DTH-XI-0046
“Everyone's grieving and I just feel numb and it scares me.”
Numbness is not the absence of grief, it's grief too big to feel all at once, so the system shuts the valve. There's nothing wrong with you. The tenet says grieve fully, but 'fully' has its own timing, and sometimes the feeling arrives late. Don't force tears. Don't judge the numb. Let it thaw when it thaws.
Your Practice
- Stop judging yourself for not crying. Numbness is a real grief response.
- Don't perform a grief you don't feel yet. The feeling will come in its time.
- Keep doing the small living things while the numbness holds.
- When it cracks open, and it will, let it. Have someone you can call when it does.
The Architects
“Let not the eyes be dry when we have lost a friend, nor let them overflow. We may weep, but we must not wail.”
Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius, Letter 63, sec. 1, Gummere translation