“When you quiet your mind, you can enter a world of clarity, peace and understanding.”
-Alice Coltrane
Quiet is more than just the absence of noise. Quiet is a state of being that helps suppress distracting intrusions so that the right sounds can become loud and clear.
For grievers, quiet is a golden elephant that seems left in a fairy tale. Our minds are a noisy mess of spiraling thoughts, our emotions are roaring like a stormy sea, and our grief supporters may sometimes be an unrelenting hurricane of unsolicited advice and unwanted opinions.
Gaining quiet can be achieved through various practices, such as meditation and yoga, which work to calm the mind’s business, or walking without the aid of entertainment (like music, audiobooks, or phone calls), which removes us from the noisy world we inhabit for a time.
What if the noise is more intrusive in our lives? Sometimes we need more distance, like a vacation, to reengage with the quiet we lose throughout the year. More aggressive practices, like removing friends and family from our lives, may be required to regain an environment away from negative and intrusive voices that disrupt any peace we attempt to establish for ourselves.
Why does quiet matter? Quiet gives grief a chance to do its work. In quiet, grief will help us face complex and lingering problems, raise our deepest needs and desires, and shape our new priorities.
Grievers must find a way to inject quiet time into life. Quiet provides time in which our minds can rest from thinking, planning, deciding, and even protecting ourselves from outside negativity. Quiet is a needed rest from external pressures and is vital for healing. It is not always given to grievers; sometimes, we must steal it for ourselves.
In grief, quiet is a matter of necessity.
A.N.Carroll 