Daryl Wood's Blog

With the solar eclipse arriving on Monday I decided to try out the glasses my friend gave me. The world looked very different through the filters and it got me thinking of times when I have worn sunglasses with various tints. The dark shades of bronze or dreamy blues that make everything in my viewing look shaded, softer and less stark. Even though I was looking at familiar objects, they didn’t look the same when the filters were applied just as the eclipse glasses significantly changed what I was looking at. Thankfully I can take them off anytime I like.

Sharing my experience with a friend at breakfast we talked about the filters that people wear all the time. At a nearby table, a couple was busy with their baby and we agreed they now have a filter that they look through because of their child. It’s a lens in front of them that has changed forever the way they live with the responsibility and obvious love for this little person. This altered vision can be true of other filters such as a new job, a divorce, a relocation, an empty nest, an illness, a new romance, financial woes, and even the beliefs we carry about ourselves and others, etc. What we see and how we see our world is influenced by the filter we look through. This isn’t news for many people but it was highlighted for me today when I realized that the filter I am looking through at this time in my life is grief. Ugh. For so many weeks this grief filter has almost blinded me to anything other than the huge aching loss I feel. That’s what acute grief does to us.

When I take off the eclipse glasses I am happy to see my world in all it’s familiarity, just the way I remember it. It feels safe and predictable again. I’ve spent almost thirty years learning and teaching how to take off the filters that cause us suffering or are a detriment to our health, happiness and relationships. If only it was as easy as taking off those eclipse glasses to see the truth of our lives. If only I could take off the grief filter and rediscover myself.

I will never be the same after the loss of my beloved Doug but I’m starting, very, very slowly to wonder what parts of me will still be visible if I consciously take the filter off a wee bit at a time. I know I’ve been doing this instinctively for all of the 21 weeks since he slipped away from his physical pain. I’ve watched myself smile at happy memories, celebrate a child’s birth, feel relief at de-cluttering, shared laughs with my sister and baked cookies for friends. All the while, the grief filter was in the room but it wasn’t clouding my ability to focus on what was in front of me. I acknowledge that it will always be nearby but I can’t escape the reality that for however long or short a period, it wasn’t stopping me from setting it aside. That’s refreshing because it feels like a shift that maybe, just maybe, will give me a purpose and a will to keep going.

The eclipse glasses will protect my eyes if I am willing to look directly at the sun on Monday. What purpose does this grief filter offer as I look directly at my loss? How has it served me to have worn this grief filter for all these long, hard days and nights? Without question I am 100% certain I did not understand deep grief until the loss of Doug. Without question I am 100% certain I did not know how loved and appreciated and worthy of other’s caring I am until the loss of Doug. While I had superficial understandings of both of these, with the grief filter (which often feels like a heavy cloak) I now face these two realities in ways I could never have known without the experience. That’s true for all of us. Experience is still the best teacher.

It’s important for me to state here and now that while we can all work at removing filters that don’t serve us anymore there will always be some that have such a profound impact we will carry them forever in the same way we keep the eclipse glasses handy on Monday just in case we get the chance to see this phenomenon. Grief is one of those filters and has the ability to shroud us over and over again unexpectedly. The challenge and opportunity is to find ways to harness the in between moments when the glasses come off after the eclipse and in our daily lives to see the beauty that is still there.