When we move through grief, longing, and sometimes the depression that lingers in these fields, we often want to prescribe a diagnosis to receive a solution. It’s only human. Yet when I reach into the soul, the wisdom of my body, art, and the human experience, I’ve discovered that grief isn’t just what’s missing; it’s what’s asking for more space for a new journey.
Hi love, I’m Lumalia: author of Blooming Upside Down, photographer, and creator of Celebrate Again. My work lives at the crossroads of art, embodiment, beauty, and the messy miracle of being human. I wrote this poem during a season of layered grief, longing for change, and depression. And as poetry so often does, it revealed not just ache, but wisdom, relief, and even joy tucked inside the dark.
Poem about Grief, Longing & Depression
I crack it open,
the closet,
the drawer,
the door,
the straitjacket I’m told to imagine I’m wearing,
the sun parting between the clouds
and always, there is a weight of grief I cannot carry,
the heavy cream at the bottom,
is this why I’m anchored here this lifetime?
I wanted to feel safe enough to weep.
This time I wanted to feel my blood like a heavy suitcase I can no longer pick up.
I have to stay here.
I cannot run.
I have to stay in this feeling of wisdom.
I keep hearing “IT’S A GAP!”
The black hole we keep running from,
the void,
isn’t it that where all is made?
Well, the damn bursts the walls it’s been told to stay behind.
I think that’s why I came back.
I want to burst through it all.
To feel every edge,
to be like the salmon swimming free,
to feel their blood through the waves,
to scrape my nails with the worms as I plant fireweed on a Saturday morning with forty other strangers,
just because we love this land,
just because we said let’s keep it beautiful here,
let’s keep this crustation that’s OURS alive,
the only one left on earth,
let’s love it,
the crack,
opens the love,
to be loved by us.
Isn’t it grand?
Isn’t that why we want to stay?
Don’t take us too soon,
don’t give up so soon,
don’t miss the grief whispering,
“This is just the edge of you,
jump my love jump into the limits of your longing,
this is just the beginning.”
Navigating Grief, Longing & Depression
When I wrote this poem, I was in a deep season of mixed parts of longing and grief, so many layers of my life were not clicking the way I’d really wanted them to work out.
Yet in letting the imagery of my subconscious unfold through poetry, I began to see the hope that’s driving me through this challenging season. Writing allowed me to remember that grief, longing, and yes, even depression aren’t signals you’re wrong or need fixing; they are actually proof of life, proof of hope.
If you are in a season of feeling untethered, grief and longing, I also wrote this piece on feeling lost in life, which may offer another place to land and explore that maybe this season isn’t as dark as it may feel, maybe it is a season that could be a new beginning, as I end with in the poem.
What if your grief wasn’t something time could heal, but early-stage beauty?
Come explore the mystery with us inside the Luminosity journal.
If this hit something home in you, I invite you to step inside the Luminosity Journal, where you’ll find me sharing regularly full articles, essays, poetry, prose, and photography that explore what I call the Five Portals of Aliveness through Beauty Hunting, Belonging, Community and Witnessing, Plot Twist Alchemy, Life as Living Art, and Your Body as Poetry.
Explore all the Luminosity Journal Essays. Luminosity Journal is a collection of essays, reflections, and poems exploring intuition, embodiment, relationships, creativity, and the deeper questions of being alive.
Listening To Yourself & Self Trust:
Essays about trusting intuition, emotional awareness, and finding your own voice.
- Lumalia’s memoir Blooming Upside Down: A Memoir of Healing from the Incurable
- When you question everything & how it saved my life
- Feeling Lost in Life
- How to Feel Your Feelings
- How to Control Your Emotions
- Goodbye Good Girl: Healing Your Inner Child
→ Explore all Luminosity Journal essays
