Grief is another word for love.

You can listen to this piece here (4 mins)

​​I do not know what it is to lose a child, but I know what it is to grieve. In the social media squares I share a quote, or a headline, or more numbers of the dead. But what I am really trying to say is: my heart is breaking.

The children’s bloody and tear stained faces scroll by on the screens. The numbers go up. Around them there are justifications, pontifications, the weighing of sides. 

What would happen if we really let our hearts break, allowed those numbers in, gave them their names back, their lives, their loves? What would happen if we collectively allowed ourselves to crack open and grieve what we have become?

I spent the week working on a children’s book I am writing. It is about wildness and connection and the imaginal realm. It is about wonder, and joy, and figuring out how to solve problems systemically, collectively, human and animal kin alike. It is about not having a singular hero or narrative. It is about love. The children in this war, any war, will never read this book. Nor any other. They will never be able to let the wonder in, or let themselves imagine what they want to be when they grow up. For war is a denier of the best of what we can be. For we, humanity, we are engineers, imagineers, pioneers. We, humanity, we are filmmakers, firefighters, farmers. We are scientists and song-writers, poets, philosophers, educators, homemakers. We are parents, daughters, sisters, lovers. And once we were all children with hopes and dreams. Some of us are lucky to still have them. 

So, no, I do not know what it is to lose a child, or be in a siege, or have my future denied because of a rampage or a bomb. But I do know how to grieve, to lose a loved one, to cry with a loss that it aches to breathe. I do know what it is to live in a world which denies itself the possibility of its own flourishing, its own becoming, all because it insists on bombs and blood and sides and the justifications of taking lives in the name of protection or vindication. 

The numbers rise and my heart breaks that bit more. My heart breaks to grieve, to cry, to hold the worst humanity has to offer, and to try to coax it back to love, to believing again. 

I am writing a children’s book for the future, because I have to believe in the future. I am putting my grief in there. I am putting my love and my broken heart in there. Because I want children to know what it is to wonder, and what it is to dream. Because sometimes we have to imagine the beautifully impossible to believe in the beautifully possible. And I am hoping my heart still has room to break, so I can let some more grief in. Because I know that a broken open heart is a birthplace for the possible. Because I know that grief is another word for love. 

#ceasefire

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Hello. I'm Clare

I'm a writer, educator and facilitator, living in beautiful West Cork, Ireland. I love to share resources and learning to help harness the regenerative power of words, place and story. I hope my work offers nourishment for mind and soul. Thank you for being here. Clare x