Midweek pick-me-up: Elizabeth Gilbert on love, loss, and how to move through grief as grief moves through you

NOTE: This newsletter might be cut short by your email program. [View it in full](.  If a friend forwarded it to you and you'd like your very own newsletter, [subscribe here]( — it's free.  Need to modify your subscription? You can [change your email address]( or [unsubscribe](. [Brain Pickings]( [Welcome] Hello, {NAME}! This is the Brain Pickings midweek pick-me-up: Once a week, I plunge into my fourteen-year archive and choose something worth resurfacing and resavoring as timeless nourishment for heart, mind, and spirit. (If you don't yet subscribe to the standard Sunday newsletter of new pieces published each week, you can sign up [here]( — it's free.) If you missed last week's edition — Iris Murdoch on storytelling, why art is essential for democracy, and the key to good writing — you can catch up [right here](. And if you find any solace, joy, and value in my labor of love, please consider supporting it with a [donation]( – over these fourteen years, I have spent tens of thousands of hours and tremendous resources on Brain Pickings, and every little bit of support helps keep it – keep me – going. If you already donate: THANK YOU. [FROM THE ARCHIVE | Elizabeth Gilbert on Love, Loss, and How to Move Through Grief as Grief Moves Through You]( “All your sorrows have been wasted on you if you have not yet learned how to be wretched,” Seneca told his mother in his extraordinary letter on [resilience in the face of loss](. One need not be a dry materialist to bow before the recognition that no heart goes through life unplundered by loss — all love presupposes it, be it in death or in heartbreak. Whether what is lost are feelings or atoms, grief comes, unforgiving and unpredictable in its myriad manifestations. Joan Didion observed this disorienting fact in her [classic memoir of loss]( “Grief, when it comes, is nothing like we expect it to be.” And when it does come, it unweaves the very fabric of our being. When love is lost, we lose the part of ourselves that did the loving — a part that, depending on the magnitude of the love, can come to approximate the whole of who we are. We lose what artist Anne Truitt so poetically termed [“the lovely entire confidence that comes only from innumerable mutual confidences entrusted and examined… woven by four hands, now trembling, now intent, over and under into a pattern that can surprise both [partners].”]( But we also gain something — out of the burning embers of the loss arises an ashen humility, true to its shared Latin root with the word humus. We are made “of the earth” — we bow down low, we become crust, and each breath seems to draw from the magmatic center of the planet that is our being. It is only when we give ourselves over to it completely that we can begin to take ourselves back, to rise, to live again. How to move through this barely survivable experience is what author and altogether glorious human being Elizabeth Gilbert examines with uncommon insight and tenderness of heart in her conversation with TED curator Chris Anderson on the inaugural episode of the [TED Interviews]( podcast. [lizgilbert_rayyaelias.png?resize=680%2C680] Rayya Elias and Elizabeth Gilbert (Photograph by Elizabeth Gilbert) Gilbert reflects on the death of her partner, Rayya Elias — her longtime best friend, whose sudden terminal cancer diagnosis unlatched a trapdoor, as Gilbert put it, into the realization that Rayya was the love of her life: [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]Grief… happens upon you, it’s bigger than you. There is a humility that you have to step into, where you surrender to being moved through the landscape of grief by grief itself. And it has its own timeframe, it has its own itinerary with you, it has its own power over you, and it will come when it comes. And when it comes, it’s a bow-down. It’s a carve-out. And it comes when it wants to, and it carves you out — it comes in the middle of the night, comes in the middle of the day, comes in the middle of a meeting, comes in the middle of a meal. It arrives — it’s this tremendously forceful arrival and it cannot be resisted without you suffering more… The posture that you take is you hit your knees in absolute humility and you let it rock you until it is done with you. And it will be done with you, eventually. And when it is done, it will leave. But to stiffen, to resist, and to fight it is to hurt yourself. With an eye to [the intimate biological connection]( between the body and the mind (which is, of course, [the seedbed of feeling]( Gilbert adds: [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]There’s this tremendous psychological and spiritual challenge to relax in the awesome power of it until it has gone through you. Grief is a full-body experience. It takes over your entire body — it’s not a disease of the mind. It’s something that impacts you at the physical level… I feel that it has a tremendous relationship to love: First of all, as they say, it’s the price you pay for love. But, secondly, in the moments of my life when I have fallen in love, I have just as little power over it as I do in grief. There are certain things that happen to you as a human being that you cannot control or command, that will come to you at really inconvenient times, and where you have to bow in the human humility to the fact that there’s something running through you that’s bigger than you. [cryheartbutneverbreak2.jpg] Illustration from [Cry, Heart, But Never Break]( a Danish meditation on love and loss Gilbert goes on to read a short, stunning reflection on love and loss she had originally published [on Instagram]( [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]People keep asking me how I’m doing, and I’m not always sure how to answer that. It depends on the day. It depends on the minute. Right this moment, I’m OK. Yesterday, not so good. Tomorrow, we’ll see. Here is what I have learned about Grief, though. I have learned that Grief is a force of energy that cannot be controlled or predicted. It comes and goes on its own schedule. Grief does not obey your plans, or your wishes. Grief will do whatever it wants to you, whenever it wants to. In that regard, Grief has a lot in common with Love. The only way that I can “handle” Grief, then, is the same way that I “handle” Love — by not “handling” it. By bowing down before its power, in complete humility. When Grief comes to visit me, it’s like being visited by a tsunami. I am given just enough warning to say, “Oh my god, this is happening RIGHT NOW,” and then I drop to the floor on my knees and let it rock me. How do you survive the tsunami of Grief? By being willing to experience it, without resistance. The conversation of Grief, then, is one of prayer-and-response. Grief says to me: “You will never love anyone the way you loved Rayya.” And I reply: “I am willing for that to be true.” Grief says: “She’s gone, and she’s never coming back.” I reply: “I am willing for that to be true.” Grief says: “You will never hear that laugh again.” I say: “I am willing.” Grief says, “You will never smell her skin again.” I get down on the floor on my fucking knees, and — and through my sheets of tears — I say, “I AM WILLING.” This is the job of the living — to be willing to bow down before EVERYTHING that is bigger than you. And nearly everything in this world is bigger than you. I don’t know where Rayya is now. It’s not mine to know. I only know that I will love her forever. And that I am willing. Onward. Gilbert adds in the interview: [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]It’s an honor to be in grief. It’s an honor to feel that much, to have loved that much. [lizgilbert_rayyaelias2.jpg?resize=680%2C679] Rayya Elias and Elizabeth Gilbert (Photograph courtesy of Elizabeth Gilbert) Complement with [life-earned wisdom on how to live with loss]( from other great artists, writers, and scientists — including Alan Turing, Albert Einstein, Abraham Lincoln, Rachel Carson, Charles Darwin, Johannes Brahms, and Charles Dickens — and [the Stoic cure for heartbreak]( from Epictetus, then revisit Gilbert on [creative bravery and the art of living in a state of uninterrupted marvel](. [Forward to a friend]( Online]( [Like on Facebook]( donating=loving Every week for fourteen years, I have been pouring tremendous time, thought, love, and resources into Brain Pickings, which remains free and is made possible by patronage. If you find any joy and solace in my labor of love, please consider supporting it with a donation. And if you already donate, from the bottom of my heart: THANK YOU. (If you've had a change of heart or circumstance and wish to rescind your support, you can do so [at this link]( monthly donation You can become a Sustaining Patron with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a Brooklyn lunch.  one-time donation Or you can become a Spontaneous Supporter with a one-time donation in any amount. [Start Now]( [Give Now]( Partial to Bitcoin? You can beam some bit-love my way: 197usDS6AsL9wDKxtGM6xaWjmR5ejgqem7 RELATED READING: [LizGilbert_UiV.jpg]( [Ursa Major: Elizabeth Gilbert Reads a Poignant Forgotten Poem About the Big Dipper and Our Cosmic Humanity]( * * * [river2.jpg]( [Olivia Laing on Life, Loss, and the Wisdom of Rivers]( * * * [EmilyLevine1.jpg]( [How to Live and How to Die]( [---] You're receiving this email because you subscribed on Brain Pickings. This weekly newsletter comes out each Wednesday and offers a highlight from the Brain Pickings archives for a midweek pick-me-up. Brain Pickings NOT A MAILING ADDRESS 159 Pioneer StreetBrooklyn, NY 11231 [Add us to your address book]( [unsubscribe from this list](   [update subscription preferences](