Is It Procrastination? Or Untended Grief?

I thought I was procrastinating.

I thought I was stuck, distracted, maybe a little scattered, maybe doing that thing where I know what needs my attention and still somehow keep moving around it.

And then I realized grief had entered the chat, friends! What stands out is that it wasn't the kind of grief that had me crying with one clear story in my mind. Nor was it the grief of missing someone who had died and knowing exactly why my chest hurt. I know that grief.

This was so much quieter than that.

There were health concerns with people I love. There were mortality things moving through the lives of friends. There was sleep being interrupted. There was that little whisper of what’s the point trying to sneak in while I was looking at my own work.

So at first I thought, let me change scenery. I thought maybe I’d go to a coffee shop. Maybe the library. Maybe getting dressed and getting in the car will shake something loose. But I could feel that the whole process of leaving would become another way of moving away from what actually needed me. So, I went to the backyard. Our perfectly imperfect backyard.

I packed my favorite bag, the one with the colors and the texture I love. I brought my notebook, pens, highlighters, my computer, something to drink, something for my head in case the bugs got too close to my ears. I came out here with the things that help me work and the things that help me feel held.

And I sat in a chair I made with my own hands, with the cushion I found that fit it just right. Next to a table my partner made with his hands. Near the plants, the birds, the lizards, the ants, the bees, the butterflies, the trees, the rocks, the bark, the living trees and the remains of dead trees we turned into seating because that was what made sense for our lives and our priorities.

I came here because this place knows decision-making. Kris and I We figured out where the hammock should go. We chose what trees needed to come down because they were risky in the wind, and what trees belonged here even when they were annoying. We made things slowly because that was the way they could be made. So I let that be my companion.

Before I opened the computer, I took a breath. I brought to mind what I knew I was grieving, what I suspected I was grieving, and what my body might already be processing before my mind had language for it.

I said the Ho‘oponopono chant a friend taught me years ago: I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.

I did not need to know exactly what every line was for. I was calling in the energy of release, gratitude, love, and repair, letting my mind catch up with what my body had already been carrying.

And then something shifted! The thing I had been calling stuckness started to look different. I had been revisiting this plan for the next form of my grief work again and again, over weeks, and I had been telling myself I was stuck because it had not come through whole the first time.

But maybe that was not stuck. Maybe that was progression. Maybe that was what this particular idea needed.

As an unschooler, I learned that a child who was not reading at the age somebody expected was not automatically behind, broken, or failing. That might not have been their rhythm yet. That might not have been their groove. People have their own timing, their own processes, their own ways of becoming available to what wants to come through.

Ideas have rhythms too. Grief has rhythms too.

✨ Sometimes clarity does not arrive because I force it. Sometimes clarity arrives because I gave the thing enough chances to be met. ✨

I came back to it. I learned a little more about the fear in it, the excitement in it, the overthinking in it, the real desire in it.

That time in the backyard helped me see that grief can interrupt like procrastination. It can look like indecision, distraction, writer’s block, fog, or a strange resistance to the thing you actually care about.

And sometimes grieftending teaches you something you can remember. Other times, it may not feel like it teaches you sh!t. It may simply give your body a place to be with what your thinking brain has not caught up to yet.

That day, it gave me enough room to begin again.I walked away from that backyard different. Still carrying what I was carrying, but no longer calling the whole thing stuck.

This is my offering for when grief interrupts: before you decide you are procrastinating, ask what (untended) grief may be trying to get your attention.

And if you can, find a place that helps your body tell the truth.

A chair. A yard. A notebook. A little drink. A messy corner of the world where something living can sit with you while you listen. 💟