Journal

Why grief, often seen as something to overcome, may be one of our most important spiritual teachers.

Grief comes to us all. It comes in waves and in long silences, in the smell of someone’s coat still hanging in the closet, in the absence where a voice used to be.

And in most of our cultural frameworks — including many spiritual traditions — grief is a problem to be solved, a stage to move through, a wound to heal. We speak of “getting over” loss as if the goal is to arrive at a place where we no longer feel it.

I want to offer a different way of seeing.

Grief as Sacred Initiation

In the ancient world, grief was honored as a threshold experience — a passage through which the soul was changed. The bereaved were not expected to “return to normal.” They were understood to have crossed into a different relationship with life and death.

There was wisdom in this. Those who have loved and lost carry something the unbereaved do not: a visceral knowledge of impermanence, a tenderness for the fragile, a capacity for presence that only comes from having held what could not be held.

This is not to romanticize pain. Grief is real suffering. But it is also real wisdom — if we let it be.

What Grief Can Teach

When we sit with grief rather than rushing past it, we often find:

The depth of love. We grieve in proportion to how deeply we loved. Grief is love with nowhere to go — and recognizing this can transform the experience from pure loss into something that honors the love itself.

The reality of impermanence. Everything passes. This is not a pessimistic teaching but a liberating one. When we truly know impermanence, we stop taking the present moment for granted. We become more awake to what is here, now.

Our connection to all who grieve. Grief is universal. In your grief, you are connected to every human who has ever loved and lost. This is the communion of suffering — and it is, paradoxically, one of the deepest experiences of not being alone.

A Practice for Grief

If you are grieving, I offer this not as a technique but as an invitation:

Find a quiet place. Let yourself feel what is there without trying to change it. You might say, simply: I loved. I lost. I am still here.

Then, when you are ready: I carry this love with me. It does not end.

Grief does not need to be healed. It needs to be honored.

Dr. Locke leads an annual online retreat for those navigating loss. Information is available on the contact page.

The most common question I receive from readers is some version of this: I want to start meditating / journaling / praying, but I don’t know how to begin. And when I do begin, I stop after a few days. What am I doing wrong?

My answer always surprises them: Nothing. You’re doing nothing wrong.

The Myth of the Perfect Practice

We have inherited, from religious and self-help traditions alike, a deep belief that spiritual practice requires consistency, discipline, and a certain sacred seriousness. We imagine monks rising at 4 AM, practitioners who never miss a session, saints in perpetual prayer.

This image, while beautiful in its own way, does more harm than good for most of us. It sets an impossible standard, then judges us harshly when we inevitably fall short.

The truth I have come to know, both from my own stumbling practice and from years of working with seekers of every kind, is this: a practice that you return to is always more valuable than a practice that is perfect.

Starting Small, Starting Now

If you want to build a spiritual practice, begin with something almost embarrassingly small.

Not thirty minutes of meditation. Two minutes.

Not three pages of journaling. Two sentences.

Not a complete study of sacred texts. One verse, one poem, one line that speaks to you.

The goal is not to do something impressive. The goal is to build a relationship with that quiet space inside you — and relationships are built through repeated, small moments of presence, not grand gestures.

When You Fall Away

And you will fall away. This is not failure. This is human.

The practice is not in never missing. The practice is in returning. Each time you return — after three days away, after three months — you are practicing something essential: the capacity to begin again.

This is, I believe, the heart of all spiritual life: the willingness to begin again, and again, and again, without condemnation, without dramatic vows to do better.

Just: here I am. I’m back. Let us begin.

Dr. Locke is the author of The Inner Sanctuary and The Awakening Path. Her workshops on spiritual practice are offered online throughout the year.