11/10/2025
Cocooning Through Grief
Grief transforms us.
For a time we cocoon,
folding inward,
seeking the smallest,
safest chamber of the heart.
It is not hiding,
not retreat,
but something elemental,
a return to the inner sanctuary,
where silence keeps company with sorrow.
There, time moves differently.
Hours stretch like threads of dusk,
days gather into hush,
the world’s noise
falling away.
Inside the cocoon,
grief does its secret work.
The old life dissolves,
once familiar, now unrecognizable.
We remember who we were,
but that self feels distant,
belonging to another.
The one we loved lingers still,
stitched into memory,
woven throughout our daily lives
Their absence hollows,
reshapes,
leaving an ache
both wound and witness.
Even here,
change stirs quietly.
The stillness gathers us,
slowly, gently,
like threads woven
into a new tapestry.
We cannot rush it.
We cannot command it.
We can only move
with it,
trusting the rhythm of its unfolding.
And then,
at some unexpected moment,
the cocoon begins to thin.
Light seeps through
the fragile seams.
The heart,
once too heavy to lift,
leans toward the light.
We blink against a world
the same,
yet utterly changed.
Emerging,
we carry both the ache and the light,
a new way of being,
fragile,
resilient,
transformed,
and in some hidden way,
more luminous
for having passed through the dark.
~ 'Cocooning Through Grief'
✍️ Mary Anne Byrne
~ Art by Serin Alar Serin Alar
