Turning Towards Life - a Thirdspace podcast

366: What Grief Wants

Oct 13, 2024

Explore the intricate dance between love and grief, emphasizing how vulnerability enhances our connections. Discover the transformative power of grief, encouraging listeners to cherish the present with loved ones. Confront emotional complexities and the importance of fully engaging with joy and sorrow. Learn how grief's inevitability can deepen appreciation for life and foster authentic relationships. Embrace the fleeting nature of existence through heartfelt reflections and shared experiences.

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Chapters

Transcript

Episode notes

Intro

00:00 • 6min

Embracing Grief: The Importance of Presence and Connection

05:57 • 5min

Embracing Present Connections Amidst Inevitable Loss

10:42 • 2min

The Dance of Love and Vulnerability

12:18 • 1min

Embracing Grief as Part of Life

13:40 • 20min

Some words about grief, and about grief's intelligence, and what it might be here to teach us both when it arrives in full force and when we 'catch a glimpse of it' in the moments with those we most cherish and love.

How might grief - and its inevitability - open us to receive the life we are in the midst of right now, and how might it move us to take care of what and who we care about the most?

Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

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Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.

Here’s our source for this week:

What Grief Wants

I only want one thing.
I want you to pay attention.

I want you to look in her eyes, now,
While there is time, while there is
Still breath, while the magnolias unfold
Into flower, quietly, in the garden.

I want you to feel, all the way through,
What it is like as she looks back at you,
While she still can, while you are here to
Receive, to be seen.

I will be ready to hold you, flood you,
Carry you, when all the gazing is done.

I want you to receive your life,
While there is life to receive.
We will wail together about its loss
In good time.

But now is not the time for that.
It is not the time for turning away,
For trying to avoid anything,
For trying not to feel.

There will be a time when you have
No choice but to be turned away.
But that time is not now.

I want you to feel what it is like to
Release your desperate grasp around
What you could never hold onto anyway.
To delight in the living flow with its
Everyday beginning and its always endings.

I want you to feel the shining aliveness of
Everything you will lose
While it is still here.

Justin Wise
justinwise.co.uk

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash