In all our loss, surely we gain something. Surely. In my darkest moments, I want to say otherwise. I want to say that it is all awful and horrible and should not be allowed to happen. The the earth and universe is cruel and unjust to make loss such a huge part of life. But that innate rebellion doesn’t last for long because I can’t help but see the silver lines in all the dark grey stormy clouds nowadays. Well maybe not all, but where there is grey, I find silver soon enough. I can’t help but feel there is nourishment somewhere deep in all the waste. And that if i just keep shifting it back into the soil of my life, it becomes food, to so many beautiful things. Losing has changed my vision for good. And so yes, in fear of being unfaithful to the insurmountable brokenness we are left with in loss, I still have to be honest and say there has been gain too. One thing I cannot deny is that my unborn babies have given me a sense of voice and self I didn’t own or even have a glimpse of before them. I hear and feel my instincts so clearly nowadays. I can’t be in conversations I don’t believe in. I can’t give to relationships that died long ago anyway. I can’t be with energy that makes me feel like something is wrong. I can’t walk into an opportunity that has just seemingly magically fallen out of the sky. There is a form to myself that I couldn’t access before and I have lived in it since I lost. Not willingly at the beginning because the price paid for it felt too high but it has definitely added a sense of richness and substance to my every day that might have been there before, but for the life of me I couldn’t see. So yes, and sometimes, strangely with a softened temperament leaning toward regret, I have gained in loss. But would I give it up to not go through the loss at all? Well, that’s a whole other story.
–S.C Lourie, the good in grief, perhaps
London, August 2017
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