Folding Corners 01

Kitchen - Banana Yoshimoto

‘If a person hasn’t ever experienced true despair, she grows old never knowing how to evaluate where she is in life; never understanding what joy really is. I’m grateful for it”

Eriko whilst watering the plants

Grief, especially the loss of a primary caregiver at a young age, is something immense but invisible that you carry forever. I sometimes picture grief as a hot coal: heavy and uncomfortable, but emitting a glow that makes the life around it feel more ferociously lovely than it might have otherwise. Grief can be a gift in that sense. It’s something I believe, but also something I want to tell myself over and over, because the alternative has always been to see it as a flaw or a hindrance. The something that sets me back from peers whose lives seem blissfully untarnished by deep despair.

Grief sharpens our senses to the world and, later, her sister gratitude arrives with arms open.