Grief is not an opponent : some reflections

This post may not be well received and it may have taken me many many years to get to this point of view (years of unconsciously fighting and resisting my own grief) but seeing grief as an enemy or an opponent that needs to be fought or feared or run from only seems to end up getting us in trouble in the long run. That said, when loss or hurt comes it does knock us sideways, it changes our view of life and ‘reality’, if it happens at a very young age it may leave an enormous void (possibly at any stage of life really!) ..

I believe that they way we come to view grief, death and loss is often determined by a culture. Ernest Becker wrote a Purlitzer Prize winning book in 1974 called The Denial of Death, in it he explored the battle we have with death forces. As many of us know who have been through loss, often we do not find a lot of assistance, understanding or empathy from others and many of us may actively be blocked in our process by others.

Edward Whitmont, a Jungian analyst gave the name heroic egoic to this particular time of consciousness we are currently coming out of it.. In this culture which was very influenced by the massive loss of the Black Plague

The Black Death (1348-5O), during which as much as half the population of Europe died, was not under Neptune in Pisces, you will be glad to read. Neptune was in Aquarius at the time, another sign associated with universality. The disease spread through fleas jumping from one person to the next, not through drinking water. However, Saturn, the Grim Reaper, was in Pisces. In fact, Saturn was sweeping from Neptune in Aquarius to Pluto and Uranus in Aries during those plague years, connecting disease to death.

Becker (and other such as Marion Woodman and Edward Edinger) have argued that over time as the heroic ego took control and put the feminine in chains taking the great mother as a generative force of the life death rebirth cycle out of the equation, death began to be seen as the enemy as was nature since it followed natural cycles that involve periods of necessary decay, breakdown and passing away as precursors to the next stage. So it is that often grief over death or loss is seen as a nuisance, aberration or mistake…

On a personal level to grieve may make us seem messy, out of control and chaotic when others would rather we be more ‘held together’ to struggle through may not be understood or supported. But really this time of grief and letting go as well as working through all the complex entangled and deep emotions that came about in the aftermath may be a time we need most support, understanding and help to move through so that grief and sadness can move too and become generative for the next stage of resurrection. When this process is blocked what happens : entrapment, stagnation, illness, endless rumination and fixation and a lot of fear.

Really grief,loss, change and endings are just all part of a natural cycle of life and when you come to observe the patterns of nature you see what a relatively short period in the life of a plant the blossoming of flowers takes or lasts for.. At the moment I have a plant in a pot outside I planted possibly just under a year ago.. I have been keeping the water up to it which has been a challenge here over the hot, dry summer months but I began to notice last week that tiny buds were forming and have been some time in the forming, on Monday I noticed a tinge of raspberry appearing on one of the buds.. My point is that like plants we all bloom and fade out our blooming in life cycles and when we live we will just encounter loss or change or periods of being fallow as a natural part of things.

Today on Radio National here in Australia there was a program on assisted dying, it was a program where listeners were invited to phone in with their experiences of suffering a terminal illness or old age and wishing to be able to end their lives.. one of the most poignant stories came from a man who lost his life partner a few years ago, the man who died was a scientist and had had a near death experience. In the chat segment where his living partner shared he spoke of the love between them and the observation of the stages of his beloved’s passing, the things said, the moments of love shared. You could hear the tears in his voice and feel the deep emotion of it all, and I am sure the man relished being able to share his experience.. But what struck me most was that the man had fully opened his heart to the experience and allowed it in, he was not fighting or resisting his grief and loss of his Beloved soul mate, he was through some act of grace able to be touch with the process of shedding, loss and decay in a totally non judgmental way. Listening to this made me think how much calmer grieving could be if we just did not fight it as much.. if we could some how find ways to honor it as a passage and surrender our hearts to the experience fully to the process.

Viewing grief as an enemy means we fight too much and in that resistance make it harder on ourselves and often on others around us.. That said we are human and we struggle with letting go and loss and the ability to have our full range of emotions is part of the human experience. But perhaps there is another way one that allows the sadness to flow and one that also allows us to surrender that cloak of grief when the time is right so that we do not end up becoming trapped in a perpetual state of inertia and mourning.

My needs?

I try to understand

I try to be there

I held your hand so often when you screamed

But when I was crying

All you did was tell me

“To get over it!”

Was I truly blind?

To your unkindness

Did I matter so little to you

Was all you ever needed a mirror?

I let it go now

But by God it hurt my heart

It set me so far apart from what I really wanted

Truly needed

And sometimes I just seem to be crying to the silence

Why is it that my needs matter so little?

And then the answer comes

From a still quiet inner voice

Just let them matter

To yourself.

I must bear this

I must bear this

I know I must

I know I can

Even if there is a God

And her plan is to let you drop

So very far

There must surely be a force of love working

Even as it reveals its absence

Inside the emptiness of your eyes

And there is a longing too

I just do not really know

What to do with it

So I must just bear witness

For as long as I can

And then not prevent myself

From standing

What help will it give me

If I remain here paralysed with you?

And yet my heart and mind is restless

Even judging that

Who knows what will happen now?

My love I do not have a clue

Surrender must surely be the only possible way of things

As your body and soul

Lie frozen stiff in the eternal snow

Of self abnegation

And so I remain here

Loyal to the silence

Lifting my heart in prayer

For I dare not even say

Which way the tide will flow

Perhaps only the Universe

Truly knows

Opening through embracing our burdens and emptiness.

When the burdens of the world weight heavily, I must remind myself there is a stillpoint inside where everything can be okay if I allow it to be and affect only the change that is needed.. At times it is so hard to even know what that can be, maybe it is a change of heart or thinking that may help, or a letting go and letting be. Maybe it is an allowing of others to have their own way and opinions even if I don’t agree, and maybe its a trying to see deeper behind the cries that speak of an emptiness, soul longing or longing for love in ourselves and others and holding them tenderly.

Some people have a void in them that may never be filled.. I have read that if we can allow ourselves the void space in time we find something within the emptiness to help us heal… I have experienced this.. I have had some dreadfully low points in my life when I did not think I could go on, there was my father’s cancer diagnosis and my own which was prefigured by a nightmare in which a hand reached deep into my belly and twisted it around…that in a way was how it felt as a child in my family when I was given enemas for a stomach ache that spoke of longing to be with someone who cared.

I was very emotional today and I went out to get lunch and when I came home it was lovely for Jasper to run to greet me and to give him my full attention…I just sat for a while on the floor with my hands on his belly and felt his beautiful puppiness.. even though he is soon 8 years old Jasper still is like a puppy so much of the time in his high energy, curiosity and boundless enthusiasm…I am so grateful for him at times as he reminds me how open and full of love and enthusiasm I was as a child before I found the world to be so inhospitable, cold and strange and witnessed the heartbreak of traumas in my own life and family… Now as an adult that I have found some kind of way to live in the world through embracing my inner world and being truer to me that feeling is still there sometimes but it doesn’t cause me as much pain as long as I know there are others to connect with in love..

I ordered Henri Nouwen’s book on the Beloved and it arrived yesterday and in that he speaks of the need we have to be ‘blessed’, to be made to feel special and needed and beloved by God and others. he speaks of a prayer meeting in which a group of disabled people asked for such a blessing and how he cuddled them. If you don’t know Henri Nouwen suffered a deep depression for many years and wrote extensively about feeling homeless in the world, in his book The Inner Voice Of Love he touches on the heart of all of us who ever felt we didn’t belong in this world that seemingly makes us feel so broken.. A lot of what he writes shows we feel more broken trying to gain affirmation from outside, that said I feel as kids we need this kind of mirroring and are left with holes or psychic tears in its absence.. some of us turn to nature and angels and otherworldly sources and feel held there.

When despair arises its good to have an inner place to go with it.. its good to be able to hold ourselves in the midst of it and reach deep to find that place inside that is okay, that cannot be touched by temporal things. Mystics speak of this place and its hard to describe but many of us know it.. in this place we can bless everything that happens, seeing it all as part of the path and knowing that even when life seems like it will break us somehow we manage to find the way to go on..

Not all of us manage this and it might be naive to think that we do, but I imagine even those who decide to check out find their place of healing too on the other side, for love is unconditional in truth no matter what we have lived, is only humans that believe in retribution rather than soul learning through trial and error. And when the world becomes too painful without the necessary love, understanding, support or self forgiveness some find it too painful to go on. Others of us move through that place over years of inner work and processing, emerging in time to find and embrace new life again. There then comes a time when we realise that somewhere deep inside of us, despite everything outside being at times so far out of control, things really are and always will be okay.

The peace I am seeking

I am learning that the peace I am seeking has to come from within. So many idols seem to be being smashed with me right now. I am beginning to see how I looked to my relationships for love and unconditional acceptance and how often that failed. Now I am feeling more and more that I must rely on myself and prayer. I am not even really feeling like socialising any more. I see the world going through so much darkness. Where I find light and tenderness is basically with my dog and nature and poetry and some writing or music. I am thinking more and more of Jesus lately and what he endured and how he was misrepresented and put to death. It seems that the true gnostic teaching that we have to find the way to God within got lost in much of Christianity.

Drawing close to peace and serenity for me now is all I wish for in my life. I see that the things of this world do not bring true lasting happiness, only peace and love in our hearts and minds and spirits and souls does that. It is something that cannot be bought and is conditional upon a spiritual experience of every day praying for love to overcome fear and petty selfish small mindedness. I am wanting to simplify my life more and more and I am sure 2020 will be the year to do it. I am also going to draw close to the silence more. Its where I find my recharge. Plugging into my own peace and happiness is my responsibility. No one else can give it to me.

not letting go

The river ran

With such a flow

All that was not love

Passed on through

As we fell to our knees

Weeping

These tears are to my soul

What make of it

Something understandable and fully known

And so when you

Look at me that way

The world splits entirely in two

There was a cleaving

With our leaving

And it had to be

For my soul to go free

I see it all now

What I could not before

When, instead

I held on so desperately

To what made no sense

And that is why now

Truly I understand

It is not letting go

That stops the river’s flow

And leads on to the death

Of healing and tenderness

A vial containing our tears : reflections on grief and grieving

There is a beautiful psalm or bible passage that I cannot remember the reference to which says that God counts and collects each one of our tears.  In a culture which so often denigrates grief it is important for us to know that our sorrow is not unimportant or in vain.  The implication is so often that we need to ‘be over it’, not carry it forward or just make sure we don’t make others too uncomfortable around us, because it can be hard for those who have not dealt with or are familiar to a grieving process to understand how essential the shedding of tears is.

I watched a movie a few weeks ago about a painful loss called The Shack and in it Sam Worthington plays an adult child of an alcoholic and abusive Dad who ends up losing his youngest daughter to a violent crime.   The movie is about his quest to come to terms with the anger, pain, sadness and resentment he holds towards a God who he feels ‘has forsaken him’ in allowing such a terrible thing to happen.  He ends up being transported to a cottage where he lives for a time with God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit and in one scene the Asian singer/actress who plays the later part holds up a vial that is full of his tears.   

This image speaks to me of ‘holding’ and containment which are two things we can really struggle with if we are not surrounded by those who assist us and support us to grieve.   I know in my own life that after my father died and my partner abandoned me I went overseas with much unresolved grief.  I acted it out over the next 8 years of my active addiction and my recovery was a journey to find my way back to it in order to understand, feel and release it.  (I am not going to say to ‘heal’ it because in a sense I think its a central mistake of our culture that grief is an illness that need to be cured or fixed somehow.)  Its a sad indictment of our modern society that in past years there has been a move to have grief included as a mental illness in the bible of psychiatry The DSM.   

Grief that is unresolved can indeed make us mentally and emotionally unwell.  To my mind it can be the huge unspoken ‘monster’ that lives at the basis of addictions and anger and the rage of acting out of terrorism and other means of reclaiming a sense of power and control within situations where we are actually overpowered.  Grief itself is feared by many because it is like a tidal wave in a way.  We can try to run from it or defend against it, but in my experience it always then finds some kind of way to knock us over sideways.  Far better not to see it as a monster but as a rejected energy that wants us to turn towards, surrender and acknowledge it.  

Being able to accept that grief is there and that we are powerless to a degree is the first step.  We can use different forms of containment.  For me dancing and writing and walking help to move the grief through my body, the freeze state of some traumas and traumatic injuries can be all about frozen grief that brings a critical event to us which externalises its intense charge in some form and then leaves us knocked over, frozen paralysed or powerless. 

And if we look to the ancestral epigenetic component we can see how this stored charge of grief and anxiety can be passed on from generation to generation.  When I start to get into compulsive cleaning I am aware of how much grief and a sense of powerlessness fuelled my Mum’s own manic cleaning binges.  And I got badly injured myself when she was in the midst of some of them.   I have injured myself so many times or broken things either gardening or cleaning that these days I am much more mindful in the midst of such activities, stopping and breathing and centring myself as much as I can.

I do believe that like most emotions grief is a kind of visitor to us, as in the poem by Rumi.  If we welcome the visitation of grief and take some steps to give it a place, then just possibly we will not be as compulsively ‘run’ over by it (or over run by it) and in time we as we integrate it, it will deepen and enrich us in the process.  

And what is most important is to know that grief has a purpose and its presence in our lives or heart is a sign that something had great value to and was cherished deeply by us or longed for.  It has come time to understand that value or experience or let that something or someone go and so there will be a shedding if we are to move forward.  Such losses and griefs will always be with us and remain forever a vital part of our soul on our ongoing journey through life.

It’s okay to relax

 

It is okay

If I just remember to breathe

And also that I am not in charge of it all

The world will go on

Happily turning

Whether I stress or not

Doing cartwheels in my mind

And maybe its for the best

If I just remember to be kind

To life and hope

And who knows in any case

Just what the plan of God is

Or how things will eventually unfold

Maybe over time

I am learning just a little

To let go

To open to trust

And to understand

That when it comes to the family dis ease

Those essential truths

I didn’t cause it

Cannot really control

Nor cure it either

Though sometimes I forget

I am not God

Just one of the tiny cogs in a wheel that goes on turning

With or without me

Surely such a stance

Seems to return everything

To just the right size and place

It resolves me of unearned guilt

And helps me realise

Its okay just to relax

And nurture my heart

For isn’t it only through surrender

That anything of true value is really ever achieved?

Surrender to the tide

If I can help you to know

Its okay to feel sadness

Please let me

I know it should not be so

That we need permission to grieve

And I have heard it said

That grief feels so much out of our control

Like a tidal wave that threatens to drown us

That is only natural that we would try to run

Or lock all the doors and windows shut with bolts of iron

Trying to pretend that all is fine

But really what we most need

Is to surrender

And allow ourselves to be tumbled about in the breakers

That pull us down to the bottom of a deep blue sea

But that said

It is not an easy thing to do

When everything in our life seems to go askew

And we are left standing all alone

Holding just a tattered remnant

Of what once was such a precious

Garment

Even now I struggle to find the words

To explain what it might mean to feel it

Allowing ourselves to let go of the barricades

So all I will say is this

Please remember

Grief really is nothing less than the measure

Of your longing and love for

The most precious and valuable of things

Free to feel sorrow

I am a big fan of embracing and accepting my emotions these days.  I consider them tides now that rise and fall and are like waves that would like us to ride them into what every shore they are breaking.  And even though it can feel exhausting to be hollowed our or broken open by grief like I was yesterday, I am so grateful now for my body’s ability to surrender to that tide rather than resist it’s natural flow.

I was thinking today of how braced my body became over years.  One of the consequences of not opening up to our feelings is that we hold our breath. We may have been taught to do this by a parent or other social conditioning, we may have been threatened if we were angry or felt sad with a punishment and so we had to freeze, or suck it up, or we may have tried to fight or fly away and been stopped, like when my Mum pulled my arm out of my socket when I was only three as I was trying to get away from her.

Yesterday at the crematorium as they played the song You’ll Never Walk Alone I really felt my abandonment wound triggered.   Gerry was far from alone in his cancer journey, Carmel listed in her eulogy all the things done for them.   I thought of my own breast cancer surgery where I had little in the way of support, a mere skeleton, but that is far from the only time I walked alone in my own life, especially after my father’s death in 1985.  This is not meant to be a post about self pity, only an attempt to say I had it really tough for so many years and validating that and feeling it is painful.  It is admitting to a truth.  I was not part of a close knit loving family like Carmel and Jerry and it’s been very hard.

Anyway surrendering to my feelings felt good yesterday even if quite uncomfortable at times.  It is not easy for many of us if we were never validated in the past.  But I truly do believe the fastest way to freedom is to feel our feelings and make sense of them, emotions are nothing less than energy in motion and energy wants to move out and through, having to bury it all inside has terrible consequences for us.  Embracing and feeling our grief is not automatic and complicated grief that is buried can be left undealt with for years with the result losses pile upon losses.  This is what I experienced as my sobriety unfolded with each funeral of a male friend or father of a friend, which would tap into all the pain over the loss of my Dad and his hurtful treatment of me over years as well as his stumbling attempts at kindness.  All these feelings were was buried for so many years in my addiction and probably my fear around males generated difficult reactions too the threatened intimacy between us.  These feelings can be a a potent cocktail when associated losses are being triggered in us from the unconscious.

When we grieve I believe we have to deal with feelings of powerlessness.  When someone we love dies or something is taken it shows we are not in control.  If we fight against the process we can end up blocked in my experience, far better to let ourselves surrender to what needs to move through us, reshape and change us.