midlife grief

sneaky grief, heavy grief, good grief

ink art by me, 2016.

Two seconds after I hung up from a call with my realtor telling me that my offer on a house was accepted, I sobbed — and I mean ugly-crying, heaving wails. These weren’t tears of joy or relief, like “Yay! This cute house is mine!” They were tears of grief, and they took me by surprise. Grief is a sneaky friend, isn’t she?

In a session with my acupuncturist (oof, I’m trying needles again 😱) last week, she saw that I had checked a box next to “grief” on her intake form as something I’ve been experiencing lately. She asked, “What do you think your grief is about?” I reflexively answered, “Mostly, I feel like grief the appropriate response of a sensitive person trying to live in the world right now.” She looked at me and put her pen down and said, “Yessss… let’s just pause for a moment with that statement,” and we sat there quietly together. Then I told her that, for me, right now, state-of-the-world-grief is compounded by divorce-grief, transition-grief, anticipatory-…