On Disaster

My sweet girl,

Sometimes the worst will happen. The worst outcome, the worst turn of events, the most horrific and unimaginable thing. This is life. Suffering cannot be avoided. I’m so sorry, sweetheart. It won’t be easy.

These moments will feel crushing. Because, as the history of your life will tell, they tend to happen when you’ve found yourself in a place of optimism, energy and hope. And the sense of devastation won’t just be about the “terrible thing that happened,” although each will contain an ordeal from which you will need to heal. The worst will be the way these moments rattle your sense of order in the world, your faith in love and your trusting of the great unfolding. You will wonder if there is a God and if that God is actually love and if there was a God who loved how could they allow you and the others in the world to suffer in the ways it does?

Here is the thing, my sweet girl. You are not meant to know the answers to these mysteries yet. But if you look at the evidence, there’s one thing that seems to hold true. In these moments, love shows up. Friendships and communities are movements are formed around “the worst things that happen.” These things cause us to go small, to go local, to receive and give help where it matters- in your heart, in your home, and with the people you can see and touch with your own skin and eyes. There’s no need to be grandiose, magic is in the details.

But this letter is actually not meant to ponder the mysteries of God and the universe and the purpose of suffering. I want to get more granular.

When great and terrible things happen, as they will, I want you to allow. Simply allow.

The body, the mind and the heart have their own pace and space for healing. Humans think too much. They try to control too many things. You can expect to feel exhausted for quite some time. When people go through a trauma, they need rest. You can expect to feel rage and fear and sadness and hopelessness… these feelings are part of the package too. Welcome them. Wail in the despair. Go numb in the hopelessness. Throw socks at the wall in your rage. Write down everything you fear from the depths of the most animalistic parts of you, even if your writing makes no sense at all. These thoughts need to get outside of your body and into the land of the living. This is the way.

Well-meaning friends may try to rush you through the process. They will imagine that if they were in your shoes they’d handle it differently or better. They wouldn’t. Only you have walked your journey, in your particular body with its DNA and generational wounds and childhood experiences, with the blows and resiliencies you’ve risen through along the way.

It is in the “trying to get better” (which we do because discomfort is painful and resting is anti-capitalist), where we get stuck. If we allow the feelings to feel and the events to process, they will eventually land in meaningful packages of lessons to learn, of direction to follow, of action to take. If we allow grief to expand us in the way grief does, our empathy will grow, as will our compassion and our hearts. If we allow these things to unfold, you will return.

You will return different, of that there is no doubt. The loss will be integrated within you, carried with you always. Your view of the world might have changed, less idealistic but holding deeper truth. You will connect now with the suffering of others in ways you didn’t before. But you will feel like you again. Your energy will come back. You will be ignited again with purpose and passion. You will feel joy and connection. Your love will be bigger, your mission will be clearer.

You will be okay. No matter the loss. Even the losses you think are for forever. Because my sweet, nothing is lost forever (but that is a matter for God and for love and for the universe, you’re simply going to have to trust me on that one).

Take care of your body, or if you can’t, that’s okay too. Feed yourself nutritious food or go ahead and eat those Salt & Vinegar chips. Move. Dance. Stay in bed. Celebrate big the days you get out of bed when you want to stay in. Do gentle things in the middle of the night when sleep evades. Write. Reach out. Forgive yourself for the ways you think you are doing healing wrong; we can only feel so much at once. You’re doing fine. You’ve got this. I promise. I promise. I promise.

I am so proud of you.

Love,

Christina Michelle

Love letters are letters of self-compassion written to me, by me, born of moments of hardship. I often find people struggle with how to speak compassionately towards themselves.

These letters are meant to be an example of how you can begin.

With love, Christina