Are We Even Doing This Right?
The wound is the place where the light enters you ~Rumi
Email sent 2/17/26 / 3 Years, 2 months, 6 days
Hello Friends,
What was meant to be a quick pause, slowly evolved to what feels like a full rewrite. “Closed for cellular re-arrangement” says the sign on the door “massive re-tinkering in progress”. I’ve missed writing to you all and seeing your beautiful faces out in the wild. Flash memories flickering in and out of my newly quieted ways. All that bright love and energy still firmly interwoven into everything I do and playing like a rainy day movie that I can watch in the comfort of my soft pants.
Despite the feeling that I have been cheating on my written words, abandoning a book that wants to be written, hoarding letters of gratitude fully formed and left unsent, not only did I chill but I slowly, purposefully deconstructed over this last year.
Not to be confused with a decomposition, this rearrangement was agreed upon and decidedly tweezer-fancy restaurant style. Quite purposeful in its process and operating separately together. Each cellular ingredient making its way to carefully sorted piles, placed on the handmade platters that still show the fingerprints of its maker. These ingredients are learning how to be still, with an understanding that it may take a lifetime to keep sorting and a quiet windless room to keep these piles in place.
In this time of cellular decronstructive sorting, I never did make it to the end of the internet or used book aisle, meet all the spirits in the forest trees, or successfully belly crawl to the edge of the universe so I could peek over and and see my son at work. But I did purposefully wander, find wonder and proudly embrace my new found ability to be still about it.
I hope that one day these separated parts will re-awaken, rise and start working in mysterious harmony together again. I vote that they should canoodle and reconstruct in the dark of the night to emerge a fully formed new version of myself. Come and surprise me with the big reveal at my bedside with a jazz hand entry as I glide from dream state to waking. Ta-daaaaaaa bitch, welcome home.
While sorting, seeking and wonder wandering, I also went to the classroom setting to become a Certified Grief Educator, soon followed by the self awareness and the mutual appreciation necessary, to understand my studies of this griefy beast is no match to living it. We are all students and teachers in agreement that there is no mastery, but only full embodiment.
Trying my best not to overthink it, coupled with an innate desire to hold space for others in pain, I started compiling every accessible resource and created a landing place for sharing these links on Miles’ website. This curated collection also acts as a love letter to every beloved friend, family member, coworker, community member, stranger, artist, author, scientist and philosopher who all played a part in the in the complex story of our continuous healing journey.
With humility and full acknowledgement that loss and grief is not a “one size fits all” my experience is served up, from one griever to another, just trying to find my way. My hope is you will share these pages with your next beloved who may find themselves in the throws of grief and could use a place to start.
The resources at the bottom of the GRIEVE page were the most impactful to me in these first few years. Not everyone will resonate with what I have collected but hopefully they all act as a launching pad to start seeking.
Most importantly, and your first stop if the timing is such, make sure to visit the information on EARLY GRIEF. The devastating early days and months of physical shock and horror. With guidance for both the grievers and the extraordinarily important caretakers.
Copy, paste, send to your loved ones in need:
Early Grief : www.beautifulmiles.com/earlygrief
Grieve : www.beautifulmiles.com/grieve
Explore : www.beautifulmiles.com/explore
Are we even doing this right? Are we alright?
Of course we are, we are just different now. We will never be the intact clan in the same way we were. Back when we were impossibly whole and made of bricks and mud. In humble exchange with the cruel whims of the universe, Miles will not be walking back through the front door of our rubble house so we are left to rebuild with the tools at hand. I must admit, reconstructing to suit the unpredictability of the gods is admittedly exhausting and painfully unrealistic. We learned we are easily permeable now and it seems fitting to mercifully give into the wind and rain. With newly hung paper walls that detach with spit or hurricanes, we’ve also learned these barriers can easily be permeated with laughter as well. bonus.
In our strong houses of wispy walls, we are thriving in the places we now embody. Izzy relocated to San Francisco, her combustible soul lighting the city ablaze with a new job and a new love. David started a new business, gifting himself the much needed sense ownership of his time and rich talents. And I am in a new career that keeps me closer to Miles than I ever could imagine. My commute a daily meditation and the natural world the office I share with him. We experience joy, we grow and make things, we travel, and sometimes you can catch us guffawing in public and acting a fool. You may bear witness and hope for a moment that we have finally arrived in the unbroken place?
Yes, we have arrived - ish. But as anyone who has experienced a grave and out of order loss knows, there is now a thread of sadness interwoven into everything we do. This thread is one of great stability and predictability amongst all the things that aren’t. It is always, consistently and impossibly there. As we continue to weave our tapestry of growth, the blanket of the days soon becomes years, and the colors of our weave becomes more intricate over time. I have come to recognize this saddest thread as a bright golden yellow, always visible, glowing and easy to see at all hours. This aching thread of love and grief belongs to Miles, forever golden, interwoven and present.
I love you moooom, Miles would say to me as he would wrap his adoring arms around my body and kiss the top of my head. How satisfying to have a child with a wingspan large enough to envelop his mother in this way. With a heart so well purposed to match his desire to do so. I remember the easy shrinking at these times, becoming naturally small to accommodate the enormity of his unfiltered love. Bricks and mud love, I looooove you too.
How staggeringly important are these visceral flash memories to me now and how still does my world need to be so I can easy conjure these moments at will?
Let me sit quietly a while longer so I can think about that some more.
With heaps and gobs of love,
~ Laura, David, Izzy and Miles
** I’ll be writing again soon with exciting updates about Miles’s traveling soil xoxoxoxo. If you have photos or stories you would like added to his map please send them along.
