The thing about grief is…

 

It’s not clean…

 

And by that I mean…

 

It’s not a river you can control

 

It’s not something that stays in it’s lane

 

All neat + tidy

 

No, when it hits you, it takes you over

 

You’re moved by it

 

Tossed around by it

 

Wrecked by it

 

Until you wash up onto shore

 

Like a drenched river-whore…

 

It’d be nice if our pain was tidy…

 

Knew how to clean itself up

 

But it doesn’t

 

It’s like spilled paint

 

It floods and gets everywhere

 

It seeps into the cracks

 

It blankets your bones + leaves messy tracks…

 

Until you surrender

 

And the thing is…

 

You don’t just grieve about one thing…

 

Your aches don’t wait to be heard

 

They don’t line up + take a number

 

When your heart is broken open

 

It’s wide

 

All that belongs there finds its way inside

 

You’ll be forced to feel all the places till

 

Where you’re harboring hatred or trying to hide

 

Are washed clean…

 

By suicide…

 

No grief is not a tidy visitor

 

And it just might overstay

 

But in its wild rushing way

 

It heals you

 

It purifies

 

It unburdens your heart in the most gut-wrenching way

 

No life is not tidy

 

It’s messy, it’s true…

 

But let it break you open

 

Flood you till your full

 

Rinsed of all that’s BLUE

 

For that, my friends is the way out

 

That my friends, is the only way through

 

 

Listen to Rachel Claire speak this poem here:

 

 

 

Thank you for joining with me today.

 

All my love,

XO

Rachel Claire