photo: graveside at my son's burial
Grief isn’t my thing, or wasn’t supposed to be.
I’d been a teacher of college before, for most of my career, but now seem to be a teacher of personal transformation, in as much that I teach what I'm learning, as my soul’s work calls me to.
Then my son died by suicide.
And I became very much a student again, of profound loss and grief.
Truth be told, my study started before he died. As life’s way of taking care of me, I’d been drawn toward Katherine Savage’s first year-long Fellowship in Grief & Death, almost two years before my son’s suicide. I ended up helping her facilitate its second year, steeping me in the material. Then I ended up phoning her the morning after we found him, to come help. This prior study of grief—along with already having a death midwife on speed dial—were factors that saved me when tragedy struck.
The aftermath of his death sent me back to the books eventually, to figure out how in the world people survive profound loss, and skillfully. If this sort of research is not your idea of a good time, I get that. But if you find yourself grief-curious (like I was before I needed it) or suddenly amid your own profound loss and now needing it (in which case my broken heart goes likewise to yours), I thought to offer a cheat sheet of some valuable things I’ve learned about grief, should any help you as they’ve helped me. Most ideas come from those well-known in grief work such as David Kessler, Megan Devine, Malidoma Patrice Somé, Sobonfu Somé, Francis Weller, Steven Jenkinson, Martin Prechtel, and foremother of western grief Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. But some come from talking with everyday folks like you and me. While the college professor part of me wants to properly attribute each concept to its author, the soul part of me knows the higher truth of this wisdom belonging to all of us already, and that we just need reminded of what we already know.
Facts
We each do grief uniquely, in our own time, in our own way.
Grief can show up not just as emotional or mental but also as physical pain.
Grief is the inside experience of loss; mourning is the outside expression of loss.
Debunking
Some say grief may be less an emotion and more a skill to be learned. Some say it’s an in-born process that our society trains us to override from childhood but that our "indigenous soul," as Prechtel reminds, knows how to return to when we're ready.
Many remind that our society no longer teaches the skills of tending to our own or others' grieving, that we’ve become “grief illiterate,” that we’re taught instead to avoid grief at all costs, that it’s disabling or weak, that we’re to insist we’re ok, but that we can learn otherwise if or when we're ready.
The famous Stages of Grief Kübler-Ross popularized in the 60s and others like Kessler added to—shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, and meaning making—aren’t meant to proceed in order but to overlap messily, some maybe skipped. They’re meant to help us identify what normal aspects of grief we’re experiencing.
“Grief is praise… it is the natural way love honors what it misses,” says Prechtel. Grieving openly can become another way to live our lives beautifully, as a constant prayer to the Divine.
"We've got to feel it to heal it," as Kessler says. Grief is a wound that time alone does not heal. And if we don't allow ourselves to experience deep grief, nor will be able to experience the pendulum swing into true joy.
"The wound is the only route to the gift. The grief and the loss are the only route to the vitality of being alive," as eloquently spoken by actor Andrew Garfield.
We don't "get over" grief. Rather, we learn how to carry it over time. Grieving can last much longer than we're led to believe, with "early grieving" lasting not just the first few days or weeks but instead sometimes the first few months or years, and later grieving lasting even a lifetime.
Tending
Sometimes we need to tuck away grief and wait for a time we're better equipped to deal with it.
It's never too late to grieve a loss: now may finally be the perfect time. We can work at grief intentionally, like returning to the gym. If I may help you finally tend a buried grief, I'd be honored..
A skillful way to tend grief can be to titrate it, like in chemistry lab, doling it out a bit at a time, even at dedicated times of the day or week, to more easily cope with it. More about grief practices here.
Skillful ways to tend grief between titrations can include healthy distractions with specific tasks and moving the body, especially in the company of others, to pull us out of isolation or overwhelm: puzzles, a hobby, a familiar job to return to when ready, loved ones and pets to tend, volunteer work, an exercise class, cooking, cleaning, decluttering, gardening or outside chores. Contemplative practices such as prayer, meditation, reading, and writing can help once we regain focus ability. Time reconnecting with nature, who knows how to hold us, is especially recommended.
Another skillful way to tend grief can be saying no—to social events we don’t feel like attending, to opinions about how we “should” be behaving, to playing along with unhealthy norms about grieving—especially as a way to regain the control that loss often takes from us. And saying yes to things that are truly nourishing and caring for ourselves during this unique time.
Avoiding tending our grief can look like many of the addictions of modern living: numbing out with technology or substances, compulsive shopping, workaholism, raging, even general addiction to doing rather than being.
Untended grief may show up ways we don't expect, emotionally as hurting ourselves or others, physically or mentally as illness or disease. Untended grief may be behind ways we're routinely screwing up our lives, or even at the root of many of western society’s problems.
Connecting
Sometimes our ways of grieving can create deep connections with one another. Some say grief is one of few universal experiences, like love, that can bring any of us together across differences.
Some say grieving can’t be resolved in solitude: that we need others to compassionately witness it and help hold it, that community is needed for—and actually the result of—grieving together.
But sometimes our ways of grieving can isolate us from each other, even within our innermost circles, causing grief upon grief.
Well-intentioned support may show up as trying to cheer us up, giving unsolicited or invalidating advice, telling us stories of their own grief instead of listening to our own, even not mentioning our grief so as not to upset us. But some of us learn the art of simply holding space and listening, without trying to fix, trusting we each find our own way in our own time with our own wisdom.
We can feel painfully alone in grief. Sometimes because of losing a beloved. Sometimes because others can’t or don’t want to relate to the type of loss we’ve experienced. Sometimes because of not being seen, heard, or understood by our old support systems in our grief. Sometimes because our society no longer knows how to support grieving. But sometimes also because of conscious or subconscious guilt and shame that we don't realize is a normal part of grief, making us want to isolate ourselves.
We may find ourselves needing to find new support systems during grief, even among fellow grievers and support groups, and distance ourselves from old support systems, since some friends and family may not know how to skillfully support us when we need it most.
Healing
Grieving can bring up complicated feelings, even mutually contradictory ones, that we can develop the capacity to feel at the same time, for the sake of our healing: for example, rage & love, heartbreak & relief, pain & pleasure.
Grieving can make us confuse pain, which is necessary, with suffering, which is optional.
Grieving can make us attach to suffering, confusing it with attachment to what we’ve lost, especially if it’s a loved one.
Grieving can make us refuse pleasure, confusing it with disloyalty to what we’ve lost, especially if it’s a loved one.
Grieving can make us attach to guilt, especially regarding the intrusive "What if..." & "If only..." thoughts about what we wish we could have done differently to prevent the loss and what we'd be willing to wager for another chance. This is the seemingly unavoidable bargaining stage of grief. This guilt gives us the illusion or superpower that we could have prevented the loss, especially if it involves a loved one, rather than surrender to our powerlessness, which can be harder to accept.
Grieving can bring up our unresolved issues from the past into the present, so that we’re experiencing not just the present grief but also all past traumas, at the same time, which is why grieving is often overwhelming and shut down by many. But grieving can also bring the opportunity of finally healing those unresolved issues. If I may help you heal unresolved issues, I'd be honored.
Our present grief is never more than we can handle: we are more resilient than we realize. But the subconscious cascade of all past unresolved issues flooding out with the present grief may feel more than we can handle. So we can find help. If I may help you tend your grief or support you through a different transition, I'd be honored.
Grieving, and its normalcy of projecting our subconscious guilt onto our partner, may threaten our marriage or partnership during a time we may most need one another. If I may help you care for your marriage, partnership, or other relationship through a challenging juncture, I'd be honored.
Grief may include more than we’re aware of, as Weller reminds: from all those we've loved and lost to all the ways we hoped for love and didn't get it, both from others and from ourselves; from traumas of our own to traumas of our ancestors still alive in us; from everything that's been done to us to everything we've done to others, personally and collectively, historically and ecologically; from the unnatural ways modern society asks us to live now to worry about what may be yet to come.
We may notice after loss that we're praised for seeming strong, happy, or unaffected, which reinforces burying our grief, perhaps so as not to activate others' untended grief. But we may find that when we have the brave vulnerability and transparency to dissemble into tears and honesty–to soften rather than "stay strong”–the grief will move through us like a cleansing gift to ourselves, we'll feel healthier, and others may thank us for the permission and showing them how.
We can let this experience make us AND break us: we can let it break our hearts open and stay that way so we may live instead from open hearts. We get to decide how we want to greet what may be the hardest experience of our lives.
What have I missed? What may you add, reader, either from research or hard won experience? I'd welcome your adding your contribution in the comments below. I'd also welcome hearing from you, and offering you the gift of some special time to learn if I may support your path and your healing.
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