Breaking Open

What Grief Taught Me About Being Human

The year after I left the monastery, my dad died.

It was sudden, and it split something open in me.
Not in a poetic, “grief is a gift” kind of way.
In a body on the floor, I can’t breathe, nothing makes sense anymore kind of way.

I didn’t know how to grieve. I knew how to work on myself.
So I did what I knew:
I pushed the gas and the brakes at the same time.
I…