The topic for this talk is grief. And maybe the talk can be titled, liberating grief. And what motivates this talk is in big part is that the one year anniversary of many of us going into sheltering in place. And the dramatic way in which our whole world has much of the world, there's 99% of it has been turned upside down or inside out or radically changed by the pandemic. And in marking this one year anniversary, it feels important to acknowledge and make room for and bring forth the grief that has been part of this year. And that grief is not something that should be shied away from, or be embarrassed about. But it's actually a very important part of human beings and our human life. And, and it should be acknowledged, it should be understood and seen. And, and what's significant, I think, for many of us recognizes that the griefs of the last year had been wide ranging. And certainly there are, some of them are huge. I mean, many, many around the world, millions of people have died in the United States, well, over 500,000 people have died directly from the disease, the illness. And then there's been many who had been seriously sick. And some with the with the long term or second long call people, people who their symptoms that continue for months and months, and maybe it'll be four years. And so there's the grief of the loss of so many things, loss of people, loss of family members, friends, from death and sickness. And then there's the grief of just loss of connections of people we've been regularly connected to, are sheltered in place themselves. And there's not much communication and the grief of not being social in the same way we were before. There's all these small griefs that goes along, that we experience of all the things we can do that we're used to doing, and that we value doing and all the small ways in which be gotten energized and inspired about life and ready to go out and do it, or not available. And some people find there's a slow, slow, steady attrition, of energy of inspiration of motivation, partly from the slow kind of drip by dripping of little griefs, and sorrows and sadness is like a one. And then there's the things that happen in our society, the challenges, the grief, the sorrow, the sadness, about politics, and about racial injustice, and economic injustice. And, and nowadays, you know, we were aware of medical injustice and environmental injustice, and then, you know, and violence and hatred, the violence against Asian Americans is, you know, as heartbreaking, the violence against black Americans is heartbreaking. And, and the hatred that exists in our society that people go around shooting each other. So all these things together, you know, are forms of sadness and grief and, and that kind of accumulate there can accumulate if they're not acknowledged, and not known and not liberated. So there's four, three ways of being with grief. There's a company in grief, there is knowing grief, and there's liberating grief. And what I like about these words accompanying, knowing and liberating, that grammatically, they can both be a verb, and an adjective. So knowing accompanying grief means we are the companions of it, we bring ourselves to be present for it and be with it. But it also it's the grief that does the accompanying it's a grief accompany and grief can also be the grief that accompanies us. And it's a mutual relationship, you and your grief and to feel and experience that mutuality Really, really to allow the company to be full.