The Tolling of the Black Bell: Grief in Midlife
- Simone Grimmer
- Oct 17
- 2 min read
Midlife grief doesn’t always arrive with a death.
Sometimes it tolls quietly, like a black bell in the distance—its sound familiar but hard to name. Joyce Rupp, in her chapter Midlife Grief: The Tolling of the Black Bell, invites us to listen to that sound.
Not to fix it. Not to silence it. But to let it ring through the chambers of our becoming.
She writes of grief as a companion—not a crisis. A presence that walks beside us as we shed identities, relationships, illusions, and long-held dreams. In midlife, grief is not just about what we’ve lost. It’s about what we’re no longer willing to carry.
What Midlife Grief Reveals
Rupp’s reflections are not prescriptive. They’re poetic and piercing.
She names the grief of:
Lost youth and fading vitality
Shattered illusions of control or certainty
Relationships that no longer fit, or never truly did
The ache of unmet dreams, and the quiet surrender of new ones
The spiritual disorientation that comes when old beliefs no longer hold
This grief is not dramatic. It’s cumulative. It builds in the body, in the soul, in the quiet moments when we realize we’re no longer who we were—and not yet who we’re becoming.
Holding Grief Without Resolution
Rupp doesn’t rush us toward healing. She offers no tidy arc. Instead, she invites us to companion our grief with tenderness and truth. To let it shape us. To let it strip away what no longer serves. To let it teach us how to live with more depth, more clarity, more reverence.
She writes, “Grief is the tolling of the black bell that calls us to attention.” It’s a summons—not to despair, but to presence. To the sacred work of becoming.
An Embodied Listening Practice
If you’re in midlife and grief is tolling—whether loudly or faintly—consider this:
What is the bell asking you to release?
What illusions are ready to be shattered?
What truths are rising, even if they’re painful?
What part of you is ready to be reclaimed?
Grief in midlife is not a detour. It’s the path. And when we walk it with awareness, we begin to hear not just the tolling of the black bell—but the quiet hum of our own becoming.
Inspired by Joyce Rupp’s reflections in Dear Heart, Come Home: The Path of Midlife Spirituality —especially her chapter “Midlife Grief: The Tolling of the Black Bell.”
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