Grief & A Guardian Spirit

It'll be seventeen years since my dad passed away. A lot can happen in seventeen years, and in that time you can learn a lot about loss and living with it, or you can stay stagnant.

For many years, I took the second path. The stagnant one. I was kind of stuck in this place of grief where I just felt everything at once while also feeling nothing at all. It was hard to explain. There were moments where I wanted to scream at the skies until I had nothing left in my lungs, and there were moments where I just wanted the emptiness to consume me completely. Death had such negative connotations and it seemed like an abrupt end to anything my father and I had. It wasn't like anything I did in regards to him mattered because he wasn't here to see it anyway. When I younger, I did a lot of things in his honor, went on all sorts of adventures he would love, but after a few years of adventures, the sorrow hit in all of the worst ways. I spent a lot of time masking the pain raging inside of me and just pretending I was fine. I was row a boat with no oars through a lake of shadows. Dove Cameron once said that hiding the sad parts of her life was doing a disservice to herself, and that life isn't always happy moments and that it's okay. I so desperately needed those words.

"Every person is in on this big secret, saying ‘We’re good,’ but, like, why? For who? What’s the point when the person next door could be going through the same things? These conversations help people, so let’s have them! There’s so much strength in vulnerability," Cameron once said. She has a wisdom well beyond her 26 years. Maybe it's because in two and a half decades, she's seen her share of tragedy too.

Over a decade ago, Dove Cameron lost her father. She's been open about this loss, even when she never truly had to be. She could have kept her progress, her thoughts, her stages of grief to herself, but she didn't. She shared parts of herself that so many of us needed to hear, and I especially resonated with. She still does, to this very day. Somedays, her sage wisdom comes exactly when I need it, when I feel myself sliding into the shadows and losing a grip on my progress. She, along with my therapist, have given me words to use as mantras and coping techniques that truly help. Dove inspired me to get back into journaling and writing in general, which has helped me document and process a complex spectrum of emotions. Not only in processing the loss of my father but several close friends as well. I have learned to face my emotions and not let them linger for longer than they are needed. When the darker emotions show themselves, I acknowledge their process and try to pinpoint what is going on. I once boxed things up and put them away without even processing them, and emotions would erupt out of me like toxic volcanoes onto others. Now, I try to figure out what is making me act how I am, instead of instantly reacting in unnecessary ways. I'm not always a master of my emotions, but the effort is there, and I notice a change, a peace, within myself as I find balance.

Dove has helped me to not live in regret but instead use those feelings to fuel what makes me truly feel alive. My father was a complex man with an amazing life, he traveled the world and saw many things, met many people and seemed to live like a bird in flight but he was hiding so much of himself. I've seen Dove's vows to live her truths for her own father and I have vowed to do the same in seeing her freedom echo back to embrace her own father. My dad was closeted queer, and also living with a disease that took a lot from him, Parkinson's Disease. He kept a lot of his battles to himself for fear of judgement. He was a tall, strong boisterous man who was afraid to be seen as weak, or anything less of a manly man. Whenever I am afraid of who I am or afraid of thee judgement for it, I think about my dad and I think about Dove being open and free in the public eye and it makes me want to be loud in my pride too. In being openly queer and gender non-conforming, I carry that part of my Dad with me that didn't get to live openly on my shoulders so he can feel the sun on his face too. I didn't get to say Good-bye to my Dad, and it caused me to hold on to a lot of pain. But I've learned, with Dove's help, that maybe it wasn't good-bye because he still has many lessons to teach me, even now. Grief is complex as f*ck. It has many layers, many chapters, and sub-sections. They say grief has five stages, but I honestly feel each stage has a handful of it's own stages. I always wanted to skip the hard parts and live comfortably in acceptance...but Dove taught me that life isn't always about comfort, and in the discomfort is where we truly learn and grow.

Dove recently posted a quote by Shannon Barry, "And when I turned to face grief, I saw that it was just love in a heavy coat." This quote reminds me of my own favorite quote of grief which is "What is grief, if not love persevering?" from WandaVision. Both are reminders that grief is just another form of love, another complex layer of a relationship. Society has forced us to only share the "good" which isn't good by any means. Trauma & loss run far deeper than that, and in sharing our spectrum of emotions we truly help others understand and embrace their own. Grief is not always the most beautiful, but there's still love there...painted under all the layers.