I don’t speak of sorrow like it’s a weakness.
I don’t lower my voice for it.
Sorrow is not something that happens to us -
it’s something that walks with us
once we’ve loved deeply enough.
Some people think sorrow means you are broken.
But our old people knew better.
They knew sorrow is the proof
that your heart stayed open
when it would have been easier to close it.
Sorrow is love with nowhere to go.
It’s memory looking for a body.
It’s the echo of laughter
still moving through the room
after everyone has gone.
In our way,
we don’t rush sorrow out the door.
We make it a place by the fire.
We feed it.
We listen.
Because sorrow carries teachings
you can’t learn any other way.
It teaches you how thin the veil really is.
How close the ancestors stand.
How fragile - and how powerful - this life is.
Sorrow slows your steps
so you don’t forget who you’re walking for.
It reminds you that every breath is borrowed.
That every name you speak
is still alive somewhere.
And yes -
sorrow is heavy.
But it’s not meant to crush you.
It’s meant to shape you.
Like river stones shaped by time,
not force.
We don’t ask sorrow to leave.
We ask it what it came to teach.
And when the lesson settles,
when the tears finally rest,
we don’t erase the sorrow.
We carry it forward -
carefully, respectfully -
as part of the bundle.
Because to live without sorrow
would mean to live without love.
And that…
was never our way.
Ekosi.
And so it continues.
*
from: 'Standing Bear Network'
* Portrait of Grandfather Elder Manataka American Indian Council
