On May 12, 2021, my mentor and meditation teacher passed away. It was unexpected, jarring, and shocking to hear the news and digest it. We met together every week for the past four years. When COVID hit, we gathered virtually every Monday evening at 8pm. He never once missed a meeting. He was the most consistent, reliable, knowledgeable, quirky, and generous human being I’d ever met. Throughout many of our sessions together, I remember thinking to myself, “This is the most seen I’ve ever felt by another person.” In February at the closing of one of our meetings he said, “You know, Julianne, there’s a lot of love here.” We both knew how special our friendship was.

The moment I found out he had passed away, I immediately messaged my friend who is a psychologist and specializes in grief and loss. “I just lost someone extremely close to me- perhaps this is the first time I’ve ever experienced losing someone that was such an important part of my life. Any resources would be greatly appreciated.”

She shared a TED Talk with me on the topic of grief- how it is not an event, it’s a process. Grief is not something we ‘get over,’ but rather it is something we move through and move with together.

This line became the seed of my poem.

Flooded with deep emotions and energy pulsing through my heart onto the page, this poem was born.

My mentor taught me that we can experience pain but we can also choose to transform it. Staying in the suffering does not serve us.

He shared his meditation practices and regularly wrote and sent his poems to me to read. He always inquired about the art I was working on and encouraged me to use my current challenges as conduits to create new forms of art. He effectively encouraged me to transmute and tranform pain into beauty. It felt fitting to use art and poetry to express my grief and love as a tribute to his life and his legacy. I am emerging from this time tender and transformed, hopeful and deeply grateful. May this poem encourage you to see the gifts in your grief, knowing that I am here too- moving with and moving through grief with you. There’s a lot of love here.