#5 I became an adult when I learnt to grieve
February 10, 2023•453 words
How did you know when you had become an adult?
Unless you're from a culture that creates rituals and ceremonies that really mark that transition, I'm guessing it might've been a far more random moment. Like My friend Tim who didn't feel like an adult when he got married, nor when he had his first child, but really it was when he bought a piece of meat for R400 to roast for Christmas dinner with his new little family.
My transition took me by surprise and really whacked me over the head. I didn't see it coming and I wasn't ready for it. I had recently left my first job after six years, deciding that wasn't the career for me. Everything felt lost and confusing but the one thing I knew was that I was carrying something very heavy around with me. It was making everything dark and grey.
Through an exercise on grief and sorrow I did at a mindfulness retreat I discovered that the weight I was carrying was around with me was likely partly the unresolved grief and sensitivity I was carrying for someone in my life who had died five years before. I hadn't been able to mourn her then properly and the grief I felt had starting expressing itself as guilt and shame for all the bad versions of me she has seen and the deep sorrow and longing for her to see me in adult form.
I took this to my therapist who helped me see that this person, my nanny, who had been around consistently in my life until I turned 23, could be representing my childhood more broadly. To release her would be to release my attachment to my childhood. To take the step forward into adulthood. A new flight of responsibilities. A new way of relating to the world.
Through a guided meditation I visualised meeting up with her again. I met her in a field and was encouraged to tell her all the words that had been left unsaid. I was scared to open up to her, but I did it anyway. I imagined her responding and instantly all the things I feared she might be thinking or feeling were washed away by her love.
I said goodbye to her watched as she floated away as a balloon into the sky - watching until I couldn't see her anymore. I felt a sense of lightness I hadn't felt before then. In the days that passed, I found I could talk about her again without bursting into tears, contracting around the pain that was caused by the very thought that she wasn't there anymore.
I think I'll mark that as my step into adulthood.