28. happy birthday papa
love, loss, and the unspoken grief that shapes us and our world
Today would have been my father’s 70th birthday. This photo is from his 41st birthday—the last one he ever got to celebrate here before he passed away a few months later. I miss him every day and would give anything to have him by my side still. Yet, losing him so young gave me a profound ability to sit with pain, grief, and loss—feelings that our troubled society tells us are personal issues to bury and hide.
Sobonfu Somé, the revered West African spiritual teacher and author from Burkina Faso’s Dagara tribe, whose work around grief and its impact on individuals and societies has profoundly shaped my journey, would often begin her talks with a simple, powerful reminder: “Not dealing with grief has got us into big trouble.” And that has never felt truer than it does today. We are living in dark times, surrounded by the death of other beings and the natural world, yet we’re expected to go on as though it’s business as usual. Unresolved grief shapes our world; it finds its way into our relationships and political systems, becoming a hidden influence on how society is run. At the heart of so much darkness in the world today lies unprocessed grief.
Sobonfu shared how, in her culture, emotions are not seen as individual burdens but as collective ones; to the Dagara, there is no such thing as private grief—grief is communal. Your pain is our pain. They believe that grief is an energy to be worked through, not left to stagnate and that it is the community’s responsibility to face it together. Our pain reveals the soul’s unrest, giving words to what it has not addressed. By naming these feelings, we create space to release them.
To me, the depth of our grief reflects the depth of our love; we grieve because we have loved deeply. Allowing ourselves to feel that grief fully can bring us closer to the love we hold for what we’ve lost. I cry because dancing with my grief is a way of honouring everything I love—the earth and all living beings. I want my grief to flow through me, to transform it into something healing and life-giving rather than a weight that holds me back so I can live a life of depth and connection.
Life is precious, friends. Remember that we are mere mortals. Don’t let this complex world close your heart.
Happy Birthday Papa, my forever Scorpio king. You are the flyest forever in so many ways. I feel you and your love reverberate through me every day.
I’m so lucky to be your daughter.
