Grief

June 19, 2025

Grief has astounded me since I was a child. 

It has been ever present throughout my life. 

I feel it in my bones.‌

I feel it in my soul.

I feel it in my spirit. 

I feel it in my sensitive heart. 

It has shown up as:

• My eyes welling with tears

• A lump in my throat that I couldn’t get rid of

• Staying awake at night and resisting sleep 

• Not knowing how to understand my hodgepodge of identities. 

• Feeling drowned in survivor’s guilt. 

• Among countless other feelings/experiences 

It’s 106 degrees as a I write this. 

It is taking me back to my homeland, which is also a desert climate 🌼🏜️

Having lived in multiple countries throughout my life, I often wonder if I chose to live in the desert as an adult because it takes me back to my original home, my Homeland. 

A home I don’t have access to. 

Today, I honor my hometown by sitting in the warm weather & letting tears run down my face as I read the news. 💔

I’ve learned that with grief—you process it not by pushing it away, but by learning how to be with it as it comes up. 

Grief doesn’t arrive all at once; it comes in waves, through the body, in images, in dreams, through brain fog, in the tightening of your chest & your heart when something reminds you of what’s gone.

Through parts work (internal family systems), I’ve come to see that grief doesn’t live in just one part of me. Various different parts of me hold a hodgepodge of feelings, experiences, and memories. 

• There are parts that hold devastation & terror

• There are part of me that feel numb & a deep sense of hollowness when they witness the news

• There are parts of me that want to “fix the feeling,” “problem solve” “just be fine!”

• There are parts of me that feel angry & feel the weight of colonial violence

• And, there are parts of me that still hope for a better future. 

Hope is not naivety- Hope is a decision to care, even when you are afraid. 

Hope as a posture is something that I am learning. Not waiting for hope, but creating hope. Because without hope, what do we really have?

All of these parts of me have valid feelings & need attention from me. 

My self channels curiosity without agenda, calm, compassion towards all of these parts. 

Self can’t fix the woes of the world (unfortunately), but what it can do, is let these parts feel seen & less alone. These parts don’t have to hold these burdens alone forever. 

When I am in regulated & In Self/Soul/Essence(whatever word works for you), I can create space for these parts who have previously felt alone in the world. 

Processing grief means listening to each of them without rushing any of them out the door.

I like to call upon Rumi’s Guesthouse Poem here- treat all emotions as welcome guests. 

Somatically, grief lives in the body—it aches in the bones, trembles in the hands, closes in the throat. Sometimes it asks to be wept out, sometimes it wants to shake, to walk, to sing, to hum, to be still. Feeling grief means making time to let the body lead the way, instead of only trying to “understand” it with the mind.

Many of us have inherited silence around grief. We’ve been taught to cope privately, or to feel ashamed of how long it lasts. 

But grief is not linear, and it is not shameful. 

It is love that has lost its usual place to go. 

Processing it often means reclaiming rituals—lighting a candle, creating a shrine, naming the loss, telling the story. It means letting ourselves grieve in partnership, in community, or in solitude, or in nature—wherever grief feels most safely held.

Maybe it looks like looking up at the stars, being in the mountains, and seeing how small we are in relation to mother nature. 

Grief isn’t something you get over. And really- its not even something you can get rid of. Its a trap to think you can avoid grief. It will just get creative and come out sideways. In your life, in your goals, in your relationships, in how you treat yourself & how you treat others. 

For a different conceptualization, Grief can be understood as an emotion as well—it brings a message.

In Emotion-Focused Therapy, we understand that emotions aren’t problems to be solved—they’re messengers bearing truth. 

Grief is no exception. It arrives not to harm us, but to reveal what mattered. It tells us that something or someone was deeply loved, deeply intertwined with our sense of meaning.

Grief’s message is often this: Slow down. Something sacred happened here. Let yourself tend to what has changed.

It is the echo of love, attachment, hope, and memory.

When we listen to grief instead of rushing to get past it, we find that it’s not here to break us, but to integrate the brokenness. It wants to make something whole again—not by replacing the loss, but by honoring it.

And if you can’t be perfect at grief—that’s okay. No one is.

There’s no timeline. No single correct way. How could there be when humans are so complex?

Some days, you’ll feel everything. 

Other days, you might feel nothing. 

That doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. 

It means your system is protecting you in waves. 

Grief unfolds in spirals, not straight lines. You don’t have to master it—you only have to be in relationship with it.

A book I recommend is: The Wild Edge of Sorrow by Francis Weller. 

Cultural resilience is an aspect of grief I’d like to touch on as well. 

Look into your lineage—your culture, your ancestry—and see how your people moved through mourning. 

In order for you to have made it here, your ancestors had to survive. They often have a blueprint for us :). 

A question I often ask myself is, “How did my people survive sorrow?”

What did they sing? Hum? What did they cook? How did they honor the dead? How did they come back to one another?

Even if you don’t know all the stories or rituals, there’s power in seeking them. It’s not about having all the answers, it’s about getting closer to yourself & recovering what you can from your ancestors. 

There may be prayers, foods, textures, scents, communal acts, or gestures of reverence that were passed down, or lost and waiting to be reclaimed.

These aren’t empty traditions. They are technologies of emotional survival. 

They say: You are not alone in this. Your grief is part of a much older story. There is wisdom in your bloodline about how to carry what hurts.

Even if you craft your own new ritual, it is still connected. Lighting a candle, naming the loss out loud, cooking something familiar, walking in nature, writing a letter—these too are sacred acts. Grief wants somewhere to go. And ritual gives it a path.

I believe healing isn’t something that happens once — it’s a rhythm we return to, again and again. 

Our hearts break like wounds that reopen, tender and raw, but over time, with hope, and conversations with people who hold us gently, & prayer/any spirituality that works for you/(omit this if you don’t resonate) we begin to mend. 

Each scar carries not just pain but wisdom: reminders of what it means to be human, to survive sorrow, to love through it. 

As someone who has always had an interest in history- it brings me some clarity to understand that human history has always been this tragic & reparative. There are always violent times, and times where the pain subsides and growth is nurtured. 

The more we encounter devastation, the more we learn how to exist alongside it — not by hardening, but by becoming softer, more patient, more connected. Grief, in its strange way, can draw us closer to the people we love. And sometimes, simply speaking our truth out loud, or being met in silence, makes the weight just a little easier to carry. 

I’m grateful for the moments that bring lightness to my heart, even in the midst of heaviness.

✨ A Pause for Poetry: A Rumi Pull ✨

As I sit and unwind from the grief-laden moments of the day, my heart releases becomes open to guidance & ancestral wisdom. 

In true Persian fashion, I decide to open my Rumi book & flip to a random page and take it as an oracle card reading 

In Persian we call this فال {faal}. It’s a Persian cultural ritual that brings me comfort—maybe you want to join me. ✨🕊️

If you’d like, make a cup of chai {Persian tea is Ceylon Tea + Saffron + Cardamom + Persian Rose Petals} ☕️, light a candle 🕯️ , and sit with me for this small poem reading. 

(Disclaimer: If you’re not into this kind of thing, that’s okay too. This part is just an offering—a soft sharing from my Persian culture to yours. You can feel free to stop reading at this point. If not, let’s delve into some Rumi)

Today, I pulled two short poems:

Rumi-  “The Hiding Place” & “The Water of the Water”

🪙 “The Hiding Place” (Mathnawi III, 1133–34)- Rumi

The most secure place to hide a treasure of gold

is in some desolate, unnoticed place.

Why would anyone hide treasure in plain sight?

And so it is said,

“Joy is hidden beneath sorrow.”

“Joy is hidden beneath sorrow.”

Reflection:

In times of war, injustice, or political fear, sorrow can feel like it blankets everything—like the world is bleeding and no good can come of it. But Rumi offers a radical spiritual truth: joy isn’t gone—it’s hidden. Hope, connection, resistance, and beauty don’t disappear in dark times; they go underground, into the unnoticed places.

This poem invites you to see your grief not as a weakness, but as a sign that you still care, still feel. That very feeling means you are not numb, not disconnected. It is grief with purpose—because somewhere, joy still exists.

Your hope doesn’t have to be loud or perfect. It can be quiet, hidden, like a buried ember waiting for the right moment to rise. The work of healing, witnessing, and protecting others often happens in this hidden way too—quiet, sacred, essential.

Affirmation: Even when sorrow surrounds me, I trust that joy is not gone—it is simply hidden, and I will seek it in small, quiet ways.

If you’d like a prompt, ask yourself gently:

• What might be quietly growing in this desolate-seeming place?

• Could the heaviness I feel be the soil that joy will root in?

🌊 “The Water of the Water” (Mathnawi III, 1271–74) - Rumi

Day and night there is movement of foam on the Sea.

You see the foam, but not the Sea.

…but look at the Water of the water.

The water has a Water that is driving it;

the spirit has a Spirit that is calling it.

“You see the foam, but not the Sea… Look at the Water of the water.”

Reflection:

Political turmoil is like foam on the surface—chaotic, blinding, exhausting. This poem reminds you: don’t confuse the foam for the whole sea. Beneath the surface, deeper currents are moving—spiritual truth, ancestral strength, community resistance, the turning of seasons.

Even if the world feels out of control, Rumi says: there is a deeper Water moving it all. That Water has a Spirit, and that Spirit is calling you. Guiding you. If you listen beneath the noise, you might hear where you’re being led: to connect, to act, to rest, to pray, to protect.

You’re not being asked to carry the world alone. You’re being asked to root into something deeper than the chaos—your values, your people, your spirit, your love.

Affirmation: The storm above does not shake the deep water below. I am guided by something deeper than fear.

If you’d like a prompt, ask yourself gently:

• What would it mean to trust the unseen current beneath the waves in my life?

• What truth have I been sensing beneath appearances lately?

Together, these poems say: Your sorrow is sacred, your confusion is part of the journey, and something unseen is guiding you. Don’t fear the quiet or the unknown. You are being led somewhere golden.

I hope this cultural exchange felt supportive to you. 

Here are some of my favorite Persian songs to listen to that help me hold the weight of being in diaspora & the fear for the future:

The Migrant Birds- Faramarz Aslani

Shabe Royayi- Aron Afshar

Hejrat- Googoosh 

Derakht- Ebi

And in the language of my ancestors:

صبوری کن، جانم.

{ saboori kon, jaanam}

Be patient, my soul.

With an open heart, 

Tara