TCM Deep Dives is a series of ongoing explorations of Traditional Chinese Medicine—bridging physiology, emotion, and spirit. Each arc invites you into a living system, where you begin to recognize patterns of harmony and disharmony and respond with steadiness and care.
If you’re new to this series, begin with the introduction, followed by the Spleen. Today builds on that foundation.
My cat MingYi died in late May during my second year of Chinese Medicine school. She was the first being I’d brought home to stay—the first I’d settled down long enough to belong to.
It was raining the morning I found her. I stepped outside and saw a small flash of white across the street. Even from that distance, I knew.
Her body was stiff with cold rain when I took her into my arms. Her abdomen was still warm.
I wailed in the empty street, clutching her to my chest, blood soaking into my red winter coat. The sound that came out of me wasn’t something I chose. It was pulled from someplace deeper.
For weeks after, the tears were unending. I cried at home, in grocery stores, sitting on curbs when I was too overcome to keep walking. I cried until my throat hurt and my breath broke apart in my chest.
The grief was bigger than any I remembered. Bigger, even, than MingYi. It was for everything and everyone that had been lost or would be. There was no consolation.
And part of me clung to that. Part of me returned again and again to touching her still-warm belly in the cold rain. It was our final contact. So long as I held onto it, I could still hope for a different ending.
The crying lasted all summer.
But one evening in August, during a yoga class, I stayed with the sensation of my breath and body instead of replaying the story. This didn’t dissolve the grief, but something in my chest began to soften and open.
Slowly, slowly, beginning in that moment on my yoga mat and continuing as summer turned to fall, despair moved through. Acceptance arose. I began to feel hope and joy again.
Only later did I understand that this was also a story about the Lung—the organ that governs breath, grief, and our capacity to take in and let go.
