WYG Prompt: what would it take?

Prompt: What would it take to seek out the smoldering ache of loss and soften into it?

Seek out? I don't have to seek out my pain: it is ever-present. If I’ve done one thing right in this disaster that has become my life, it’s that I have not tried to hide from the pain. I let my feelings come, and I let myself feel them. But in the interests of full disclosure, I don’t know if I can really take credit for that. Sometimes it seems as though the pain of my grief has me in a chokehold from which I cannot escape.

Moreover, I don't know what this "smoldering ache" to which the prompt is referring may be. My grief is not a smoldering ache. My grief is a conflagration - a nuclear furnace - of sharp, stabbing agony.

I don’t know what it means to “soften into” the pain. I imagine it has something to do with being gentle with myself and not judging my pain. But I don’t really know how to do that. I only know how to feel the pain and express the pain. I do not know how to “soften into it” or “lovingly tend it” or whatever new age bullshit this is trying to peddle - because that is indeed what it sounds like: new age bullshit.

There’s not really anything else to add: the pain is always right there on top of me, surrounding me, crushing me… I don’t need to seek it out, I need it to burn itself out.

Based on what I’ve seen and read from other widows and widowers, even many years out, it’s very likely that will never happen, and I’ll remain forever as I am today: stuck in the nuclear furnace of my grief, unable to escape it or protect myself from it or even ignore it.