No Matter What They Say: Grief and the Practice of Being

There are moments in life when loss reshapes us. It might be the loss of a loved one, the loss of a season of life, or the quiet loss of what we thought would be. Grief, in all its forms, is part of the human experience. And yet, so often, we are told to move on, to get over it, to follow some neat progression of “stages.”

But as the poet Rosemerry Wahtoler Trommer reminds us in No Matter What They Say, grief doesn’t live in tidy boxes. It builds rooms inside us, spaces no one else can enter. Rooms that hold silence or song, weeping or stillness. Rooms where we get to decide what it looks like to live with loss.

Here is her poem in full:

No Matter What They Say

by Rosemerry Wahtoler Trommer

You do not have to get over it.
You will carry your grief
and be carried by loss
in any way the carrying happens.
As if you had a choice.
Grief builds rooms inside you
no one else will ever see,
rooms with doors
only you can pass through
filled with songs or silence
only you can hear.
Rest here. Or dance here.
Shout. Or whisper. Rise
like milkweed seeds on the wind.
Or lie here, you can only do it right.
Here, there are no other eyes
or ears to tell you what to do
or how long it will take
or what choices to make.
And if you are weeping, weep.
And if you are dry, you are dry.
The rest of the world
can talk about stages
of grief and how it should be,
but you, you do not have to listen.

Yoga teaches us to stay present with what is real, even when it’s uncomfortable. On the mat, we notice our breath, our bodies, our emotions. Some days the practice is steady and strong. Other days it feels heavy, fragile, or tender. Just as there is no “wrong” way to move through a yoga practice, there is no wrong way to move through grief.