When Andrew Wood, the frontman of Mother Love Bone, died in 1990, his friend Chris Cornell didn’t stop loving him. That love flowed into songs, and the songs became Temple of the Dog.
I’ve been thinking about that since my Campfire Conversation with Chiara Liberatore, co-founder and co-executive director of Maine Inside Out. Listening back, I noticed how often Chiara talked about grief like water. Let it wash through. It gets clogged up. Let it metabolize.
In The Soul of Money, Lynne Twist says money is a lot like water. When it flows, it cleanses and helps things grow. When it gets held and stagnant, it turns toxic. I’ve started to think love and grief work the same way. They might be two sides of the same coin. Grief just might be love flowing after a loss.
Chiara told me she feels most alive when she’s creating. Later, she said she also feels most alive in deep grief. I think both are love moving. And when we let grief keep flowing, it often turns into something new and beautiful. Songs. Paintings. A play built from people’s own stories.
Most of us were never taught to let it move. So we hold on. It has me thinking, what beautiful creation might be stuck in me because I haven’t let it flow?
Read the full story on Substack.
Learn more about the adventure at heart-strong.org.
