To Love Is To Lose

Exploring the sacred tension of loss

I used to think that grief was something that you have purely as a result of losing love.

While that is certainly true, now I see that it is also present as we open to receiving love.

I think this has many dimensions in the context of romantic love:

1. We are grieving the idea of losing them as we open to loving them. This is why love is also accompanied with a sacred tension where we are simultaneously feeling what it will be like to lose them one day, whilst also opening to loving them. To love fully is to accept loss fully.

2. If we have never truly sat with the grief of our losses we will not be able to open up fully. Our ceiling in intimacy will live within the limit of our own ability to hold the depth that grief requires. Which leads perfectly to the next...

3. If we are opening up more than we ever have we are grieving that we have left love on the table. Every time we go deeper, open more fully, we are witnessing our past through what was possible with this new lens of awareness. This is true of all awarenesses, however it is especially true in recognizing how we show up to relationships. A lot of us get stuck here, in the space of regret, not realizing that there is a present moment now lacking our full attention because we’re hoping for a better past. We wish we could’ve shown up better, or different, thinking we’d have a different life, and we miss living this one and creating magic now.

4. As we open our hearts more fully to them we're exploring if we give ourselves the same level of love. Are we as committed to ourselves as we are to them? Are we as willing to go to the moon and back, to fight for the love with them, as we are for ourselves? These are painful and powerful mirrors that require exploration only available through the lens of relational possibility. And the pain of this awareness requires immediate restoration, or it will lead to addictions, self-sabotage, and a myriad of other distractions in order to avoid claiming the power of alignment.

Grief is one of the most potent vehicles for transformation. It roots us. It grounds us. It demands to be felt. It is the descent into our forgotten selves. If we’re willing to feel it, we will liberate our totality.

I think we’re afraid of it because we afraid of how powerful we’ll be once we remember what we’ve forgotten. We don’t necessarily trust we can hold it, not realizing we are simultaneously grieving that we pretend it’s not there.

Somewhere in some dimension all of that makes sense to me. I hope that makes sense to you.

On the podcast I dive deep with the brilliant psychotherapist Megan Devine on the subject of grief… in the context of relationships, death, and all the things. She is one of the best teachers I have encountered not just on the subject of loss, but life in all its complexities. Check out the episode here.

Big love,

Mark