The Grey
Written by Haley Bowes, Registered Social Worker
This is a pic of Poppie and me, a week before she unexpectedly passed away this month. But this post isn’t actually about that, it’s about the grey.
I had the privilege of attending the Coastal Fashion Show in support of Pivotal Help last night, and it’s still moving through me.
Particularly the segment that depicted life as “black and white vs grey.” Delivered in the most creative way, the models walked the runaway in blacks, whites, and grey’s, while recordings of different voices, each with their own stories, played in the background. Stories of divorce, fatherless children, illness, addictions, childless mothers, infidelity, blended families, miscarriages, and abuse.
As a counsellor, I get to work in the grey with people everyday. What an absolute honour, and one I never take for granted. Not only do people trust me enough to let me into their grey, I also get to see my own grey reflecting back. I’m grateful for that.
Life is not black and white. We can’t categorize experiences, people, and situations as entirely good or bad, life is too complex for that. Decisions often involve trade-offs, and truths can coexist even when they seem contradictory.
It’s really no coincidence that we grey as we age. It’s a melting pot of the black and white lens that we spend a good half of our lives trying to look through. With age comes experience, with experience comes greater compassion, and greater compassion makes it harder and harder to be black and white about anything, so we become grey.
Anyways, this pic, was just another reminder of the grey for me. Our loss wasn’t black and white, it was a messy dark shade of grey. We cried, and sobbed, yet we still had to work and go to school. We laughed and we reminisced about Poppie, and we packed it away to give our hearts a break at times. We paid bills and experienced other hard things. We disagreed and we loved.
I want to thank Madison at Coastal and all of the incredibly talented people who gave their time and energy to delivering such a powerful piece of art, and for supporting mental and emotional health services (kinda one of my faves).