Our Grief is Sacred

In Which Tears Can Be a Kind of Prayer

Welcome back to Take What You Need. I’m so glad you’re here. I had a different plan for my second Substack post ever, but based on the happenings of our world, my heart wanted to honor the necessity of grief. As always, please take what you need from what I share and leave the rest.

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In honor of the many who have lost their lives in the recent Texas floods, and in honor of the sheer magnitude of intensity happening in our world—I wanted to take a moment to remember that our grief + the tears we cry are sacred. Valuable. Important. Vital; a reminder that Jesus wept in the face of tragedy¹ (even as he knew that the healing would still come).

For many folks, but particularly trauma survivors, we have internalized the belief that grief is bad, shameful, or weak. Maybe it wasn’t safe to be vulnerable. Maybe no one cared if you were in despair. Maybe you were harmed if you spoke up. And perhaps you were even taught that it makes someone sinful to feel sad or grieve.² This may be why I adore when Henri Nouwen says, “I am beginning to see that much of praying is grieving³.”

Indeed. Doesn’t that just feel like an exhale?

Nouwen’s quote points to the fact that God designed our bodies to move through and metabolize pain (at the pace we are able)—and grieving is a necessary piece of this work. Grief work is so often part of prayer because from an attachment perspective, a God that we experience as safe and compassionate can help us feel what we can’t feel on our own.⁴

Like a good parent who holds their overwhelmed child when the world feels too big and too much, we, too, have access to the God who is the great Co-Regulator of our bodies, minds, and spirits. Because we have a God who moves close to the brokenhearted, the downtrodden, the marginalized and bereft—we can let ourselves soften and move through the pain. For however long that takes.

In a world that is experiencing no shortage of overwhelm, pain, + trauma—grief is a valid response.

And, I pray that grief would allow you, and us, to keep our hearts tender + open.

May our grief mobilize us + create pathways to healing + reimagining how we honor our neighbors + ourselves.

May it remind us of what matters deeply to our Creator + to us. May grief help us both soften + strengthen as we find the way forward.

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If it feels like a resource to you, I’ll leave you with a breath prayer:

Inhale: I am allowed to feel.

Exhale: God holds me as I do.

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Need more resources & insight? Check out my best selling books:

Try Softer (Over 160,000 sold)

Try Softer Guided Journey

Strong like Water

Strong like Water Guided Journey

Take What You Need: Soft Words for Hard Days

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*A gentle reminder that this space is not meant to substitute medical or psychiatric individualized advice. If you are having a mental health emergency, please call or text 988 or go to your local emergency room.

1. See John 11:35

2. This in itself can be a form of spiritual abuse.

3. I also want to recognize that for some folks their faith has been weaponized against them or used in other ways to harm them—and therefore faith doesn’t currently feel like a support or resource. I can’t emphasize enough how valid this is, and I invite you, like all the resources I share to engage this essay to the extent that it feels helpful.

4. If you are needing more information on trauma, nervous system regulation, attachment, or faith integration please check out “Try Softer” or “Strong like Water.”