'Tis the Season of Conscious Rotting
Welp, I moved. I made a very big move.
After nine extraordinary years in San Diego, I packed up my life and moved back to Oahu a few weeks ago. While I knew this would be an adjustment, I didn’t anticipate the magnitude of what my grief would be like.
To my surprise, sadness didn’t find me right away, fatigue did. And my fatigue has been colossal. Every moment of being awake has felt strenuous, every limb in my body has felt heavy, like a weighted blanket found its way under my skin. Within my first few hours home, I took a long nap, awoke to eat dinner, then crawled back into bed. Even after sleeping through that first night, I woke up the next day with such little energy.
“Ah, this will be interesting,” I thought to myself.
It was this way for the first week, and it took small acts of nurturing my exhaustion to start boundlessly crying. As if all my inner tenderness brewed the strongest cup of sorrow and since then, I have cried and cried. Sometimes I don’t specifically know why, but most of the time I do. I cry reflecting on my various communities, and how I won’t be living life with them. I cry thinking about my favorite memories of the last nine years, how I miss my favorite spots, and the cottage I lived in. I cry reflecting on how much I evolved as a person- how the aloha spirit was always my foundation, but living off-island has imprinted on me and widened my perspective of what I want for myself.
From my lens as a grief coach, I know I am mourning. I am holding the complexity of feeling at home and homesick at the same time. This fatigue and sadness is just part of it, yet here I am, annoyed that such emotional volatility comes with a meaningful goodbye.
I think a part of me hoped I could jump into the current of Hawaii’s charm and bypass the unpredictable aspects of grief. I fantasized about picking up where I left off the last time I was here: picnics at the beach, spiritual convos with my elders, rejoining a meditation group. The lifestyle here is magical, yet I know none of it is enough to soothe me, or tame the grief I feel for San Diego.
I truly believe from my work with clients, that nothing can “tame” grief. Grief itself isn’t a monster, or a problem with a cure. It’s a part of our humanity. Its wildness reflects how well we loved. Grief asks that we pay attention to our hearts and change our lives even more. Grief invites us into deeper listening, of ourselves and our transformation ahead.
Right now, I’m relearning self-trust and the permission to slow down. It is taking everything in me to be patient with my sorrow, not panic about my future, and remind myself of what I support others through: that in a fresh season of change, there’s nothing to do other than consciously rot.
Doing this is always easier said than done, and maybe it’s different for everyone. To me, conscious rotting means letting myself fall apart, nurturing my raw state with rest and patience. To rot involves giving up expectations that we need to do more, give more, be more. To rot is to let something in us die because that is the bravest thing we could do when we know our lives are changing forever.
Sitting in my grief has taught me time and time again- if we are daring enough to love, we will know grief. This life is about trusting grief’s nature to break us down and break us open. To consciously rot is not an experience of sulking, self-harm, or regression. It is an honoring of who we were and who we love. We can trust that the part of our soul that aches, knows exactly the path to regrow, fuller and sturdier than before.
Thank you for reading this. Writing about grief is always cathartic for me.
May we all keep living and grieving well.
Aloha,
Melinda