Grief Has Its Own Calendar
I anticipate that certain dates will intensify my grief, and I meet those days with compassion.
Did you know grief carries a calendar your conscious mind does not always know about? A specific time of year, a date, a season, a kind of light — your body remembers, even when you have not been thinking about it. You may find yourself unusually heavy one afternoon and only later realize what the date is, or what time of year it was when things began to fall apart.
This is not failure. This is the wisdom of the body. It is keeping track of what you lived through and offering you the chance to acknowledge it. You can meet these days, when they come, with a little more softness than you would meet an ordinary day. You can let yourself move more slowly. You can plan less. You can ask for company, or for space, depending on what is true.
You do not have to perform a normal day on a day that is not normal for you. You do not have to push through. You do not have to explain to anyone why a particular Tuesday is heavier than the Tuesday before. The bodies of survivors often know things our calendars do not name, and trusting your body when it speaks is part of healing.
If a day is going to be hard, you can let yourself prepare. Reach toward the people who get it. Move your body. Stay off the corners of the internet that will not be kind to you that day. Tend to yourself — patiently, deliberately — the way you would tend to someone you love who was walking through something heavy. Because that is exactly what is happening.