My Grief is an Animal Mother

 This simile came to me as I was waking, in a twilight dream.

When a vixen or mother wolf or feral cat queen moves her young she takes them in her teeth by the scruff of the neck and, if they make too much of a fuss that could attract attention, gives them a good shake or several to quiet them down.

She can then get them to the new, or next, den safely.

When my grief comes for me it seizes me by the scruff of the neck and gives me a bone-shaking session, sending me to the restroom or, if I'm at home, to my bedroom for a good fingernails-embedded-in-palms, face-screwed-up ugly cry that will leave me trembling, red-eyed and relieved, and ready for a major nap.

Over time, these sessions have also culminated to push me over the line into true radical acceptance of my new situation; I couldn't have done it without them.  I needed to grieve my old life in order to truly accept my new one, suck though it does.    And once I truly began to radically accept it, it was much easier to live with every day.

Talk about hope all you want.  Hope is still resistance to the present reality, and as such, it's a state of pain.  Plus, it has a dark side.  The dark side of hope is fear.  And fear is the worst state of all.  The most blissful state of all, in my opinion, is a life free of fear.  Living in acceptance comes pretty close.

That's where the animal mother in my soul has taken such good care of me.