Permission to Mourn
My brother’s passing has brought me once again into the terrain of mourning.
I say once again because I am not unfamiliar with death and loss. Many who know me know of the tragic loss of my sister nearly nineteen years ago. That kind of grief does not simply disappear. It changes shape. It softens in places, deepens in others, and becomes part of the fabric of who you are. And now, with my brother’s death, I find myself once again in that ancient, humbling place where loss strips life back to its essentials.
This time has not only brought sorrow. It has brought a deepening awareness of what mourning actually is, and how little space our modern world seems to make for it.
We speak often about grief, but not enough about mourning. Grief is what we feel inwardly. Mourning is how we live that grief. It is grief expressed, witnessed, ritualised, and allowed. Mourning gives form to sorrow. It creates a container for what would otherwise feel overwhelming, formless, and too much to carry alone.
And yet, we do not seem to know how to mourn anymore.
There was a time when mourning had a recognised place in life. There were rituals, garments, gatherings, prayers, periods of withdrawal, and a communal understanding that the bereaved had entered a different kind of time. They were not expected to be fine. They were not expected to resume ordinary life immediately. Their sorrow was visible, held, and given dignity.
Now, more often, mourning feels truncated. We may be given a few days, a few sympathetic words, and then quietly expected to carry on. To function. To answer messages. To return to work. To compose ourselves. To move forward.
But sorrow does not move according to the speed of the world around us.
The heart does not obey the timetable of modern life. Loss asks something slower, older, and more honest of us. It asks us to stop. To feel. To acknowledge that something irrevocable has happened.
This is why mourning matters.
Not because sorrow needs to be indulged, but because sorrow needs to move. If grief is not given expression, it does not simply vanish. It often goes underground. It can settle in the body, in the nervous system, in the psyche. It can remain as numbness, agitation, anxiety, exhaustion, sadness without language, or that strange feeling of being present in life while not quite fully here.
Mourning is not self-pity. It is not indulgence. It is not wallowing.
It is the soul’s way of catching up with reality.
When someone dies, we are not only grieving their absence. We are grieving the rupture in the world as we knew it. A voice is gone. A presence is gone. A role within the family is gone. The future we unconsciously assumed has been altered. Mourning is what allows us to stand inside that truth, rather than stepping over it too quickly.
For me, this experience has also deepened my contemplation of a profound yogic idea: abhiniveśa.
Abhiniveśa is often described as the deep clinging to life, or fear of death. Not merely the conscious thought, I am afraid to die, but a more subtle, subconscious force. A profound attachment to continuity. A resistance to ending. A primal fear that sits underneath so much of human life.
Swami Rama once said that there are really two fears: the fear of losing what we have, including life itself, and the fear of not getting what we want or realising our desires.
That feels profoundly true to me.
We fear losing what we have: our loved ones, our health, our youth, our identity, our certainties, our place in the world, our life.
And we fear not receiving what we want: the unrealised dream, the unlived future, the relationship we hoped would remain, the life we thought we still had time to build.
Beneath both fears runs that deep current of abhiniveśa. The clinging. The refusal of ending. The ancient, often subconscious fear of death. Fear and attachment are deeply intertwined, because the more tightly we cling to people, identities, desires, and the life we have built, the more profoundly we fear their loss.
Perhaps this is why death is so confronting. Because when someone dies, we are not only meeting their death. We are brought face to face with our own vulnerability, our own helplessness, our own impermanence. Death tears through the illusion that life can be controlled, secured, or guaranteed.
Mourning, then, is not only sorrow for the one who has gone. It is also our encounter with the fragility of being human.
This is why I feel mourning deserves to be restored.
Not hidden away.
Not rushed through.
Not bypassed by platitudes about being strong, staying positive, or finding meaning before the heart is ready.
Sometimes mourning simply asks us to be with what has been broken open.
To cry when the tears come.
To speak the name of the one who has died.
To remember.
To stop pretending that life has not changed us.
Losing my sister taught me something about grief’s long arc. It taught me that grief does not end so much as become woven into one’s being. It becomes part of how you love, how you see, how you understand others, and how tenderly you live with what can be lost. Now, with my brother’s passing, I feel that understanding deepening again. Not because I welcome loss, but because loss keeps teaching me what it means to be human.
It teaches humility.
It teaches impermanence.
It teaches love by revealing what love costs.
And perhaps that is why mourning matters so deeply.
Mourning is how we honour the truth that love leaves a mark.
Mourning is how we acknowledge that death changes the living.
Mourning is how we let the heart register what the mind cannot yet fully comprehend.
To give ourselves permission to mourn is not to collapse into sorrow forever. It is to allow grief to move honestly, so that it does not harden within us. It is to recognise that there are seasons in life when strength does not look like composure. Sometimes strength looks like tenderness. Sometimes it looks like stopping. Sometimes it looks like allowing the heart to break.
In these early days, one of the greatest comforts has been being with family. Sharing stories, remembering together, and simply holding one another through the first shock of loss has mattered deeply.
Now, mourning continues in quieter ways. I include my brother in my daily prayers and in my sādhana. I write about him. I light a candle. I look at photographs. I listen to songs he loved.
These are some of the ways I am mourning my brother now. Mourning is not only about sorrow. It is also about love finding new forms through which to remain.
And slowly, I will return to my work and to teaching yoga. Each experience in life deepens and enriches what we carry and what we offer. This loss, too, will be folded into the fullness, tenderness, and truth I bring to my teachings.
With heartfelt thanks, I want to acknowledge your many messages, thoughts, love, and support during this difficult time, and to thank you also for your patience.
I look forward to reconnecting, sharing, and teaching again soon.
Wishing you all a peaceful and beautiful Easter break.
From the heart,
Avril