|This write-up invites you to pause, to receive and to reflect. We look into the word, the verb and the experience of “missing”. There are different lenses through which to explore this topic and it is explored in through specific lenses here. This may or may not resonate with you.|
What does it mean to miss someone/something/someplace?
I don’t know what it means to you and for you. I have no idea how you define missing and what you do when you miss.
“To miss” means whatever meaning you are giving in your mind.
Some have this image of pain, sadness, hurt connected to missing and these are to be avoided at all cost. Others have this image of sweet remembrance, a nectar to be indulged in whenever it is offered to them.
What does “to miss” mean to you? How do you use the verb “miss”? What meaning are you giving “to miss” in your mind?
What value does “to miss” hold in your life?
I sit in conversations with women and men, it is intriguely interesting how we are many to shrink at the experience of missing a loved one, a colleague, an old home, a country, a child, a parent, an old lover and so much more.
I am more and more becoming present of how “missing” is shunned and even shamed. Some say to miss is a negative or energy draining or disempowering movement. Some say to miss is to mean that I am not living a connected life.
All I know is that we are humans and the beauty of being human is our biological imperative and nature to connect, to bond, to create and to meet each other.
We cannot not miss people we have been with, people we have parted ways with, people who have left this world, our old homes, our colleagues, our pets, our cars and so much more.
When someone leaves our space or when we leave someone, some place, the movement is visceral, it is not just in our mind or heart that we experience this lost or parting or departing, it is in the nervous system. Suddenly what was used to, is no more or has changed shape and form. So we cannot not struggle, pain, tear and cry. It does not make of us clingy or sick or depressed. It is an internal experience where we are kicked into a sudden change in the body’s chemistry at all levels. A change that asked to be cared for and taken care of you. A change that asks of deep kindness and gentleness as we transit from “what was” to “what is”.
It is normal. It is beautifully normal to miss.
It is impossible to not miss and to not grief in this process.
Missing and allowing oneself to move into the experience of “missing whatever it is” is not dysfunctional and least disempowering. On the other hand, what causes dysfunctional is numbing the experience of missing whenever it shows up.
What we numb stays frozen, to freeze part of our internal world asks of ongoing investment of our internal energy and resources and this not only limit our access to energy for our day to day life but also to ability to create, to connect, to bond and to life. This numbing keeps the autonomic nervous system in survival mode. This survival is intelligently designed to survive and connection is not it’s priority.
To miss is the beauty of being human. To miss is the reminder that I have opened, I have met, I was met and through this meeting a part of me was birthed and now, I miss that which has served this part of me.
If you are missing someone here now, a lover, a mother, a friend, a pet, a colleague, may you find inside and outside the support and the holding while you move through this experience.
The discomfort is not about missing but rather the lack of internal and external intelligence, guidance, understanding and support to hold oneself as one misses when and as.
Our beliefs, our perceptions, our memories, our ideas, our ideals, our identities and so much more impact on our experience of “missing whatever it is”.
So miss as hard you miss. While we miss, may we be reminded that there is no wrongness or rightness to this experience, what impacts our experience are our personal judgements. The need to find safety in our experience of missing is what asks to be met.
To love, to connect is to also open to the doors of missing.
The sweetness of aching reminder of what matters most in life.
Love from my heart to yours
Post © Megha Venketasamy, 2022. All rights reserved.
Creative Work © Megha Venketasamy,
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