Grieving

Grief is the soul's response to loss. It is not a problem to solve but a process to allow. The Mature Healer develops the capacity to grieve—to let loss carve into him, to feel what endings demand, to release what can no longer be held.

Men often struggle with grief. We're taught to be strong, to move on, to fix things. But grief cannot be fixed. It can only be felt. The man who refuses to grieve carries his losses like stones—getting heavier each year until the weight becomes unbearable.

The Charlatan pretends grief doesn't touch him. He performs recovery while festering privately. His unfelt grief becomes manipulation—he makes others pay for pain he won't feel. The Wounded Child drowns in loss without finding bottom. The Mature Healer feels grief fully while maintaining his capacity to live and serve.

What Grief Is

Grief is the emotional, physical, and spiritual response to losing something that mattered:

Sorrow: The ache of absence, the pain of "no more" and "never again."

Anger: Rage at the loss, at the unfairness, at whatever caused it.

Bargaining: The desperate wish to undo what happened, to find a way back.

Despair: The bottom where hope seems impossible and meaning collapses.

Acceptance: Not approval, but acknowledgment. The loss is real and cannot be undone.

These are not stages to check off. They are waves that come and go, sometimes crashing over us when we least expect.

What We Grieve

We grieve obvious losses—deaths, divorces, catastrophic changes. But we also grieve what often goes unrecognized:

• The father we never had
• The childhood that was stolen
• The dreams that will never come true
• The person we thought we'd become
• The naive belief that we were exempt from suffering

There is also the first wound—separation from mother. Every boy must leave the maternal world to become a man. The man who never grieved this separation remains tied to the mother, seeking her approval in every woman.

These unlived griefs haunt us—expressing themselves in depression, addiction, rage, and numbness. The Healer learns to recognize them and give them their due.

The Road of Ashes

There are two kinds of descent. Katabasis is the dramatic fall—sudden catastrophe that strips away illusions in one blow. The road of ashes is slower: the gradual accumulation of ordinary disappointments.

Traditional cultures gave young men "ashes time"—a period of lying in cinders, doing nothing, letting the grandiose child die before the mature man could emerge. Modern men rarely get this. We're expected to stay productive. To hustle through pain.

But grief won't be rushed. The man who skips ashes time remains inflated—succeeding externally while staying a boy internally. The way out is not around grief but through it.

The Body's Grief

Grief lives in the body before it reaches the mind. The chest tightens. The throat closes. The stomach drops. The body knows loss before we have words for it.

Many men try to think their way through grief. This fails because grief is embodied. We must feel it in our flesh to release it. The man who stays in his head will find it stuck there—circulating as anxiety, depression, or rage. Let grief move through the body. Shake. Breathe. Cry. Roar.

How to Grieve

Grieving requires:

Time: Grief cannot be rushed. It takes as long as it takes.

Space: Create conditions where grief can emerge. Privacy. Safety. Unscheduled time.

Feeling: Let the feelings come. Don't analyze them, fix them, or make meaning of them. Feel them completely.

Expression: Grief needs outlet. Tears. Sound. Movement. Writing. Let it out of the body before it poisons from within.

Witness: Sometimes grief needs to be seen. A trusted friend, a therapist, a group of men who understand what it means to lose something precious.

Grief and Strength

There is no conflict between grief and strength. The man who weeps for what he's lost is not weak—he is honest. His tears are evidence that something mattered. His grief is love with nowhere to go.

The man who cannot grieve is trapped. His unfelt losses control him from the shadows. He becomes rigid, defended, incapable of true intimacy.

The Warrior who can grieve is more powerful, not less. He knows he can survive loss because he has survived it—fully, consciously, without hiding from what it demanded.

When Grief Returns

Grief does not follow schedules. We think we've finished. Then a song plays. A smell drifts past. Someone laughs like she used to laugh. Grief crashes back like a wave we didn't see coming.

This is not failure. This is how grief works. It comes in waves for years, sometimes decades. The waves get smaller. The intervals grow longer. But they never fully stop. Grief is loyal. It remembers what mattered.

Grief as Transformation

Grief transforms. The sorrow that carves into us creates space for joy we couldn't hold before. The loss that breaks us open teaches what comfort never could. The endings that devastate us prepare us for beginnings we couldn't have imagined.

A man needs something that rips him open, a wound which allows soul to enter. Pain is not merely suffering—it's initiation.

This is not consolation—grief is not worth it because of what it teaches. Grief is real. When met honestly, it changes us. The man who has grieved deeply has a gravity and tenderness that others recognize. He has faced his darkness. He is trustworthy.

He becomes someone who can sit with others in their pain. He knows what grief requires because he has lived it. His presence says: "I will not run from your sorrow. I have been to the bottom and found there is a bottom."

The Healer's Grief

The Healer grieves not only his own losses but holds space for the grief of others. This requires that his own grief be tended first. The Healer who avoids his losses cannot hold others'. He will flee their pain because it activates his own unprocessed wounds.

The Healer who has grieved his own losses can sit in the fire with others. He is not afraid of tears, of anger, of despair. He has been there. He knows the territory. Grief does not destroy. It completes what love began.