The only acceptance in grief is accepting the fact that we will always carry the pain of loss and accepting the fact that this pain will resurface periodically through unexpected circumstance. There will never be a day that we won’t remember the loss, the pain that it caused and continues to cause us. The idea that one day we will simply get over it is a dangerous lie that leaves us feeling guilty or that there might be something wrong with us for still being set off by the memory of that loss.

Case in point: After all the years that I’ve had to heal from the abuse I experienced at the hands of the Catholic Church, and the pain that eventually caused me to leave, you would think I’d be over it. This weekend I was reminded that I am not (over it). Instead, while watching the final episode of the final season of the British series Sex Education, all the pain came rushing back.

I had been given a vision, a mission, and a purpose. I had made a plan and had been encouraged and supported along that plan. I was on the path to give my professional life to the Church and to fulfill my mission to become “pastor” in the way that was available to women in the Catholic Church – pursuing the education to become a parish director. Then that all came crashing down.  You all know the story, and to be honest, I’m sick of hearing myself talk about it.

The short version (as if I could ever tell a short version!) is that I left the Church to forge my own path as “pastor” to a secular audience mostly made up of the Catholic diaspora. That mission failed too.

This is where I found myself while watching a character in a similar state of unwelcome hearing a calling and deciding to forge his own path within that calling. If I wasn’t on an anti-panic attack medication that suppresses crying, I would have been bawling my eyes out. Instead, all I could do was sit in a state of shock as my body tried to process the mixture of emotions brought up while watching a story similar to my own playing out in real time over Netflix. Ugh.

Grief is a harsh mistress. Standing in front of us with riding crop and pummel, always at the ready to whip us back to reality. Life is hard. We’re given visions with a sense of purpose, and that purpose is often torn from our grasp. We make plans and the Universe laughs. We fall in love and find ourselves betrayed. We believe and have faith. We pray. We discern. And still we remain the victims of fate.

Life has its own plan no matter how clearly we might discern.  Even when we fail, our discernment may have been correct. Failure and loss are part of life, and there’s nothing we can do to change or avoid this fact. The best we can do is accept. Accept that life is hard, that shit happens, that there will be disappointment and devastating loss. Accept that the pain of loss and disappointment will always be with us and will periodically rear its head, inviting us into another layer of being with that pain. We weep. We wail. We rage. We curl into ourselves. We become momentarily paralyzed. We love and comfort ourselves. And then we move on until the next reminder comes and then we do it all over again. And in between, we embrace those moments of wonder, joy, and beauty that also make up the human condition. It is also for these that we are here.