Grief and loss are the payment required to enter the territory of love and Eros.
It is a sacred transaction—
A debt paid to the gods of impermanence.
Everything you love,
you will one day lose.
As much as we cling to the ideal of forever—
The dream of the eternal—
This longing runs against the templates encoded in the natural law of this planet.
The desire for permanence is a coping mechanism,
A fantasy we project to soften the blow of the inevitable.
Grief has initiated me many times over, supporting me in cultivating greater emotional maturity, compassion for myself and others, and cleansing old wounds of the past.
Most of my initiations have come through the loss of love—I have not yet faced grief around death directly. Yet each experience of losing love felt like a way of developing a relationship with death. I had to die to the many identities of self that hinged on the aliveness of those relationship structures. Myself as husband, as provider to a family, as the sole father figure in my child’s life. I had to bury the shared dreams and visions for a life that would not come to manifest.
Grief opens a fissure in the heart, linking present pain to old wounds. As I’ve entered these waters, buried childhood experiences have surfaced, along with the relational patterns wired into my nervous system. Each loss unearthed deeper layers of hurt, offering a chance to heal and break the cycle of repeating pain. Through grief, I saw the ways I had abandoned or rejected parts of myself—and slowly, I began to call those exiled fragments home, tending to their needs and reclaiming a deeper sense of wholeness.
Many attempt to enter the territory of love without paying the toll—
Avoiding attachments altogether,
Believing it’s safer to feel nothing
Than to risk being pierced by the stealthy blade of love.
Others let love touch them only just beneath the surface—
Never deep enough to wound,
And never deep enough to truly change them.
Francis Weller, who guided me through my first initiation into men's work at 26, powerfully articulates the essential role of grief in his book The Wild Edge of Sorrow. One of his core teachings is that grief should never be carried alone. In his work, Weller identifies five gateways into grief—each a portal through which sorrow enters our lives and asks to be honored.
- The First Gateway
Loss of loved ones, of course, but also the loss of dreams, hopes, and what we’ve deeply cherished.
- The Second Gateway
The parts of ourselves that have never known love—those abandoned, exiled, or shamed aspects of our being.
- The Third Gateway
The sorrows of the world—the collective grief we share when we open ourselves to the pain of humanity and nature.
- The Fourth Gateway
The grief of what we expected but did not receive—our unmet longing for community, initiation, belonging, or a deeper spiritual connection.
- The Fifth Gateway
Ancestral grief—the weight of pain inherited from generations before us, wounds carried unconsciously through lineage.
This holistic framing of grief aligns closely with indigenous traditions, which treat grief not as an isolated event, but as a communal ritual, a collective process, and a necessary element of spiritual growth. Indigenous wisdom has long understood that grief, when held in community, transforms from a solitary burden into a shared sacred task—easing its heaviness, creating connection, and reinforcing the web of mutuality.
The Western psychological model, notably the five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance), helps us cognitively map our process. Yet grief often defies tidy stages—it spirals unpredictably, teaching us humility and patience. Men especially have been culturally conditioned to view grief as weakness, something to endure quietly or dismiss entirely. Yet this conditioning isolates and fragments us, reinforcing our disconnection from self and others. Grief, when welcomed, becomes medicine, drawing us closer to ourselves, to each other, and to life itself.
In my experience leading men's groups, guided by Francis Weller's teachings, our community in Southern California created intentional grief ritual spaces where men and women could gather to witness and support each other in their grieving. These spaces proved powerfully transformative, offering individuals permission to fully feel their loss without shame or judgment. In communal grief rituals, I’ve watched as burdens were lifted, hearts softened, and isolation dissolved—reminding us of the profound human need to grieve collectively.
Without a willingness to meet grief, the heart becomes congested—guarded against life itself. It may carry you for a few decades, but in that state, life will be mediocre at best—a life half-lived.
The heart is one of our primary relational centers, the place where we enter into intimate communion with others. When it closes, it suffocates love—not just our ability to receive it, but our capacity to be in the Spirit of love itself.
To come fully alive,
We must let our hearts be stung and wrung clean
By the bitter medicine of grief.
Only the cracked fissures of a broken heart
Are wide enough for love to take root again.
It’s inconvenient to the heroic paradigm—
This descent into the underworld of grief.
It doesn’t fit neatly into a life of hustle,
Or the myth of endless progress—
Always rising, always conquering.
But it is in the underworld that you are made capable
Of carrying—with grace and dignity—
The burdens this lifetime asks you to hold.
When grief arrives,
Bow your head to it as an ally,
Not an enemy.
Welcome each loss—of self, of other—as a little death.
Each one preparing you
For the final letting go.