When the Storm Carries the Grief Away
Grief settled on me, enveloping me down to the bone and sinew, every fiber feeling the weight of deep and inconsolable loss. Not only of a sister that I had loved, gone suddenly and unexpectedly, but also other relationships I never knew I would lose along with her.
I walked, because walking settles me. I cannot sit quietly and be drowned in feelings so intense. I would never surface if I could not walk and process.
So I walked – in nature.
I arose from sleep, if I had actually slept, I don’t know.
4:00 a.m.… not yet… 5? maybe.
Dressing quickly and without thought, I stepped outside the trailer into a sunrise yet unknown. Yesterday’s storm — both internal and external — perhaps giving way to a sunrise that might at least lighten the burdens my soul had been scarred with.
I walked along the riverbank, my sorrow drowned by the bellow of the tugboats pushing barges down the Mississippi. Grateful that my keening cries were drowned by their sound and kept my sorrow secret.
I never truly knew what keening meant. I had read it in novels and period romances, but never experienced it before today. Deep cries of grief that come from the soul is the only way I can describe it.
Then, there it was, the reality of a new dawn — distracting me, for a while, from my pain.
Storms, I have learned, carry more than wind and rain. They carry the weight of what we cannot name, the ache we try to hide. They give form to what is happening inside us.
That morning, as the world shifted from dark to light, I understood something: grief, like the weather, comes in seasons. And storms — whether outside or within — have their own rhythm of arrival, intensity, and passing.
In truth, the storm outside us often mirrors the one within.
Sometimes it’s grief, uncertainty, or change that shakes our foundations. But just as the wind dies down and the sun returns, there’s a rhythm to it all — a reminder that even the most powerful moments of upheaval pass, leaving behind clarity and renewal.
There are seasons when life feels too heavy to carry — when loss settles over us like a storm we can’t escape. The world keeps turning, yet inside, everything feels still and hollow. That’s when I’ve always turned to nature — not for answers, but for company.
That morning reminded me that nature doesn’t hurry its healing — it simply continues. The storm passes, the river moves on, and somehow, we begin again.
1. Let Nature Carry the Weight for a While
When pain feels too big to name, step outside. You don’t have to speak or even think. Just let the world meet you where you are. Walk. Sit by water. Lean into the wind.
Nature has an ancient way of absorbing what we can’t yet process. The sound of rain, the steady rhythm of your steps on wet ground — these become the language of surrender.
Writer Isak Dinesen once said:
“The cure for anything is salt water — sweat, tears, or the sea.”
When we walk, when we let our tears mix with the rain or the river, we begin to loosen our grip on grief. Nature doesn’t demand that we be okay. It simply makes room for whatever we bring.
2. Let the Storm Mirror Your Emotions
Sometimes grief feels like thunder — sudden, raw, impossible to contain. We try to hold it in, but like lightning, it finds its way out.
Nature’s storms invite us to stop fighting what we feel. The wind cries, and for a moment, we can cry with it. The rain comes in sheets, and it feels as though the sky itself is crying alongside us.
Vincent van Gogh once wrote to his brother:
“There is peace even in the storm.”
Those words remind me that even when everything feels chaotic, there is still a rhythm underneath — the steady heartbeat of the earth. By standing in the storm, we give our emotions permission to move, to shift, to pass through us.
3. Wait for the Gentle Rain
After every storm, there’s that quiet, misty calm — the kind that makes the world feel tender again. The air smells different. The colors deepen. The silence hums with relief.
Grief doesn’t disappear after the storm, but it changes shape. The sharp edges soften. The heaviness turns to a kind of sacred stillness.
Poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote:
“Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.”
There is something tender and freeing in Rilke’s words — a reminder that grief, like a storm, is not permanent. It comes in full force, demanding our attention, and then passes in its own time.
Pain does not vanish instantly, but it changes
Healing isn’t about forgetting or moving on. It’s about moving with. It’s learning to walk beside our memories as the light returns. The gentle rain becomes a balm, reminding us that new growth often begins in the soil the storm has turned.
Photographer Minor White once said:
“A photographer is a person who stands before the world and says: I will see this. I will understand this. I will hold it gently and pass it on.”
I think that is what walking in the storm felt like for me — holding my grief gently, seeing it clearly, and letting it pass through.
The thunder rolled later that day, as if the earth itself echoed my unrest. The rain came heavy and sudden, washing over the riverbank where I had walked earlier. It was a storm both outside me and within. I let myself stand in it, letting the wind twist my hair, letting the rain wash the ache into something softer.
Not gone, not forgotten. Just a little – less.
Artist Georgia O’Keeffe once reflected:
“I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way — things I had no words for.”
There is truth in her words for all of us who live through loss. Sometimes the language of grief is not spoken but felt — in the deep swell of the wind, in the hush after thunder, in the smell of earth after rain.
Eventually, the storm began to ease. The thunder receded, the wind softened, and the rain turned to gentle mist. A hush settled over the river, and with it came rest. My grief had not vanished, but it had shifted. The storm had softened the sharp edges.
Painter Claude Monet said:
“Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love.”
That morning, I understood something simple and true: storms are not meant to be fully understood. They are meant to be experienced, endured, and finally let go. To love ourselves enough to stand in them, and to trust they will pass.
When nature returns to calm, it is never quite the same landscape — and neither are we. The earth is darker, the colors deeper, the air easier to breathe. And perhaps that is the gift of the storm: not destruction, but renewal.
So when thunder rolls, let yourself stand in it. Let it remind you that even the deepest grief can be softened by the storm — and that a new dawn is always possible.
Returning to the River
When I will look back on that morning by the Mississippi, I will hear the tugboats and feel the damp air against my skin. The storm that once echoed my sorrow became part of my healing — not by erasing my grief, but by holding it.
The sunrise holding my attention for just a moment longer, allowing me respite from the pain.
Sometimes, nature doesn’t fix us. It simply stays with us until we can breathe again.
And maybe that’s enough.
Journal Prompt
Think of a storm — real or emotional — that changed you.
What did it wash away?
What new growth began afterward?