great mystery.
The mystery where love still lives, just beyond the veil.
Still here. Still holding you. Still singing in the silence.
You have not been abandoned. Love has not vanished. It has simply changed its clothing— and become the sky, the wind, the silence in your chest when you remember.
Let it hold you now. Let it shape you, gently, into someone who knows— even through sorrow—that nothing true is ever lost.
“If this opened something tender in you, feel free to share it with someone walking through grief.”
Nigel Lott teaandzen.org
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