Download Matt's free book - A Place for Grief

Grief doesn't arrive only when someone we love dies, or when we lose something precious to us.

There is also grief for the lives we haven't lived, the relationships that have changed, the dreams that have fallen away, and the versions of ourselves we can no longer become.

Some of these losses are difficult to name. They may appear as a strange melancholy in the middle of an ordinary afternoon, a longing we can't quite locate, or a tenderness that visits us without any obvious explanation.

There are dreams that don't return simply because we've understood why they disappeared. Relationships that cannot be restored to what they once were. And places in the heart where something remains unfinished, where love and sorrow continue to mingle in ways we may never fully understand.

I've been reflecting on these quieter forms of grief, and on what it might mean to offer them a place in our lives, to spend time with what has been lost, what was hoped for, and what never came to be.

I've gathered eleven reflections into a small book, A Place for Grief: Companionship in Difficult Times, which I'd like to share with you freely.

It's an invitation into the many landscapes of grief, including those losses that may remain invisible to others.

If it speaks to something in your own experience, you're very welcome to download a copy here:

https://mattlicataphd.com/a-place-for-grief/

Join Matt for The Winter Passage: A 3-Month Online Journey Starting November 5

As we move toward the winter months, I've been reflecting on the different seasons of the inner life, and how not everything within us unfolds according to the same rhythm.

There are times when something in us longs to become a little quieter, to listen more closely, and to make room for what has been waiting beneath the surface of our ordinary lives.

I've come to feel that healing has something of this same seasonal quality. There are movements within us that cannot be hurried, experiences that don't necessarily need another explanation or technique, but perhaps a different kind of attention. A place where we can begin to meet what is here, without so much pressure to change it into something else.

This November, I'll be opening The Winter Passage, a three-month online gathering held within our ongoing Mystery School community.

From November through January, we'll come together for nine live gatherings, exploring the inner life through contemplative teaching, experiential practice, and companionship.

We'll make room for the body and the heart, for grief and tenderness, for uncertainty and wonder, and for those parts of ourselves we may not yet fully know how to meet.

One of the things I've come to appreciate most about this work is what becomes possible when we gather together over time. When we discover that we don't have to carry everything alone, and that something within us may begin to soften through being met, listened to, and accompanied.

The Winter Passage is complete in itself. You can simply come spend these three months with us, without needing to make a longer commitment.

We begin Thursday, November 5.

If something in you recognizes this invitation, I'd love to welcome you.

Learn more about The Winter Passage and join us here.

With warmth,
Matt

Sometimes the path will disturb us

Sometimes life comes not to soothe us, but to overturn the world we have made. Something arrives—death, a new lover, shattering grief, the end of a dream, an encounter we cannot explain—and the spiritual house of cards begins to fall.

The beloved has appeared, in one of her fierce or more wrathful forms, carrying the power to undo the familiar arrangement of who we have taken ourselves to be.

This is part of what makes healing and awakening so disagreeable at times. We imagine they will make us feel better, safer, more certain, perhaps even more whole. And sometimes they do.

But initiation has another movement. It contradicts the persona. It disturbs the world it has so carefully arranged. It brings us into contact with a life that may bear little resemblance to the one we were certain we were going to live.

Something unexpected enters the room and pulls the rug out from underneath us.

There is a mercurial intelligence in the psyche that does not seem particularly interested in preserving who we think we are. It disturbs what has become fixed, opens what has become closed, and returns movement to places that have crystallized around certainty.

Perhaps this is one of the deeper purposes of regulation: not to become increasingly undisturbable, but to develop enough ground that we can allow ourselves to be genuinely moved.

To be touched by beauty. Undone by love. Rearranged by grief. Astonished by what we cannot explain.

Not every disturbance is a sign that we have lost our way. Sometimes the path itself comes to disturb us.

Learn more about Matt and his work