Grief is not flat one-time thing. It's not this linear something that we simply move through and leave behind like a bad chapter in a book. Grief has depth. Real depth. And the deeper the grief, the deeper we find ourselves falling. What if that fall into grief isn't the problem though? What if falling into grief is actually the plan all along? Is it time for you to look at when grief becomes the gateway home?
Grief is like falling into a well and it happens suddenly. Even when we know it's coming for us. One moment you're walking on familiar ground, and the next, the ground beneath you is gone. It’s like there’s a hole that’s opened up beneath you and that well is dark, cold, and full of icy water.
At the top of the well people gather. They're just as uncomfortable with the well as you are. So, they throw words down instead. Well-meaning throw-away phrases like… You'll be fine. It could be worse. They're at peace now. Give it time.
Other stop by the well and get more practical like constructing emotional ropes, providing timelines, and offer you plans and ideas of how to escape… You'll meet someone else. Have another baby. Move house. Give it about a year.
All of it is absolutely well-meant. And all of it is focused on the same goal. That is… getting you out of the well.
What happens though is that somewhere along the way, we absorbed the belief that healing with grief means climbing out. That the purpose of grief is to return us to how things were. That the longer we stay in the well, the more something must be wrong with us. So, we fight the descent and we resist the depth. We scramble for promised escape routes. We want to get to touch the bottom and for the well to end.
Could falling into the well not actually be a mistake? What if it was designed to separate us from the noise of the world? From all those opinions, fixes, distractions, and expectations so we can finally be alone enough to hear ourselves?
When grief becomes the gateway home, the well forces stillness. It removes your roles and it strips away the happy face of pretending. It stops your life completely so that nothing matters in the same way down deep in the well. And that's not accidental.
The water in the well, the grief, is heavy. The water presses against you and it feels endless.
But if that water isn't meant to drown you, then what? What if it's recognising it as unshed tears? Or unfelt emotions? Maybe it’s unexplored truth? What if the water isn't a barrier? And instead it’s the gateway home?
Because beneath the water, at the bottom of the grief well, there's something rarely spoken about. A door. Your door. And beyond it, there’s a tunnel that leads to understanding. This tunnel is not lit and there’s no signs. There’re also no guides and no one giving directions. It's cold, dark, and deeply personal.
It’s here when grief becomes the gateway home that you’ll find grief as the processing lane. It’s the perspective shift you didn’t even know yet that you needed. And it’s the place where things finally start to make sense. You don't find this tunnel by bypassing grief. You find it by allowing yourself to stay in the well long enough to feel what's there.
In the grief well, you are alone. And for as on Earth, alone feels terrifying. But there are actually two kinds of alone. One is isolation, that’s the Earth version of alone. The other is reconnection; that’s the Soul version of alone.
Grief strips away outside belonging so that Soul belonging can be felt again. It disconnects you from everyone else so you can reconnect with yourself. But we're not taught how to be in the well. Instead, we're taught how to escape it. So, we shut grief down. We suppress it and distract ourselves from it. We manage symptoms and we try to regulate the nervous system without understanding what it's responding to. But the nervous system won't settle until the truth beneath the grief is acknowledged.
Because peace doesn't come from leaving the well when grief becomes the gateway home. It comes from understanding what the well was here to show you.
When we allow ourselves to remain in the well just long enough. Not forever, but honestly, then questions begin to surface naturally…
These aren't questions asked from the head. When grief becomes the gateway home, they come from being in the depth. And when they're answered truthfully, the water begins to move.
The grief well is not here to break you. It's here to return you to yourself. It's the passageway between what happened and what it meant. And once that meaning is felt (not explained by the mind, but felt), you'll find that the well no longer holds you in the same way. And you’ll deeply know that you don't climb out. You come through.
*You keep replaying the same moments, the same conversations, looking for what it all means underneath. And part of you wonders if you're supposed to stop analysing and just "let it go," but it doesn't feel finished yet.
Your body feels different now… heavier, slower, like you're moving through water… and you notice it, then tell yourself you just need to exercise more or sleep better.
This is the kind of work we practise together in Life Unpacked Membership. Where we don't rush the process, but honour it. Where understanding becomes the bridge between surviving and living.
