This sadness sits comfortably in my chest, cavernous in my heart. It’s poignant darkness and chill courses through my body and sometimes escapes from my eyes, but most of the time it stirs beneath the surface ever-present and ever demanding I acknowledge it and tend to it.

This sorrow upholds me, it caresses me and comforts me. Sorrow is love’s winter: we experience sorrow because we love. It’s love gone cold, love that’s missing its object of affection, love that persists after loss.

I’ve ponder the irony of 40 weeks since my brother said “Nine months, that’s how long it takes for a baby to be born” last week. Instead, no babies, just reminders of death everywhere. In this Easter season of budding life, our days are shrouded in death. Life and babies and joy and resurrection, only to be left motherless and childless and filled with death.

What are we, we children with no mothers?

It’s love that is eternal, it’s memory that crosses the bounds of time. The dead exist vividly in our minds and in our memories, and our love for them connects us when their bodies have returned to the earth.

Emotions are, eternal, uncontrollable, inevitable, and inherent. Emotions may make us feel trapped or elated, delighted or dismayed. Feelings aren’t the problem. Emotions are not positive or negative, they or not bad or good. Some feelings are painful, some are delightful, some give heart palpitations. There is no good or bad here, there is simply the human experience and the emotions that allow you to embody the depth of the universe.

Nothing is wrong with your feelings. Nothing is wrong with you. Feelings/emotions indicate what is and isn’t important, what we do and don’t like, what is and isn’t okay. Emotions demand to be felt, acknowledged, and tended to. Pretending they don’t exist doesn’t help. Punishing oneself for their existence doesn’t help. Minimizing them doesn’t help.

Sadness, anger, grief, anxiety, and a litany of other emotions belong to you. They are part of you, they are kind indicators of your experience and they must be tended to, given a seat at the table, brought before a trusted community, and validated. It’s in safety and acknowledgment that we begin to heal.

Yes, this sadness sits with me. Yes, this pain washes over me. I deeply feel all that is not right in my life because none of this is okay.

Mothers aren’t supposed to leave their babies.

Grandparents aren’t supposed to exploit their children and sue their grandchildren.

Aunts aren’t supposed to destroy families.

Churches aren’t supposed to act like their staff member’s life was a stain on their reputation, and punish her family in the process.

Brothers aren’t supposed to cut their lives short.

Stigmatization of suicide survivors isn’t supposed to exist.

But all these things happen, and the only way to heal from it is to acknowledge how much it isn’t okay and to find true support.

Your feelings are not a curse, they are meant to protect you and guide you into tender and caring spaces.

So, I sit with my sadness and I allow it to comfort me. I allow it to teach me what I need to feel whole in my world that is so broken. Emotions take us where words cannot reach: I free my sadness to take whatever form it needs, and I free myself to heal from incommunicable hurts.

40 weeks of death, so many decades of life. Oh, how strange are these numbers and milestones that mar us.