Fierce Grace: the power to re-emerge after grief

The enormous tenderness and fragility we encounter in our grief passage requires us to cultivate two opposing qualities...

First 'fierceness' - because it's impossible to tell from our appearance the enormity of our personal grief story!

If there was a physical evidence like the 'bandaged injury' from a car accident visible, then maybe the people around us could have a clue as to how to approach someone such a torn and grieving heart!

But because the demolition of our inner world is scarcely visible, we can often be treated - like 'nothing has changed' - when in fact we are completely different people!

So, we are required to become fierce in self protection, fierce in self advocacy and fierce in self preservation!

At the same time, we are not moving from the same capacity or inner resource - so mistakes are bound to happen... Grief has a way of stealing our voice, leaving us unable to express our needs or state our preferences! And so not only are we prone to error (losing things & forgetting appointments), but those around us can be so unfamiliar with who we are that they too stumble over communication and invariably make a mistake in how they relate to us...

Moving from this level of vulnerability is a daily tenderness and realm of new territory that without both fierceness to protect ourselves and the grace to forgive ourselves we can be tempted to become recluses altogether (I didn't speak to strangers or make any new friends for 18 months because I was so unfamiliar with my new truth)

I am new and maybe so are you

Cultivating Fierceness and Grace can be a powerful duo to forge a new beginning.