A Pliable Grief

The greatest gift that grief has afforded me is the gateway into knowing.

John: June 6, 2016. Jabiru, NT.

Greet grief with an open heart — compassion. An attentive, present listening validates love’s truth. It is felt — an embodied acceptance of be-ing, the humanness of our soul’s experience.

As the first anniversary of my adventure on Substack approaches, so too does John’s 6^th deathday.

Along the internal highway to awareness — to be-ing, subsidiary service roads release any urgency of meeting external expectations, knowing that timelines of the eternal are spiralling and simultaneous — all at once. Love’s expression of grief is not acquainted with linear time.

Access roads can be remote and wild, they demand presence to recognise the beauty in such offerings. Some, are calm meanderings of ecstasy, joy and bliss. A topography in service to the soul. She knows where each fork leads — they are aspects of herself. She remembers everything.

Don’t mind that three poems previously shared reappear here, by John’s request. Allow me this indulgence, he drops-in — with a smirk. Thank you. They capture the essence of this post.

This first poem, I received in one fluent movement, 3 months short of his 3^rd deathday.

The Transitory Breath

I was not alone ...

When, I consented with peace,

To shed my body ... gracefully,

Enveloped with love.

A releasing graduation ...

The event of my death,

A gentle welcome ...

My transitory final breath.

Quiet relief, that passage ...

Of enduring, abiding light,

Rediscovering the Universe ...

My eternal Soul, my home.

John — November 6, 2021.

John’s grace is what I feel when I revisit this poem — his soul’s recital. I notice John’s dawning awareness during his illness — witness as l was to his courage and endurance. We could not speak the language of words in those last few months. Perhaps the birthing ground for what has become a way of being — feeling into listening.

The greatest gift that grief has afforded me is the gateway into knowing.

I have grown in and around grief. When I befriended her it was because I was unable to resist her, and in my acceptance and surrender she taught me that she sings in echoes of love. She taught me that to resist is to fear. And in the fear is an amplification of lack. Allowing her freedom to flow through the heart centre shifts her vibrational resonance to align with members of her team — gratitude and grace — connections to the eternal — to the team — to John.

So, what of the trauma in grief? This snippet from a previous post recognises the presence of grief and trauma.

I would kiss those atrophied parts of his body when I washed, dressed and moisturised him every day ... I was no longer haunted by the daily taking. Seeing and feeling the desperate muscles as they flexed — a pulsating despair in seeking to find the means to keep moving.

He was stealthily robbed of his voice, and almost ... his ability to smile ... his beautiful eyes and soul became our avenue of communication.

I tossed and turned and watched all night — every night. Trying to imagine his discomfort. I would stare at his handsome face while he slept. How that one remaining functioning arm must have ached? He bore that bloody cross with such grace.

The circumstances surrounding his decline and knowing that we are eternal gave me reassurance that John would be in what he now reports as a formless fluidity of bliss — testimony of his soul’s sovereignty.

I too, saw the gifts in being present with John. These are for the choosing. This is how I came to know and befriend grief. Because she was cohabiting my heart space she transcended my humanness with each nuanced gesture. If I resisted, she became an intruder, stuck energy in the body.


When welcomed, she nestled around the heart before retreating as swiftly as she entered, with movements of compassion and grace. Her intention is to never linger, she simply asks to be heard. I was drawn to feel her wisdom offerings.

As noted previously, her language is vibrational and her messages carry Source frequencies of unconditional love. It is therefore not a conscious brain/mind decision to choose to experience grief. She is an organic aspect of our be-ing. And she is misunderstood and maligned by mainstream society.

We know our Earth bound human existence is temporal, and perhaps factors into society’s preoccupation with futile attempts to resist the natural process of aging towards death — the physical decline of the organic vessel that gifts a fragment of our soul a human experience.

The assumption that it is our birthright to live to a ripe age, is perhaps premised on the mainstream misnomer that when we die we are forgotten and hence obliterated from existence — of this one human lifetime. Allegedly — thanks John.

Because society fears death, it simplifies grief in efforts to silence her —including by those professing to be healing and health professionals and self-proclaimed spiritual leaders. Whilst listening to a podcast interview, an after-life expert asserted that those of us who know we are eternal souls — reincarnating in soul groups with contracts including established exit points — are therefore selfish if we grieve those we lose. The irony of spiritual egoism is self-evident.

John has previously offered guidance in writing-out these mainstream and spiritual misnomers, as per previous posts.

Regardless of the gift of on-going connection with John — there remains a pliable grief.

It stands to reason that there is an intimacy with grief that is clearly reflective of the relationship in the current life span. Past life memories can offer further clarity with regard to the relationship between love, grief and trauma. This includes intergenerational and ancestral patterns that we inherit — memories stored in our bodies, those shared with of our soul group. I will further explore these threads as they are revealed to me.

Back to John and our evolving relationship despite being in parallel worlds. It’s a matter of vibrational frequency — as with all connections with our soul team and earth bound members of community.

So, of the last year’s writing collaboration with John, and the wisdom teachings from the team — my soul group? The poke was to use the substack handle to reflect on the love and learning — the clarity, the shifts, the expansion.

A quick reminder — I only know what I receive from my team. In the sharing, I hope that others may find some resonance in the universal truths that we each receive, at our point of need.

The Gifts: Everything is Connected

Grief: I have increasingly written about the need for us to be able to feel the pain that reflects the power of love and intimacy. When we can discern that the grief is coming from our heart, we can feel that the pain is embossed by love. There can be no lack coming from the heart space. This is where my awareness manifested its wisdom teachings of knowing. This is where John and the team initially greeted me.

Grief coming from my mind. Do I still rue the fact that John is no longer in his physical form? Yes — I allow it, this human pang of lack — and so, she lingers less. This is unrelated to time. My human form yearns for John’s physical presence — simple. And that’s OK.

Mother Nature will nurture me when I get some stuck energy around lack. Though stored in some of the body’s other energy centres, Gaia’s grounding frequencies are initially received and released through the heart. This is how we transform and shift such energies, to gift our human be-ing compassionate perspectives.

Gratitude: is a way of being, a manifestation and harvesting of the vibrational frequency of universal love — the intelligence of creation. Beyond our human conceptualisation — beyond a lexicon I can fathom.

As stated previously, gratitude is how our human aspect receives and expresses unconditional love, our soul’s essence. When I feel gratitude, it is a body led response. An expanding energy is formed in my heart space, enough to spring a tear or two. Tears of gratitude are spilt from the heart, in and of kindness. Such tears gift me presence — feeling into listening.

Gratitude holds space — it maintains the vibrational frequency for the mutual summonsing and receiving of messages with John and the team.

Love: Vulnerability and acceptance — in and of our human experiences — a clear drop in from John, and his want for me to include the following poem.

You have spoken of the eternal, unconditional love in Gratitude, bring it back to the human remembering, when the light transformed the darkness into awareness.

His wish, to distract me from re-witnessing through body’s remembrance, the trauma and vulnerability in his illness — you don’t need to go or dwell there. It is not the sum of the man or the purpose of this post. The poem is an invitation to feel into listening, coming in about 18 months after his death.

Thank you.

The Unimagined

In the haunting isolation of uncertainty

Of despairing, impending loss,

The overwhelming anticipatory grief

Evokes a spiralling sense of self.

An illusionary rhythm of life

Shadows the acceptance of pain to loss,

As love to joy

Afflictions of the yearning.

Ego’s weapon of time

Campaigning for toxic positivity,

In pursuit of silver linings ... lie

Contrived projections of secondary losses.

I met the depths of my love

For the first time; in loss, in grief,

Stretching my shattered heart

Expanding my amenable mind.

Love’s presence in absence

The imagined to the unimagined,

Conceiving new latitudes of gratitude

For the eternal, the truth.

Simone & John, 13.09.21

Laughter: The Inner Child — Our Soul’s Essence — Freedom and Joy — Our birthright.

I’ll leave this one for you and the fairies, I hear John laugh.

You know I am adverse to using the term healing. I understand there being an element of lack about it — a resistance, an embedded desire to return to a precondition. Fear lurks in an expectation to heal — fear of the unknown, a lack of control. This is how I have digested the mainstream-ness around trauma related grief.

So, I prefer to use recovery. I have written plenty about my inner child leading my recovery. My most recent post shared how she continues to ground me in the physicality of presence — the crucial role of Nature in maintaining the vibrational frequencies that keep open, the portals to awareness.

Lying on my back, her waves broke over my face and in the backwash she rolled me in a gentle backward somersault despite the plunging nature of the shore break. Resurfacing with a giggle I was in that instant transported back to my 8 year old self. Sharing the laughter with a friend, we floated in the foaming and bubbly spume of whitewash between sets.

Recovery with my inner child has triggered the first experiences of trauma and grief in this incarnation. Wounds of which we are familiar, including those which speak of patterns weaved in our adult choices.

Awareness works as a reminder that she is indeed safe and protected — she is our soul’s interpretation of her essence — our inner child is her personification of our divinity.


It is my inner child who gifts me freedom — the laughter and joy that connects me to community. It is the true expression of my soul in its human aspect — it is the playfulness in all of us — our birthright.

Acceptance and surrender to what is.

Poke, poke — for the third and final time in this post, a poem of John’s choosing. It is a synthesis of the learning — in matters of the heart — as John so aptly terms it. With acceptance and surrender comes guiding wisdom. What we receive from the esoteric realms translates with a resounding practical clarity when we ground our body in our earth mother. Here lies the gateway to knowing — universal wisdom.

As John’s death day approaches — I seek solace in the company of nature — rituals of grace — with gratitude, love and laughter.

The Silent Inheritance Our Lifeblood

There is nothing

to discern

in allowing your body

to feel into

— listening —

leaning into

your be-ing.

When we listen

to feel

Universal Wisdom

we intuit

— truth —

from our expansive self

our Soul.

When the egoic fear

of our human-ness

weeps a mournful cry

our Earth-Mother

emits a vibrational

frequency of loving

— acceptance —

an enveloping

cradling embrace.

A nurturing whisper

that we might take

— a breath —

to reconnect with

the rhythm

of Her body

— Our Body —

Holding a mirror of

outward terrain which

speaks to our inwardness.

A call to notice

Her sentient messengers

a songful pause

— to silence —

Her offer perhaps to

spy a mischief

of fairies frolic amongst

fields of tilting grass

whilst propped against

the guardianship

of a tree?

Perhaps to rumble

in the wintry waves?

Perhaps to sit

silently and feel

the Sun seep

its orange tinge

through translucent eyelids?

Her timeless invitation to

wonder a reimagining

through remembrance.

In loving recognition

of the bewildered

— shadow self —

A beckoning to the

birthright of our be-ing.

Cushioning our

surrender and acceptance

to what is

— eternal —

Soul’s essence of

unconditional love.

Wisdom keeper of the

— heart chakra —

safe haven for

its energetic-body

and human lifeblood

— the inner child —

Simone & John August 18, 2024

With love and gratitude, my learning continues.

John and team, thank you for the guidance. I love you.

Mother Earth – Bless You, Thank you!

And so it is.