Cacao, Cuddles & Grief
The image of the two cuddling friends doesn’t leave my mind.
They apparently haven’t seen each other for a long time, deduced from the long, joyful way they hugged each other in welcome. Now they sit on their pillows in front of me, one woman’s head leaning on the shoulder of the other, each with an arm around the other.
We’re in the middle of the concert by Sophia Kai, having already witnessed a heartfelt opening by Miyuki followed by a cacao ceremony.
An area with meditation cushions set up in front of the stage. Behind there are chairs for those who don’t want to sit on the ground. The light is dimmed, the room filled with candles, and a beautiful altar with white and pink flower petals lovingly arranged in front of the stage.
I closed my eyes and smiled. I was happy for their close friendship. I genuinely was, because I know the feeling of reuniting with an old dear friend.
And it reminds me of how lonely I felt.
They remind of me and a friend.
Ex-friend.
Is this even a word?
A friend that is no longer a friend.
But still very present in my heart.
We knew each other from our engineering studies in university. She was a sunshine in my life at that time, making the gray soul-sucking world of academia more enjoyable. She was a lot of things to me, but most importantly, she loved to cuddle. As someone who grew up in a touch-deprived environment, that was new and I absolutely loved it. We would have spontaneous sleep-overs, share the same bed and cuddle like kids.
After our studies, our paths parted, and we took on very different journeys in different countries. Despite challenges came up in our friendship, we would always find a way to meet again. I remember how awkward we once felt in the beginning of a reunion, and after a few hours ended up in cuddles again.
As the evening progressed, more people around me found themselves in cozy cuddles.
I sat silently on my meditation cushion and bathed in the warm, loving atmosphere.
I listened to Sophia’s medicine - her dark, nourishing voice singing in languages that my soul understood, and reciting poems and telling anecdotal stories that my mind understood. Words and melodies cleaning my soul, while mama cacao supported the process with her sweet heart-opening.
Tears wouldn’t stop flowing and I let them be.
It wasn’t an explosive sobbing, nose-running, sound-making cry. More a gentle, soft, feather-like calm stream that left delicate wet marks on my face, and I didn’t bother to wipe them away after a while.
Flashes of grief already announced themselves in the past weeks of my life
This evening was a culmination of this process.
I’m not particularly familiar with grief. At least, this is what I tell myself. Out of the whole range of human emotions, grief is the one I feel the most inexperienced in.
I’m fortunate that up until now, no one from my immediate circle of acquaintances has died. The majority of my family lives in China, and when (sadly) estranged family members passed away, I was more observing grief in my parents.
Or rather the lack of it.
It was only this year, when I realised that I’m very familiar with the consequences of unprocessed grief. And how my parent’s grief unconsciously became mine. Grief already made its way early into my life without me noticing it.
I experience feelings of loss and sadness.
For the end of relationships - platonic and romantic alike - a phase in life, an object dear to me, a vision, a place, an identity.
Grief hasn’t really found a place in my vocabulary yet - not in a way that I’m comfortable using it.
It feels like a big thing to say, reserved for very specific events.
The passing of a loved one, devastating natural catastrophe or war, ending of a romantic relationship that meant the world.
I have watched other people grieve and grieved with them. And I’m starting to learn how grief looks in my own life.
2.5 years ago, my spiritual community fell apart
Almost over night, it crumbled like a house of cards.
I’ll save the details for another time.
I lost my spiritual family and my home all at once.
My community that I’ve been so intimately close with for two years.
People I’d worked and lived with together in the remote lands of Portugal. People with whom I’d been on an intense collective spiritual journey together - with our individual journeys interwoven.
We had countless mind-blowing moments of insights, challenges, transformations, growth. We shared the same vision, mirrored each other’s fires in our hearts, and encouraged to show up in strength as who we really are. We danced barefoot around fires in ecstasy, held space for individual crisis, and made impossible things possible.
My people.
I didn’t realise how much the separation is still affecting me now. Looking back, grief has been my silent companion that I wasn’t aware of.
When the community fell apart, every member was grieving differently. I think, we were all in shock for a while. Then, all the feelings came up at different times in different people, ranging from anger, sadness to relief, joy and more.
I did feel grief & sadness in the beginning. When I physically moved away a month later, I felt disoriented and relieved. Life directed me to Madeira where I deep-dived into the next chapter of my life and fell in love in another way.
There has been many moments in the past 2.5 years where I experienced glimpses of loss. Missing the community spirit. The hugs, words of wisdom, and sharing a dinner table. However, it was quickly overshadowed by memories that don’t deserve the word ‘positive’ and mainly led to emotions of resentment and relief.
There has been one friend over this time with whom I shared more details (the good and the bad) about my time, and who listened with curiosity, asked questions - for which I’m very grateful.
Most of the time, I don’t know how to talk about it, then don’t want to talk about it, because there are so many things I didn’t understand and didn’t know how to express.
So, a few weeks ago, as if a silent dam broke, I came more in touch with the deeper layer of trust & gratitude again (that has always been there in the background), while washing away surface-level emotions that my system no longer tolerated.
I remembered valuable lessons I learned and decided I want to keep them in my heart moving onward. I remembered experiences that I still don’t have words for and told myself that this is okay. I forgave people and I asked for forgiveness. I gave thanks and let myself feel deep appreciation for that time again, after a long time.
I grieved.
Grief has been the gray haze that made me very cynical, bitter and mistrustful towards spiritual circles for a while.
Even though, I longed for community (in any form) again, and did seek communities, there was always a little careful, anxious something lurking in the dark that I recognise now as grief (and fear).
There’s nothing wrong with its existence. On the contrary, I feel actually quite excited to get to know grief and all its subtle ways that it’s showing itself in my life.
I told myself that I can be proud of myself to have loved so many people so deeply that their absence still makes me cry.
The next morning after the concert, I’m making a cup of cacao in the kitchen. I don’t know if I will feel its effect since my last cup was the evening before, but I didn’t care. It’s the last day before my travels and I wanted some heart-warming support in my preparations.
Dad tries to make smalltalk while I’m boiling the water and look for spices. Cinnamon, cardamom, pepper and maybe a tiny bit of coconut oil and acorn sirup will do today.
I respond one-syllabically. We didn’t leave on good terms yesterday and I’m still sour about some words he said. I know I’ll forgive him later.
My brain cannot fathom how some paradoxes can exist. How can I enjoy an evening of warm love, feeling at home yet lonely, among strangers, while coming back to a home that still sometimes make my body believe it’s in a battlefield?
‘We are the species
that writes lullabies
and builds bombs.’
one of Sophia’s poems read.
I know that dad loves me (in his ways) and I love him (in my ways). I understand that his chronic illness sometimes turns him into a person he doesn’t want to be and is very sorry for. I know that whenever I believe that I’m from an infinite source, I have the strength to forgive him. Also when I don’t consciously believe it, somehow I always find a way to forgiveness.
Yet, it feels unbearable how much extreme ‘opposites’ of feelings can be so close to each other.
As if the universe wanted to brag by demonstrating its skill in showcasing the most paradoxical experiences.
Letting us mortals run in cycles of denial & confusion until eventually, after many lifetimes of seeking, we come to the conclusion that everything simply IS - there are no extremes, no opposites, everything just IS.
Maybe lullabies wouldn’t exist without bombs.
The same as grief and love cannot exist without the other.
Or life and death are different sides of the same coin.