Could grief be a portal to systems change?

Dear one,

The last couple of weeks have been a period of metabolizing multiple experiences and emotions for me. It has been a time of recognizing areas of life where I still need greater acceptance, less pushing away, and more grace. Over and over, the role of grief has emerged as an alive inquiry for me. As often happens when a certain theme presents itself to be observed, in conversations with several people, I am seeing the theme of underlying grief - both individual and collective.

Many of these stories are not mine to tell. But I am looking back at my own life and periods of profound personal transformation. Usually, these periods were preceded by periods of feeling stuck, in a liminal space. I couldn’t see it then, but now, in hindsight, I see the gift of these liminal spaces. There was a me that existed that I was trying to hold on to and was so afraid to lose, and there was a new, fuller version of me waiting patiently for me to be ready to meet it. Between these two versions, there was a me that was afraid to feel. Now I know that what it was afraid to feel was grief. It was grief about who I used to be and knowing that if I took a step ahead, I would no longer be able to be that person. Sometimes, I am stuck wanting a situation to be different from what it is, but not yet willing to see that it will be different if I am different, if my response, my presence is different. Often, that period of change is just a waiting to open my heart enough to feel, to see objectively, and to let go.

These liminal spaces have presented themselves many times in my life - most recently in the latter half of 2023 and the whole of 2024 when I left a role and identity I held dear for very long because I decided to listen to my heart’s calling for greater possibilities. There was deep discomfort associated with the uncertainty but a wiser part of me knew that the only thing to do was to keep taking aligned action that would gather more data for me, and to keep feeling. I did not do a great job at the feeling for a long time. I was still too attached to who I was used to being, what that felt like, what it meant for my place in the world. Then, an opening happened in the latter half of 2024 when I began to be ready to grieve the loss of who I thought I was and needed to be. It led to accepting and then to surrendering. The most beautiful possibilities then began to unfold, one of which took the shape of this newsletter. When I first met my partner, one of the things I had told him was that my ideal, most loving work will involve systems change and writing together. I get to do both now, and I feel deep gratitude - to the people and resources in my supportive ecosystem, to my own inner wisdom for staying with the massive discomfort of letting go and awaiting something new to emerge and to the liminal space itself that has a way of presenting itself as a gift in my life from time to time.

In several conversations around me, I sense a collective discomfort. The system is making itself visible more and more clearly. We are being confronted with the consequences of endless consumption, relentless striving, and our need to control, measure, and prove. The metacrisis we are faced with in the form of both outer and inner unsustainability - rising inequities, the climate emergency, unsustainable economic models, the breakdown of social connections, the epidemics of stress, loneliness, and mental health struggles - are all symptoms of a deeper disconnection - disconnection from ourselves, from each other, and from the living world we are a part of.

What if this moment of crisis is also a liminal space, waiting for us to stop pushing away the discomfort in seeing it clearly, waiting for us to grieve who we were and could be and to step into new possibilities that are waiting for our transformation?

What if grief is the portal we must walk through collectively to transform ourselves and the systems we have created?

With love,

Tulika