Thorns of grief, tangled inside me like the branches of wild blackberries.
In the darkest moment of my grief, I tried to separate myself from art. I was so angry and upset, I felt like what I created was more important than me as a person. I felt like my only value was placed on what I made for others to consume. It blinded me. I couldn’t see how others were loving me, because no one ever showed me or defined what that looked like.
How would I know what it looked like when someone else loved me, if I didn’t have the instructions?
It’s not like we come to earth with an instruction manual:
“How to recognize love?”
“How do I become a better parent?”
“How to love myself”
It wasn’t until we all joined in and started flooding the internet with “articles on self help” that we could start seeing how one way of existing wasn’t the end all be all.
I felt like I was the thorny mess left tangled in abandoned places. I felt small in comparison to my art. It was the abundance that was plucked clean off of my love to decorate and adorn others without leaving anything for me. I fell into and surrendered to a depression that made me feel the most alone that I ever have felt. I lost my support system that I created from my abundance because I refused to produce. I was so angry and finally had to figure out where to put those feelings and how to express myself and find myself in a way that wasn’t outside of myself.
I submitted to my shadow and let it swallow me whole. I did this to understand how to contain myself, and how to not hurt myself or others from me being oblivious or consumed in my work.
I had to get to know me. I had to study myself and figure out how I worked because that was my job, not anyone else’s. I had to learn how to manage my cycles of growth and figure out how to create boundaries for myself and make room inside myself in the tangle of thorns, to figure out what seeds I was given and what else existed within me besides my creative gifts.
Who was I, and why?
Why do I like what I like?
Where are the roots to what I value?
How strong and how deep do the roots reach?
When do they start?
What parts of myself are no longer useful?
How do I cure the parts of myself that hurt me?
How do I love myself if I’ve never been shown how?
There it was.
Love.
When I thought about love, it was a big nasty knot tied to grief… and that love was tethered to art with a golden thread. No matter how many attempts, I couldn’t chew through it.
The roots were strong and deep. I tore it from me, I ripped off my armor and veil to see who was hiding within me.
In doing this, I also ripped out the roots of a seed that my grandma loved and held space for. The tangled mess was not knowing how to contain that love. I kept all the mess inside me from the invasive thorns of unbridled grief and anger inside me.
Of course it was going to spill over outside of me…
It tangled into my relationships.
It tangled into my work.
It tangled into my schedule.
It tangled into every part of my life and when I don’t keep it in check, it still spills over.
Grief makes a home inside of us and it’s invasive. It twists and tangles when we don’t give it a space to be released. Those thorns aren’t meant to grow and tangle inside us. Love should be the piece of Death that remains within us. Expressing it and giving a place to release it in healthy ways to ease the gut wrenching moments of the wounds of their absence left behind, should be what we fill ourselves with.
But how would we know? When there are so many ways to lessen the pain outside of ourselves?
Distractions from the pain and discomfort; drugs, alcohol, sex, work, money, working out, eating, pick your poison.
Any one of those things can turn into the invasive thorns that start to consume and take over and hurt areas of your life that are supposed to be sustained and managed to create abundance. Having self control is a hard discipline to learn when you’re in the depths of grief. It takes work and it’s intimidating to face a mess that has been inside you since the roots of its origin.
I had to figure out how to salvage parts of the roots that are healthy inside me so I could focus on those parts and heal. Refurbish that home that is supposed to make me feel safe inside myself, so I wouldn’t seek comfort outside of me to cope with the permanent invasive roommate “grief” that refuses to get a job and clean up after themselves.
You have a few options at that point:
- Let grief take over your life. Go party and distract yourself until you burn a hole through your desire to live from all the anger and resentment you refuse to release.
- Find a compromise with grief. If it starts figuring out a way to pay some bills and make a living, it can stay- but it can’t get out of control.
- Figure out a way to grow in healthy ways that exist inside of yourself made of unbridled unconditional love so that way grief doesn’t have any room left to exist within you.
*disclaimer: if grief moves out, it may or may not *pop in* for unsolicited visits, usually around the holidays and family gatherings.
When I tried to separate myself from art, I realized that I was destroying my own abundance.
I realized that I was crucifying myself.
Restricting my mind for a space to release the energy of my gift, was restricting myself from the love that came from the endless well of love that my grandma gave to me. I wrapped the thorns around my mind instead of letting the flowers bloom. Art was with me since birth. It was my first language before I could speak. It kept me company when I was alone. It kept me busy. It kept me safe. It was the closest that I could be to God, because it was a gift, no matter how far away I felt from myself I could always snap right back to me and pull myself out the darkness from what I created from my own mind. Because it was pure love.
I found myself in the dark. I learned more about love when I abandoned myself, than any relationship tried to create. It was held in the realization of how much I was already operating in radical unconditional self love.
In the internal battle, fighting back to it- I was given access to other gifts that I never realized were apart of me.
I found others like me who were searching for the same thing. They had amazing gifts as well, all unique and bright. Unseen, because of the thorns around their light. It was like underwater welding trying to reach an opening to get them to see a glimmer of light left within them. We broke each others thorns apart in the space that we allowed for each other.
There’s no label for this batch. They’re all unbridled love that have been planted in the wrong parts of the garden. They’re survivors fueled by love. Each one holding their own concept of what God is, which to me, was the most beautiful part of their hearts. All of them had the same desire, seeking the same destination. Love.
Without Life and Death there cannot be Love and Desire. You have to reach into the depths of your own psyche to understand what unnecessary trials and limits you’re putting on yourself in your life and create healthy boundaries so you can enjoy the fruits of your labor.
My advice is to not let those unbridled, untamed, overgrown blackberries of your life be what you fall into when you abandon the home within yourself. It’s not a good time climbing out of. You are love. This is your home.