Daryl Wood's Blog

It hadn’t been such a bad morning. Even though I was a little overwhelmed by the disorganization of my home I was intent on making the most of my time. I sent a thank you text to friends I’d visited the day before, sent another text to a friend struggling with her husband’s treatment plan, mailed a thank you card to a widow ‘buddy’ and dropped off a sympathy card to someone who lost a loved one. A great start to the day. I arrived at the grocery store when it opened and before I finished my quick shopping I’d had two conversations that involved me listening carefully to someone’s current life challenge. Still felt good and home to start a project.

The project? Moving my socks to their place in another dresser drawer. I have too many socks so I began setting them up in categories and that’s when it happened. Under the pile of thick, black winter socks was a small stack of little white crew socks. I caught my breath. They were folded neatly in the signature way that my husband Doug folded socks (he had a unique way for all laundry). I could barely touch them knowing that he had folded them and would have set them aside for me to put in the drawer. The tears were instant and the next few hours became a test of my will to grieve and function. I sent a note to my buddy wondering how three pairs of little white crew socks could have so much power over me. Her reply “that’s grief for ya” confirmed what I knew but didn’t give me an answer to how to cope. And then I realized that I didn’t need to cope. I just needed to ‘be with’ the feelings.

As if I needed to be reminded that we live at a time when feeling anything ‘bad’ is a call to arms for solutions – and the sooner the better. We have access to a myriad of ways to overcome discomfort when most of the time being with the discomfort is what is needed most. It allows the feelings to process through our bodies, minds and spirits just as joy and elation need space to ignite our systems. It is true that what we resist, persists. By being ‘with’ our feelings we get to witness our capacity to feel a full range of emotions without dying from the happiness OR anguish. We get to feel the healing, learn from the triggers, assess our strengths and weaknesses. How would we ever know this about ourselves if we were never tested? And grief offers one of life’s biggest examinations. One I sincerely wish I didn’t have to face. But in the end, we all do.

And so I walked. A lot. Not to hide from or avoid the feelings but to talk out loud in the frigid air and brilliant sunshine. I wanted to hear myself say out loud what hurt so bad. I’ve always processed better out loud and Doug was often my witness. Today the only witnesses were random wildlife and the ongoing conversations I have with my patient husband in his spirit form.

What was clear was that there’s no need to take my power back from the little white crew socks. In fact, they are safely stored in a corner of the drawer where I can look at them once in a while and cry or smile, neither being the right or wrong way to react. Allowing ourselves to feel all of our feelings is only an abstract idea until we make it an act of intention. And everyone has little white crew socks somewhere in their life.