Gratitude Is the Other Side of Grief

Abeja Rise | Substack no.02

Hello dear ones,

Thank you for joining me here. Today I wanted to talk about grief, death, pet death and some heavy spiritually-loaded topics. Please take care of yourself in reading this or not reading this. I am grateful for you either way.

Last summer, I said goodbye to two of the loves of my life, Ashes and Isis. I had to put two of my cats to sleep less than five weeks apart. Their loss cracked my heart so deeply, deeper than when I lost my father over 11 years ago, deeper than I ever imagined it could crack and still beat.

Now I know that my heart needed to crack open. To let in the sun. To release the demon that held onto me so tightly. I know you think I might be using symbolism here but I’m not. Sort of.

A few months ago, I attended an event with a spiritual healer and author, Bex Mui of House of Our Queer. She had me and the other attendees pull an oracle card. The card I pulled asked me to practice radical honesty.

So here goes. For most of my life, since before I was nine years old, something possessed me. I was left vulnerable for a number of reasons and so I was taken. I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t let it in.

I don’t know if demon is the right term because it falls short of what I experienced. Also, I personally do not believe in the evil/good binary. And while I do believe in energy or entities that we might understand as traditional “demons,” I do not believe that these entities are completely evil. As far as I know, I do not have the words for what this was.

But I also knew I found solace in the macabre and the occult because they gave me, however implausible, explanations for what I was experiencing. Those explanations made sense more than what I was taught as both a Catholic and as not.

Since my first experience with death at nine years old, I would collide with death around every ten years after. Like clockwork. And when I realized that pattern, I began to fight. Harder than I ever had before. Harder than I ever believed I could.

And one day, only weeks since I had said goodbye to my dear sweet Isis, I felt that entity leave my body with such violent excrement. Literal shit. But only after weeks of unexplained bug bites, scratches, sleep paralysis, nightmares, and all of its attempts to stop me from fighting.

But I didn’t. And as I fought, my guides gave me gifts to keep going. And when I released it, I received an incredible healing vision that showed me everything I live and love for.

Most of the vision, the most sacred part to me, is mine. But I will say, I saw everyone that has ever lived and will ever live. The fucking brevity of this is not something I can explain. You see what I just wrote but even I, now, can’t fully grasp what was shown to me. And I don’t need to. Because I know it on a deep level. We all do.

I don’t need you to believe me or pathologize me. It doesn’t really matter. I do need to remind you of something though. We chose to be alive in this lifetime. We choose it every day we are here. We have a purpose. We are here to serve, to care, to love. It must be the forefront of everything we do. There are so many who have come before us, so many here with us now, and so many who will come that know and embody this.

And so, as my recently adopted cat, Marigold, lays across me, licks my face as I sob, and as I chant thank you over and over, she tells me, “gratitude is the other side of grief.” I know it’s true. All she had to do was lick my face as I cry, just as Ashes used to do. I know she was sent to me to show me this. As I sit here, writing this, with gratitude coming off me in gold waves, I hope you know it’s true too.

Thank you for reading. If you want support in exploring grief or other transitions, check out Liberated Transitions. I highly recommend Tasha and their death doula work.