The Gates of Grief
Jan 20, 2025 | MLK Day, Inauguration Day
My beloved grandfather of 91 years passed on December 22, 2024 just after the winter solstice portal, surrounded by family. He set the bar high and paved his own path in so many respects. He was a lawyer, a magician, and an artist , among many other things. He taught us how to fish, how to laugh, how to find courage in the face of adversity, how much find magic in the mundane, and ultimately how to die. When asked how he was doing, he would always respond, “I’m in good shape to be in the shape I’m in.” His secret to life: humor and humility. He never met a stranger and was cracking jokes until the very end.
This year, my word is bloom. I also have phrases on my vision board like make your impact last, changing the tides, rebalance, and LEGACIES. This year, many projects, dreams, and desires of mine are coming to fruition. And yet, I simultaneously hold grief, sadness, anger, and rage when I think of the destruction of our planet and the death of loved ones.
While my grandfather’s death has been one of the hardest experiences I’ve gone through, it has allowed me to tap into a deeper well of feeling than I’ve ever known. Grief is a portal. It creates space for us to hold so much. I have always been a deeply sensitive person, and over the past month, I’ve felt like I’m holding the grief of the world. Yet, just like a flower sprout bursting out of its seed, grief can help us bloom into bigger and better things.
I was on retreat in Colorado when he was admitted to the hospital in the beginning of December. By chance, one of the offerings at the retreat was a grief circle, led by Sydney Badik and Danielle Rifkin, where we were introduced to a meditation on the 6 Gates of Grief.
I will guide you through them now. I invite you to take a few moments with each gate, taking slow breaths and acknowledging how it lands in your body.
The 6 Gates of Grief
The Grief of Knowing That Everything We Love Will Die
This one hit hard immediately. “How dark!” I thought. But as the truth settled into my bones, I realized how much resistance I (and we) have to this reality. We spend our lives trying to protect ourselves from loss, even though it is inevitable in one form or another.
The Grief of the Parts of Ourselves That Have Never Known Love
No matter how much inner work we’ve done, we all have parts of ourselves we’ve banished. Opening this gate allows us to embrace our wholeness. It’s not enough to cherish only the parts of ourselves we like; we must acknowledge the ones we’ve ignored or shamed.
The Grief of the Collective Suffering of Our Planet
I began to weep when this gate opened. I wept for Asheville and the lives diminished by floods, for Ukraine and Palestine, and for the endless wars humanity wages. I wept for the oceans, the soil, and the pillaging of our planet. This gate holds the collective grief of the world, and I realized then how much unresolved grief I have in this domain.
The Grief of Not Receiving What You Had Hoped
This gate relates to unmet dreams and hopes. I thought of unfulfilled birthday wishes, lost relationships, and the painful reality that people can only meet us as deeply as they’ve met themselves.
The Grief of Ancestral Loss
I shed tears for my ancestors—for their pain, for the harm they caused, and for the legacy of resilience they passed down. Ancestral grief connects us to the unspoken stories we carry in our bodies. I have often felt my ancestors at play within my own body and consciousness, so this grief was familiar to me.
The Grief of the Harm We Have Caused
This gate is hard to face, but extremely important. None of us are perfect. We are flawed and beautiful individuals, continuously relearning how to exist in this complex world. I breathed through the discomfort this brought up within my body, and sat up a little bit taller.
We were then prompted to journal on the grief we carry...
Words flowed out of me like tears, faster than my hand could write. I wrote about the grief that lives in my throat, in my kidneys and in my hips. I wrote about how my grief feels deeply on other planes and in other worlds and in other languages. I wrote about the collective suffering and fears of the unknown. I wrote about the grief that runs away to hide in all the cracks and crevices of my body. I wrote about the grief that sometimes pours out of me in the form of pain or tears or harsh remarks or judgments or thoughts whose sole purpose is to keep me unhappy. Sometimes I feel that I have so much grief for the world, I don’t know what to do it or where to put it. And yet, grief is a portal that connects me to my spirit, my heart, my breath, and to all beings—human, plant, and animal.
So, I offer a prayer for the collective suffering—for those who have been harmed, those who I have harmed, and those who have harmed me. I offer this prayer as an acknowledgment of the interconnectivity of the human experience, where pain and healing are inextricably linked. May all beings find the grace to forgive and be forgiven, to release guilt and shame, and to step into the light of understanding and compassion.
I offer a prayer for Death—that she may grace us with her presence when the time is right, not as an enemy but as a guide. May she bring us signs, symbols, and wisdom along the way, helping us to see that every ending is the soil from which new life emerges. Let her presence remind us of the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth—that in surrendering to her inevitability, we make space for transformation, for growth, and for the blooming of what is yet to come. 🌸