Ever find yourself stuck in something, unable to let go of it? Stuck in a job? Stuck in a feud? Stuck In a miserable relationship? When I get stuck, I go look for the something else I’m really stuck on. It’s invariably an emotional loss of some kind. Being stuck, not letting go… it’s about a loss that hasn’t been grieved enough. At least, that’s what I discovered for myself.

Know anybody who cut’s bait way too soon, who never stays long enough to catch the big fish? A person who moves on without looking back? This is the other side of the coin, a refusal to acknowledge loss at all.

Why am I talking about this? Well, for starters it’s autumn and Halloween has just passed. The losers in the mid-term elections have publicly conceded their defeat. This is the season of passing on, the season of gray, cloudy days and melancholy. I’ve found myself cleaning the emotional closets, letting my dreams guide the way. Two nights in a row I dreamed about old jobs, old bosses, from decades ago. That got my attention!

Maybe there were some feelings left behind that needed attention. I spent some time just allowing the losses I experienced in those situations come to the surface. I let myself feel the sadness of the transition in each situation and mourn the loss I never quite felt at the time. When I finished, I felt clean and whole and renewed. Interesting. I really didn’t know what to expect. The next day I got going on a couple of projects that had languished. No coincidence I concluded.

This reminds me of a passage from “The Listener”, the autobiography by the psychoanalyst Allen Wheelis.

“A human voice is one that bears the awareness of death – that once-only-once-and-never-again resonance. Sex and death, eternal antagonists, forever contending, forever overturning and contradicting each other. And beyond these difficult two, that impossible third, love, inextricably commingled.”