there's no getting over it, there's only getting through...
I don’t believe we ever fully get over anything; however, I do believe in our fullest capacity to move through.
This thought and the energy of these words met me unexpectedly this morning as I was in my kitchen prepping food for the week and making rice. As I diced green onions and processed all that I was feeling in response to another innocent Black man killed by the Missouri judicial system, and the ineptness of this so-called justice—especially with evidence proving his innocence and support screaming through a tyrant and fixed system—alongside all the other immoral and heartbreaking things happening simultaneously, I held the realization that this is not something we are supposed to get over. These times are not something we can avoid or minimize at the expense of our own sanity and soul. These are times that will stick with us, saturate us, all in hopes of us knowing and cultivating better.
I do not want to minimize, even for a moment, what these times hold. I do not want to pretend I am some scholar in the school of life, with all the answers, because I do not. I only want to share what has shown up for me in my own story, healing, and reckoning with just how absurd our norms can be—like how too often it is normalized for us to get over such things. That sentiment can be woven into the many losses, griefs, heartbreaks, and hardships we endure in our own timelines, both personally and collectively. It’s unfortunate how many times in my own healing story I heard from those closest to me, “Keri, when are you going to get over it?” Those words felt hurtful, and the jolt within my own system lingered long after the sentence was uttered.
We need time to process things.
We deserve time to process things.
Yet, the current norms of how we move, breathe, and exist in this world give us barely any space and almost no time. We ingest the un-ingestable and are encouraged to go about our days as though everything is fine.
Well, it is not.
And we all deserve time to be with those knots and nots—the ones we feel in our stomachs and chests, the ones that spiral and stay static in our minds. We need time to unravel and digest the emotions so that the energy and weight can move through us and be used in purposeful ways, not poison seeping and saturating us through and through.
I was brought back to a moment about 11.5 years ago when I was burying my dad's ashes. We had flown to Colorado to bury his ashes in his hometown plot in Rocky Ford. I was at peace with this decision; I knew he is not limited to where he is placed. Yet, as the time came to hand over the ashes to my aunts, a part of me clung to them in a way I didn’t expect. In the brief moment between handing his ashes off, I felt a pull inside me that needed to save some for myself. I had already received a small urn with his ashes; my brother and I both did. But right there, in real-time, I needed just a little bit more. So, I said to my aunts, “Hold on, I need to save just a little bit for me,” only to have one of my aunts respond, “Keri, when are you going to get over it?”
It still stings to remember that. I am thankful for my own awareness and compassion to understand that was her own issue, not mine. But, damn, it did hurt, and it became a message I knew my heart and spirit did not want to receive. We were just two weeks post-tragedy. I did not understand how someone so close to me—someone who was experiencing similar anger, sadness, and grief, someone who had been with me my entire life—could say something so disheartening at this moment of my own grief. Yet, 11.5 years later, I am realizing how frequent this sentiment seems to be.
Similar messages were shared with me in different ways, especially that first year. It felt as though I was inconveniencing those closest to me because I could no longer do what we used to do. The normal was no longer normal to me, and that disrupted many relationships. I hold no grudges against those who couldn’t understand that this was not something I could ever get over. But I do have grief, and there’s no getting over that.
Grief is love.
And love is eternal.
So, what if these two pieces of my heart will always be a part of my whole? What if that also exists within you and every system, society, structure, and story we occupy? What if we allowed space within those spaces for all we hold?
With no need to get over it,
With no need to leave it at the door,
With no timeline,
With no apathy or agenda,
Just the allowance of all that lives within us—the hard, the soft, the challenging, the changing, the processing—not to be ignored but thoughtfully and intentionally cared for and carried, until we ourselves are ready to put it down and until we ourselves are ready to let it move through.
I hope for a world where we normalize the time and space needed to truly digest and learn from these emotional experiences we each and all are having. I hope we learn how to be with it and with ourselves and each other without ignoring the elephants and electricity in the room, in our bodies, in our hearts, in our heads…
Healing takes time.
And we should not feel rushed; we should not rush anyone else to get over or get through.
It’s a cycle.
It’s a process.
It’s a practice.
That requires great patience and love.
And if those outside of you cannot and are not able to show you the support you so deserve and need, please, oh please, make certain that you are supporting yourself.
There’s no getting over, dear friends, but I have absolute faith that we can, and we must, find our way and find each other as we move through.
