Grief & Euphoria : On Feeling the Whole Spectrum

On Christmas Day {2023} my Dad passed away. It was unexpected and it was tragic.

On that day, I felt the most pain I’d felt in my entire life. Hours of build up. Huddled in the entry way waiting for someone to tell us what we already knew in our bones. My dad was gone.

You settle into a new understanding of our experience on Earth - in this human body - once you’ve experienced loss like this. Grief like this. This pain is, ironically, one of the through threads amidst humanity. One of the through threads between us all. We are all guaranteed to lose someone we love at some point in our lives. It’s inevitable. 

There’s a sort of kinship you develop for others that have also endured such pain, such loss - especially so young, so unexpectedly. A kinship that says ‘I am so sorry you’ve also experienced this pain and I see your strength’. A kinship that, without words, acknowledges the inevitable growth that is a result of feeling such depths of pain.

In real time I could feel my capacity to hold space- my own threshold to feel- expanding. There were two options: expand and feel it despite how much it physically and spiritually hurt, or let it live inside me. Let the hurt, let the pain, let the grief rot inside of me. Turning rancid. Insidiously poisoning the soil of my being. Slowly dimming my light until it’d eventually go out all together.

So, I felt. And I keep feeling whenever a wave of anger, of pain, of sorrow, of joy, of remembering and laughter crashes within me; whenever a wave of emotion swells in my body, I let it crash. I let it rumble. I let it roar. And I watch. I watch it move through me. I watch as tears roll down my cheeks onto the earth, I watch the raging urge to explode at the slightest inconvenience, I watch a smile crawl across my lips as I remember his sense of humor. I watch and I allow for. I allow for and watch as the emotion transmutes on my breath.

What I’ve learnt is that the more I feel, the more strength I know I possess to feel. 

It’s the chicken and the egg conundrum. You see, you don’t start feeling once you are strong. You become strong once you start feeling. You quickly notice how equip you are to do hard things. To feel hard emotions. What happens next? An overwhelming sense of safety to exist in your body. A sense of safety that reminds you that you can do anything. That you can feel anything. That nothing is too painful for your breath. That nothing is too big for your breath. That nothing is too hard for your breath.

In feeling safe to feel the deepest, darkest waves of pain, the equal and opposite becomes true. We begin to feel safe to experience ecstasy… euphoria… minutes of belly laughter… calm… peace in every moment. 

So then what happens? We no longer need to subconsciously self sabotage in order to avoid feeling something new- something hard.  avoid feeling disappointment, embarrassment, anger, fear, uncertainty, or the deepest pain. We no longer need to trip ourselves when we’re going downhill. 

Instead, we develop a relationship with the breath. We walk hand in hand with our breath to expand into profound pain… and euphoric pleasure. The threshold to feel expands in all directions. To feel the ‘desired’ emotions, we must feel the ‘hard’ emotions. If we reject one, we reject the other.

Less than two months after my dad passed away, I got engaged to the love of my life on a mountain top in New Zealand. Ecstacy. As you free fall into now - into your breath -  and feel, it becomes clear: to observe & feel the whole spectrum of emotions is to be free.