Sweet and Salt

I get automatic emails from RESOLVE, an infertility website, and this article seems to be good advice for people like me.

SWEET & SALT
by Barbara Eck Menning

Life from its beginning is equal parts of sweet and salt.
We spend the first nine months of our existence
nurtured on pure maternal honey while afloat in a salty
sea. Still, most of us grow to adults calling salt the
enemy and claiming sweet as the prize. It is only with
the wisdom of many years that we come to accept
both. In the words of Robert Frost ( from “To
Earthward”):
“...Now, no joy but lacks salt
That is not dashed with pain
And weariness and fault;
I crave the stain
Of tears, the aftermark
Of almost too much love,
The sweet of bitter bark
And burning clove...”
The holiday season is a patchwork of sweet and salt
remembrances. We are urged at every turn to be
thankful and to count our blessings. This may be the
only appeal you will ever see that urges you to count
your losses as well. It does not seem ungrateful to
combine the two; they do not negate each other. They
coexist. Sweet and salt—a fact of life. It seems
natural to ponder both together.
I am not referring to traditional losses. The death of a
beloved friend or relative, however tragic and
untimely, has elaborate social rituals: paying respects
to the deceased; comforting the bereaved; marking
significant anniversaries. In traditional loss, grieving is
encouraged, supported, socially-encoded as necessary
—even majestic. No, I am not talking about losses
like these.
There are losses which society does not yet define and,
therefore, does not mark with rituals. I think these are
the real salt in human lives, the unmarked losses. To
name a few: losses of health, capacities or abilities;
surgical loss of parts both physically and symbolically
important to us; losses of children conceived and
never born or never conceived at all; losses of
relationships through relocation, misunderstanding or
the ultimate rupture of divorce; losses of youth or
innocence, of old safe stages in our lives; losses of
hopes and dreams.
No ritual of comfort attends these passings. There is
no plot for them in the common graveyard. These
most intimate losses must be interred in the privacy of
the heart. It is there we make our pilgrimage to bear
witness from time to time, lay our flowers down,
wonder at the meaning, shed our salt tears and move
on.
This holiday season, as you consider all the sweetness
of blessings in your life and the lives of those you love,
I wish you would take an equal moment to consider
your losses. Accept both with grace. Give thanks for
the richness of sweet and salt which is life.