The Sacredness of Grief

Never in a million years would I have thought that grief could be a sacred process. Until two weeks ago, when my precious, beautiful, joyful light of a son was killed in a car accident.

I always saw him as a radiant, joyful light, but I also knew he was struggling—deeply struggling—with questions bigger than his 18-year-old mind had answers for. He was a seeker, a philosopher in a young body, asking profound questions far beyond his years.

At four years old, he asked me about the Illuminati. When I explained that they were a super-secret society, he quipped, “If they’re so secret, how come I know about them?”

Another time, he asked, “If aliens have the technology to travel through space, why do they have lights on their ships?”

And then he asked the biggest question of all: Who created God?

Damn.

The moment he was born, our eyes met, and in that instant, I felt a telepathic message from him: I’ve been here a million times. You don’t have to tell me what to do.

Even though he was an old soul, he was also a young man—one who took risks, who lived on the edge, and who, in one reckless moment, lost his life.

I never expected to be living with this kind of grief. Foolishly, I believed that because I had already endured more trauma than most people do in a lifetime, the second half of my life would be wrapped in ease, joy, and bliss. I thought that my spiritual awakening had somehow lifted me beyond this—beyond mortal suffering, beyond loss of this magnitude.

And I’m not going to lie. The day after it happened, I raged at God.

I screamed, I am doing everything You’ve asked me to do and then some. I am being obedient. I am following the promptings of my spirit.

And You take my son?

Premonition and Powerlessness

The Thursday before Weston left for Las Vegas, I knew something was going to happen. A premonition. A visceral, bone-deep knowing.

I begged him not to go. I bribed him. I pleaded with him to fly instead of drive.

But he said he needed his car.

He laughed and said my imagination was like Stephen King. When he arrived in Vegas, he texted: Made it without dying.

He didn’t make it back without dying.

The Breaking Point

The night after he died, I woke up feeling like an elephant was sitting on my chest. I couldn’t breathe. My body was shaking uncontrollably. I was hyperventilating, certain I was having a heart attack.

Then, a voice in my mind whispered: Call Andrea.

Andrea was someone I met while waiting in line to hug Amma, the Indian saint known as the “Hugging Mother.” I held her while she cried, a moment of raw human connection, and we exchanged numbers with the vague promise of staying in touch.

Months later, out of nowhere, my friend Pagona asked me to do a sound bath for a visiting friend. Guess who it was?

Andrea.

She was a trauma therapist. And when I called her that night, she guided me back to my breath, back to my body. And in that moment of stillness, I heard a thought running on a loop in my mind:

"You knew this was going to happen... you did nothing to stop it... this is all your fault."

That voice was the cause of my overwhelming anxiety attack. It wasn’t mine. But it was destroying me.

Had I not known Andrea, I don’t know what I would have done.

My mother also came that night. Our relationship has been strained for years, but her presence was a Godsend. She held space for my husband because I couldn't.

The Sacredness of Grief

As a spiritual teacher, I don’t see death the way most people in the West do.

I see this process—this devastating, soul-shattering loss—as sacred.

Because in the midst of it, I have discovered how deeply I am held. By community. By family. By love.

There was a part of my heart—one I had long sensed was locked away—that I could never seem to access. I knew it was there, buried under years of spiritual work, longing to be found.

And somehow, losing my son is what broke my heart open, not shut.

How is that possible?

How is it that grief itself is sacred medicine—a force that, rather than closing me, has expanded me into more love?

I knew something was coming—a threshold I was meant to cross. I just never imagined it would be this.

The Mystery of It All

I don’t know what’s coming next.

I don’t know what I’m here to do now.

But I know I am being led. I know that somehow, all things unfold for the highest good, even when I cannot see it through the tears.

And I definitely know that my infinitely curious son, with his big, beautiful, impossible questions—

Now has the answers to everything he ever wanted to know about the universe.

As for me?

I believe the meaning of life is simple. Connection. Love. Service.

Everything else is just mystery.