On Grief.
“There is a story of a woman running away from tigers. She runs and runs and the tigers are getting closer and closer. When she comes to the edge of a cliff, she sees some vines there, so she climbs down and holds on to the vines. Looking down, she sees that there are tigers below her as well. She then notices that a mouse is gnawing away at the vine to which she is clinging. She also sees a beautiful little bunch of strawberries close to her, growing out of a clump of grass. She looks up and she looks down. She looks at the mouse. Then she just takes a strawberry, puts it in her mouth, and enjoys it thoroughly. Tigers above, tigers below. This is actually the predicament that we are always in, in terms of our birth and death. Each moment is just what it is. It might be the only moment of our life; it might be the only strawberry we’ll ever eat. We could get depressed about it, or we could finally appreciate it and delight in the preciousness of every single moment of our life.”
I thought I’d survive this year un-scathed. I really thought I’d be one of the lucky ones, the exception to membership of the “2020 Rocked Me Club”. I thought I’d just be lucky enough to observe everyone else’s world crumble from a distance. It would be okay because I could just show empathy for everyone else’s misfortunes. We all just need a little empathy. Someone will share something with me, and I’ll furrow my brow, nod my head and say, “I’m so sorry that happened to you”. And part of me wouldn’t be able to relate because I’m not apart of your experience. We would be separate.
I thought I’d survive it if I put myself in a snow globe while spinning in circles with my arms stretched wide and looking at the dome above my head. I could even catch snowflakes on my tongue. Nothing to worry about here.
I thought the worst of it was being out of work. Collecting unemployment. There’s so much shame in the dreaded word “unemployment”. I thought the worst of it was the heavy anxiety, the uncertainty of what the state of affairs would bring. I thought this pandemic would throw me into the deep end. While it derailed some plans, it left room for others. Everything worked out, pandemically speaking, and has so far. If anything, the circumstances brought me joy, clarity, self-reliance. I’m so fortunate. It was a blissful month and a half free of obligation and work, existing on this beautiful island without tourists. It was, quite frankly, my oyster.
But that’s the funny thing about thinking you’re the exception to a rule. The universe likes to humble you in that way. I, me, you—we are never the exception. We are all in this messy dance together. Life likely got messy for you, and life also got messy for me.
I almost lost my Dad this year, and I lost what I thought was the love of my life.
I’ve been sitting with this old friend called grief lately. The anguish, the heavy and sorrowful burden of grief. It’s actually a really interesting emotion if you allow yourself to experience it—and at 33 I can tell you this might be one of the first times I’ve actually really FELT it. Thanks to recovery, I can now feel my feelings, and I do. Grief is my least favorite. It comes and goes like a wave, but when it comes—you cannot run away from it. You cannot.
It heaves in my chest. It puts a hole in my belly. It stomps its feet in the depths of my being and with each foot that comes down, it reverberates with the type of pain that will cause me to wince. It’s a punch in the gut with no marks to show for it. The only evidence is the red in my eyes. All I taste is salt from the wetness on my cheeks.
Grief comes to me much like the fog in San Francisco. When I lived in the city, I liked to plant myself in the sand at Baker Beach some evenings before the sun went down, armed with my parka and blankets to protect me from the crisp Northern California air. Watching the fog roll in was an escape, a place of solace amongst the chaos of the city, the traffic and the people. The fog hauntingly creeps into the city, coming in just past the Golden Gate bridge. It slowly approaches from the trenches of the Pacific Ocean with its darkness, its dampness, its heaviness—and soon the city is enveloped.
Grief, it will envelop you.
I feel enveloped by it.
Grief, it will cloud you.
I feel clouded by it.
It will make everything else blurry, but the grief. The heavy grief begs for the attention, and the heavy grief will be heard.
I am riding the waves of grief. The unbearable moments where I want to stop and distract and busy and scroll and do whatever the hell I can to run away from this awful, agonizing emotion. No wonder people have addictions to run away from this! Hello eating disorder, I see you. I understand you a little better. I see how you tried to protect me from grief.
Instead, I hold my breath as the wave crashes over me. It takes everything I have to succumb to it. To surrender, and know I’ll come up for air. I’ve always been one to panic underwater, but this letting go commands the calm. Fortunately, the waves of grief are also fleeting. A set comes, you ride the wave, you paddle back out to the peak, and wait. Another set will come again. Repeat.
Although it is difficult, grief can also bring us gifts. The blanketed cloud of grief has the capacity to dim the power of other emotions—like fear. And when you conquer a little troubled child that is fear, the grief can temporarily melt away.
I sent a text to my friend Willy the other day and said,
“Willy, we are surfing the damn Bowl when you’re off work.”
The Bowl. A beautiful, sometimes textbook, peeling right reef break on the far side of Hanalei Bay. It’s the kind of wave you see in magazines. Back in the 70’s, the locals would jump any photographer who would come with their camera and try to take pictures of the wave because they didn’t want the world to know about it. I don’t blame them. It’s sacred. It’s a place every surfer on Kauai loves. But, word got out, apparently.
Even though the wave is beautiful, you can’t be a novice surfing it. You have to paddle for a good 10-15 minutes to even get out there—and any surfer knows what it’s like learning to paddle even a short distance when you’re first learning. It’s harder than it looks. If you’re lucky enough to even get to the peak, the drop is steep and fast. Timing is essential—something you can only learn with experience. My first year surfing on Kauai, I went out there twice and my whole body convulsed with shakes of my own terror, and I went on the small days. I sat so far on the outside and watched the water and didn’t even dare trying to catch a wave. I knew my time for the Bowl would eventually come, and for some reason, the grief pushed me towards it.
Thanks to grief, I’ve finally conquered my fear of the Bowl.
I parked by the pier, Black Pot as it’s called by the locals, and got out to look at the water and examine what I would be getting myself into. It wasn’t too big, at least from where I was standing. Thank god. I walked back to my car in a daze, a veil that the grief provided, leaving no emotions. No nerves. Not the usual shakes. I couldn’t help but think “He’d be pretty proud of me for doing this.” I shook my head to pop the thought bubble from my ever-changing thought train. No, Amanda. No. “He doesn’t know what you’re doing, and you’re doing this for you.”
That’s better. I untied my board and took it off the roof and onto the hood of my car to remove it from my Dakine board bag. I unzip the bright yellow zipper and peal back the flap to reveal the board’s bright pink body and turquoise rails, a beauty shaped just for me, shaped just for this wave. I remove the board and put it on top of the bag and grab wax from my glove compartment. Willy pulls up, giving me the side eye thinking I’m going to chicken out and say, “Let’s just surf the Cape.”
“Hey Wills”, I said, instead. “You need wax?”
After putting on a fresh coat of wax that smells like coconuts, and wiggling into my spring suit, we make our way into the water. I feel the immediate hug, the embrace of the ocean and its lukewarm temperature. It’s perfect. Relief washes over me. I take a deep breath, and we begin our walk on the sandbar until it turns to reef, pushing our boards in the shallows and splashing water over the top to harden the wax. As we get deeper, I begin to feel rocks tickling the bottom of my feet, so I reach down to put on my leash and hop on my board. Now, we paddle. We make it past the pier and the first buoy—the marker for those who might be serious and for those who are not. I’m serious this time. I keep going. I come up on the white water, straddle my board and turn around. I see Hanalei Bay in its entirety; a view from that far out in the ocean is one of the best in the world. I turn back around and onto my belly—with a dead-pan stare at the exact place I’ll be sitting. I aim for a spot amongst the other silhouettes of surfers in the horizon ahead. I will not be sitting on the outside. No. I’m catching waves today.
For the first time, the normal nerves in my belly and the rush of adrenaline through my veins is gone. I sat in the lineup at the Bowl, and I was calm. A set starts to come in, and I can tell from the lines ahead that this one has some size. I calmly paddle towards the small mountain as it forms in front of me, to not get caught on the inside. Surfer lingo for the white water, a place you can get pounded, and it’s even more difficult to maneuver with a 9’2 longboard like mine. I used to panic when a set of this size came towards me, but I floated up and over like it was a normal thing. Like I did it every day. I watch the wave make its way past me, and I feel the spray on my face as some force behind me gives me a nudge to paddle back to the spot. The 2nd wave comes, I float over it. The 3rd wave starts to form in the distance and makes its way towards me from the horizon-- this wave is mine. I inched to the back of my board, grabbed the rails and turned around. I start ferociously paddling until I feel the wave pick me up, look to my right and draw my line, pop up, and feel my belly in my throat as I drop into the face of the wave. I rode that sucker all the way, gliding and turning up and down its face until I couldn’t any longer. The force and power began to lose its steam, and I kicked out and paddled back to the lineup with a cheesy grin on my face. I did this again and again and again.
It had been days since I felt this kind of joy. This weird combination of happy and sad at the same time. There was room for both in those moments of freedom in the water. They enabled one another. I had felt cracked so far open, that all I wanted to do was close and retreat. But somehow a higher version of self realized that in the cracking, there was more space for joy. It was not time to retreat, it was a time to keep opening. The only time grief can be overshadowed is by doing something I didn’t think I could. I thanked my grief that day. I thanked it for its veil. I thanked it for cracking me open. I thanked it for pushing me to the edge.
Maybe I can start to welcome grief more freely. It’s funny how we are often looking at these moments of grief as an obstacle to get to a better moment. We always want the better moment. I got in the water that day in search of a better moment. “How can I fix this?” is the only question I have ever asked in my moments of darkness. But perhaps our grief is here to not be fixed or changed. It is here to teach us how to see in the darkness. It’s in these depths where we can recover the parts of ourselves that we have missed. It’s in my own depths that I discovered a new sense of fearlessness.
When you start seeing obstacles or grief as opportunities, and the challenge as an invitation—it will transform your life. My life isn’t transformed by a few waves, but it’s transforming by the currents of where its taking me. I can see clearly what this invitation has been trying to show me all along. It’s been trying to show me the gaps and conditions in which I love myself. Where the holes exist. The holes that still have a sliver of belief that I’m unworthy.
And none of this unworthiness is true.
This has allowed me to witness the death of this old version of me. I accept this invitation to love myself, unconditionally.
When you find and acknowledge a truth you’ve been ignoring, it’s a sense of relief. It’s a surrender. We ask “why me?” “why this?” “why this relationship?” “why this truth?” “why these circumstances?” You are pointing your finger at anyone or anything but yourself. You can’t put it off—this reclaiming of self and this invitation to not only be with all of you, but to love all of you.
And grief gives you that chance. Here’s my chance. There’s a whole lot of love I gave to someone else that I now have a chance to pour back in. To gather that love I had placed on him, into the relationship, and return it to the one who needs it the most. That person is me.
I will continue to ride the waves of grief and know what it is here to teach me. And if it takes actively surfing waves at the Bowl or figuratively riding the waves of grief to show me how much love I have left to give myself, then I’ll slide along as long as I have to.
So when that next set that comes is bigger than the last, maybe even over my head, and I feel fear tickle the back of my neck-- I’ll still grab my rails, turn around and paddle into it despite what my instincts are telling me. It just might be the ride of my life.