"Goof Grief" - an piece of Amanda Gorman's Book "Call Us What We Carry"

I wanted to share with you all a little except I found meaningful in a poetry book I read recently. I would highly recommend the book, and if anyone would like to borrow it, I would be more than happy to loan my copy by mail so just reach out.

Call Us What We Carry - Amanda Gorman

Good Grief pg 28

"The origin of the word trauma

Is not just "wound," but "piercing" or "turning,"

As blades do when finding home.

Grief commands its own grammar,

Structured by intimacy and imagination

We often say:

We are beside ourselves with grief.

We can't even imagine.

This means anguish can call us to envision

More than what we believed was carriable

Or even survivable.

This is to say, there does exist

A good grief.

The hurt is how we know

We are alive and awake;

It clears us for all the exquisite,

Excruciating enormities to come.

We are pierced new by the turning

Forward.

All that is grave need

Not be a burden, an anguish.

Call it, instead, an anchor,

Grief grounding us in its sea.

Despair exits us the same way it enters-

Turning through the mouth.

Even now conviction works

Strange magic on our tongues.

We are built up again

By what we

Build/find/see/say/remember/know.

What we carry means we survive.

It is what survives us.

We have survived us.

Where once we are alone,

Now we are beside ourselves.

Where we once we barbed and brutal as blades,

Now we can only imagine.