Grief is the thing with feathers

Every day I greet the crows in my local park as I walk past to the train station. This began back in 2019 when I was lucky to see the phenomenal performance of Cillian Murphy in Grief is the Thing With Feathers at the Barbican. Based upon the book with the same name, the play goes through the grieving process of a man and his sons after the loss of his wife, their mother, with grief showing itself as Crow - dark, raw, unforgiving, consuming and numbing.

Grief can pierce through you, leaving you feeling torn, broken and a shadow of your former self. Try as you might to bury, ignore or run from the pain, it’s always there until you face it.

And grief can also bring you home, to your true self.

It forces you to change, strip back the veil - because you can’t maintain that state - something will give and most often it shows up as physical disease, that awakens (or forces) you to make new choices. It draws you to heal and find inner peace.

Being able to move through the stages of grief has been one of the hardest and greatest personal experiences of my life, that has led me here, to serve you!

Greeting the crows each day reminds me grief is there, part of me and a part of life. The longer we live, the more we’ll have to dance with it. And time will hold us.