this love is a haunting

“Empress Matilda was buried beneath the high altar at the Abbey of Bec-Hellouin, where she had wished to be laid to rest. The epitaph on her tomb read, ‘Great by birth, greater by marriage, greatest in her offspring: here lies Matilda; the daughter, wife and mother of Henry.’ It was poetic and made reference to her first imperial husband, but not the second. To measure her life in terms only of her father, Henry I, her first husband, the Holy Roman Emperor, and her oldest son, Henry II, seems unfair, even if the symmetry is poetic. In death, she was denied the independence she had fiercely preserved throughout her life.”

do it while the ground falls out from under you; do it while everything you loved goes up in smoke; do it while the dream of your future is still burning embers around you; build anew on the hot ashes of everything you worked for; keep going, keep loving, keep living, even as all you want is to turn back (there is no turning back; it is gone already); do it through grief, which feels like fear in the body

The tag I have seen most often on this post is "I needed to hear this," and I am so, so grateful to have said something that was needed. These words came out of the depths of my own grief, and I am so grateful to have made this small connection with others in the midst of it. Grief is isolating and indescribable, but none of us are alone.