For weeks the phrase “sacred sorrow” has echoed in my mind. My heart aches as it remembers the pain of every time it was told to “get over it.”
Move on.
Stop thinking about it.
Just be happy.
Choose joy.
They’re meant to nudge us in the “right direction” and force us to push past what we’re feeling. To abandon the raw emotions festering inside us in pursuit of “peace” and “comfort”.
But my body doesn’t hold this sorrow because it is inherently sad. It absorbs this sorrow because it empathizes with the world around it.
And that type of sorrow is undeniably sacred because it’s the same burden of grief that the goddess holds within herself as every person a part of her network of consciousness and life moves through the universe.
In a perfect universe, if there could ever be such a thing, love is the primal energetic channel that connects everything. In our universe, though, there are people who move through it operating as conduits of hatred, violence, and greed. They take and they take and they take. They create rules and systems to oppress.
And the result?
Suffering.
Terror.
Affliction.
And for that, I will always feel sorrow.
Sacred sorrow recognizes when voices are being silenced.
Sacred sorrow understands the inhumanity of forcing people to live the same, love the same, look the same, and worship the same.
Sacred sorrow weeps within our bones when we can’t logically grasp the lack of compassion toward Mother Nature and all her inhabitants.
Sacred sorrow cries out for us to do something, even if it’s only holding space for those who are being targeted and oppressed.
Sacred sorrow isn’t something we’re meant to get over. It isn’t something that we need to move on from or stop thinking about. Happiness and joy are systematically being distanced from people who don’t fit society’s mold — and how dare someone say that their problems are not our problems.
That is the voice of oppression.
The voice of the goddess, though, is angry. Rage screeches through her teeth at the mistreatment of her people. “Their problems,” she hisses, “are ALL of our problems.“
Every shot aimed at one of her people, she feels like an arrow to the heart. You feel it too when that sacred sorrow creeps in, begging you to care; demanding that you don’t ignore it any longer.
After all, that sacred sorrow is her.
