so you're afraid of your grief.

hello, dear friends. last night i hosted a free tarot journaling session, and it was such a rich and generous time, full of grievers and tenderhearted people. if you were part of that lovely group, thank you for bringing your open heart and your honest grief. and for those of you who weren't able to make it, over the next week or so i'm going to share a few reflections on the conversations and questions that emerged there, as a way of bringing you in. (and if you missed my recent trio of essays on grief, click here to catch up.)

i honestly didn't plan to send an essay to y'all today. i'm tired. but these words are flowing out of me in response to our session last night and i wanted to share them, in the hopes that they offer you some tenderness and support.

i also wanted to let you know that river styx, my ten-week grief program for tenderhearted badasses who want to believe in the future again, is now open for enrollment. if you're feeling overwhelmed and exhausted by the world, if collective grief feels impossibly heavy to navigate, if you're ready to reclaim your energy and focus and transmute your grief into meaningful action, river styx is for you.

grief can be a really scary thing. we tend to associate the word grief with loss, death, pain, sorrow, bereavement, and a feeling of heaviness and desperation that feels like it will never ease.

as i was reminded last night, a lot of us are profoundly afraid of grief — afraid of the experience, afraid of the sensations, afraid of being unmoored and alone. it can feel safer to contain the grief, to cordon it off or find a way to manage it. it can feel easier to control the grief, control the feelings, control our responses. it can feel more realistic somehow to deny the grief, to tell ourselves that what we're feeling isn't that bad or that we should be stronger.

most of us would prefer if grief wasn't so goddamn messy. grief leaks out, breaks containment, challenges our notions of self-possession or intentionality. grief can have a mind of its own, one that backs us into corners or not recognizing ourselves. it's unpredictable, takes up space, and demands our attention.

but the flip side of this, the tricky side of this, is that it can also feel devastating to lose the grief, to "heal" it or move past it — especially in personal grief, when it can feel like those feelings of pain and sorrow are the only things keeping us connected to what we've lost. we might not love the experience of grieving, but we might feel guilty if we're not grieving, like the person we've lost is kept alive by our sorrow, like we're proving to the world that what we've lost still matters.

that's because grief is tangled up in love, in connection, in what we value. at its core, grief is a response and a reaction to loss — and we don't grieve things that we don't love, that we aren't connected to, that we don't value.

friends, i know how this feels. i have been there before, and i'm there with you now. grief shakes our very foundations, breaks and remakes us into people that we don't always recognize. it's a transformational process, and it can sting, can ache, can knock us down and crouch on our chest and bring so much pressure that we can't seem to get a full breath.

i have lived through personal grief: the devastating realization that someone we loved is no longer available to hug, to care for, to look to. i have lived through separations and estrangements, through rejections and abandonments, through not knowing why i was even alive. i know what it feels to sit in and live with these feelings.

and i also experience collective grief, every day, just like you do. i watch the news and grieve for the lives lost, for the violence and abuse, for the human beings whose stories are not told as loudly or as often as their white counterparts. i rage and yell, i cry and stagnate, i feel so much all the time. but i also know how to channel that grief into writing, into community spaces, into creative work, into art, into spirit, into love.

it's taken a long time, but i have slowly learned how to recognize my grief when it emerges, to look it dead in the eye and listen to its anguish and honor its needs, to shift into an action in a way that eases my sorrow. to me, that's what grief work is: the practice of learning to move with and through our grief, so that our grief can move with and through us.

so what does it take to get to this place? what does it mean to work with our grief, to understand how to transmute grief into action and connection?

for personal grief, it takes time. nothing but time, patience, and gentle care can really ease the pain of the loss of a loved one, the loss of a dream, the loss of a worldview or belief or expectation.

but for collective grief, it takes sitting in the grief. it takes listening to the grief. it takes learning to be with the grief without trying to fix it.

and the only way to get better at being with our grief is to practice.

i know, i wish it was easier too. i wish i could tell you that there's one clever trick or three easy steps towards befriending and being with your grief.

there isn't. you've just gotta practice, consistently, whenever you can, in a way that works for you.

at its core, so many of my resources and programs and tarot spreads and journaling prompts are about this very truth: that we have to learn how to sit with the hard things. we have to practice being in it without trying to fix it or manage it or control it. we have to let ourselves struggle in the discomfort of not being perfect at a thing the very first time.

we have to try, and try, and then try again.

there are a lot of ways to do this. for grief of all kinds, community helps — and especially for collective grief, where new waves hit daily with ongoing news and state violence and genocides and climate crises, it's so important to be with people who get it, who feel it, who are right there with you.

i really love using tarot for grief work, because tarot can also be in it with you. if you're struggling to listen to your grief, to know what it needs, to see and know it intimately, tarot can serve as a mirror and a window, a compass and a guide.

in last night's grief journaling session, i offered a tarot spread for this kind of ongoing grief check-in work — and i want to share it with y'all, too. these three small questions can be used for general reflections in your journal, conversational check-ins with people you love, or as tarot prompts if you need help hearing what your grief has to say.

checking in with your grief, with three small questions:
-what am i grieving right now? (a.k.a. which grief feels the sharpest or heaviest today, not "how many things can i name that are worthy of my grief?")
-what shape is that grief taking right now? (a.k.a. how is my grief expressing itself? how does my grief feel? how is my grief showing up in my life today?)
-what does that grief need today? (a.k.a. how can i tend to my grief today? what might offer my grief support, comfort, movement, encouragement?)

this, my friends, can be a relatively simple way to start practicing grief work. if your grief feels impossibly hard to be with, if the very notion of engaging with your grief seems like too much to bear, you might be surprised by how much tarot can help.

day by day, friends. we do this work day by day, a bit at a time.

i know that this world seems broken beyond repair. i know that the hard, scary things are coming at us from all directions. i know it seems like the people and institutions in power are too big to fail. i know that it might feel like you're trying to walk through quicksand, to breathe through mud. i know that the world keeps spinning madly on and on and on.

but i want you to remember that we are in this together. you are not alone — not in your grief, not in your uncertainty, not in your fear. together we build spaces for trust and vulnerability, for care and support, for expression and connection. together we show up to do hard things, to be with the pain, to honor where we are and where we hope to go. together we make a difference, one day and one action at a time.

and if you are hungry for change, if you are eager to have support in moving through this difficult moment, if you are ready to transmute your grief for the world into meaningful action with the support of tarot, journaling, and steadfast community, my ten-week collective grief program river styx is open now for enrollment. we begin on february 6th, but as soon as you sign up you'll get access to a collection of new tarot spreads, our private discord server, an introductory lesson, and some ways to begin engaging with your grief immediately.

i know this program won't be for everyone — but if you think it might be for you, click here to visit the river styx page on my website and learn more.

and if you have questions or concerns, if you aren't sure, if you want to chat about how the program might work for you, i'm going to be hosting a river styx open house on monday, february 2nd at 7pm EST (zoom link here, no registration required!). you can also email me anytime at 3am.tarot@gmail.com — i'd love to chat with you and help you decide if river styx is a good fit.

i'm sending you all so much love and courage, today and always.