Do a hard puzzle to get through peak grief days

This puzzle saved me. Here’s what I wrote about it Maybe I’ve only just now understood what it means to look at a painting. I don’t know what the impulse was in buying this 1000 piece puzzle of Klimt’s Poppy Field. I was at Barnes and Noble buying architecture and design magazines. I started on it impulsively as well, hungrily and without much good planning. I’ve never done a puzzle by myself, maybe one about 7 years ago with my dad and noah. After I filled the frame in and got the easy parts down, I felt so overwhelmed. How impossible. I should just throw it back in the box, I have work to do… but literally every single flower, every single brushstroke is completely unique. Staring at tiny dots so minuscule they are barely perceptible. When I find one dot, one flower, one subtle wash of color that matches the piece I hold, the sense of relief that washes over me has made the days since Sunday the easiest during my grief. I’ve never taken puzzles seriously as a mindfulness practice. I always thought that they were just like giving your brain something pointless to chew on. But I’m a convert now. This puzzle is arrestingly calming. Aside from this backwards imagination process that feels like a form of empathizing with Klimt as he was standing before this field and painting, I’m practicing regulating difficult emotions. Sitting with and through the most difficult thoughts; every moment of grief or joy with Molly, every second she and I shared was completely unique. Processing it all is huge, and certainly much bigger and more complex than this painting. But, as cliche as it is, the truth is still profound. The only way to move through anything, however much we convince ourselves we are even capable of doing anything else, is just one thing at a time. Whatever that thing is, it is beautiful in its own right.