Mourning our losses

I keep thinking about the theme of ‘mourning the loss’—because, to me, it seems to capture the very aim of the whole practice of psychotherapy—whether for a 14-year-old girl who wants to be a boy; a young woman who can’t find stability in any relationship with any man; or a young man, afraid to invest his heart…

When we can’t mourn our inner losses, we find ourselves—desperately—seeking something to fill the gap within (a theme I touched upon before in the 'touching, being touched' reflection).

This drive to fill that inner gap takes so many forms—among them, the comfort of intoxicants, or indiscriminate arms—as a kind of ecstasy born from brokenness.

Then life throws us into a relationship, or an event, that opens us to mourn these hidden losses. This relationship awaken us to the gap within—an awakening that is, itself, a form of mourning. When this happens, mourning itself becomes a light—like the first light of creation: “God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. God saw that the light was good… and there was evening, and there was morning.”

This light—how could I describe it?—it moves us from the world of fantasy to an awareness of reality… "And there was evening, and there was morning".

Light lets us see—but a kind of ‘clearance’—a “Let there be”—must first come before it, so that this light can make visible what can be seen… to unconceal the brokenness within.

I see the relationship, or the life event, —the “Let there be”— that precedes this unconcealment of brokenness as the very clearance that lets the light reveal what is already there.

Inner losses threaten the mind—but when we mourn them… life is restored.

Life and mind are one and the same.