The Vitality and Wildness of Grief
The Vitality and Wildness of Grief
I’ve always been drawn to people who are really able to name what’s going on for them, who aren’t afraid to talk about the gnarly, grief laden, heavy things in life. Often they are also the ones that have an absolute joy and aliveness about them too - don’t you think? I find myself feeling grief a lot and writing about it a lot too…
I don’t mean that I want to swim in grief 24/7. But that I think grief, and feeling grief, is totally and utterly fundamental to our experience. Of course I’m not alone. And so many of us find absolute catharsis at balling, collectively at a film.
Recently though I’d been feeling stuck in my grief and wondering if it was helpful. The stuck and stagnation and whirring thoughts had been accompanied by rage. Which I’ve written about a lot, and which, I think, is probably the only approprite response in the face of genocide and the degradation of our rights, humanity and the planet…
But I could also feel it eating away at me. My rage was leaky - I could feel it coming out in my interactions with nearest and dearest. It led me to isolation and self doubt and a feeling of contraction. A hardening.
What is the point of this grief? Why do I feel it so keenly and want to also be around others that feel it too? Should I even feel grief, when it is so small, in comparison to a mother in Palestine whose children have been murdered? Why do I feel lonely, desolate, and sometimes angry, if grief is turned away from, not spoken about and hushed away? Be that about abortion, pregnancy loss, death, the climate, or Palestine?
When I read ‘The Wild Edge of Sorrow’ by Francis Wheller I felt like all of these feelings had been illuminated. He says… “at the core of our grief is our longing to belong’. Grief work is essential for maintaining and sustaining the wellbeing of our communitiies…whereby our compassion is quickened and our mutual suffering acknowledged. It is also a form of soul protest, our wholehearted response to acts of violence and oppression’. Grief is wild, it resists the demand to be silent and still.
Expressing grief, having it witnessed, seen, understood and held by others is crucial to the vitality of our lives and health of our socitieies. Societies for millenia have had rituals and ceremony around grief. It’s mad really to think that the wellness industry can be so ‘positive vibes only’.
We know that children, if not met by attuned, affectionate tender care in the face of a painful experience, are more likely to struggle with their emotions. “It is grief that moves us toward the helping hands and embrace of others. We need grief in order to heal these traumas and make sense of world turned upside down’.
My small griefs connect me to the rest of the world. It opens me up, with compassion, to others’ suffering. It keeps me alive, soft, flexible, open and fighting. Grief work is radical. Grief so often strips us down - and we don’t want to stay there forever - but it takes us back to our roots, often has us kneeling on the ground. Indeed, the word Radical, Weller explains, comes from the Latin word for ‘root’.
“To witness mindfully is to grieve for what has been lost. That is the intent and purpose of grief. In one ancient language, the word ‘memory’ derives from a word meaning mindful, in another, from a word to describe a witness, in yet another, it means, at root, to grieve…Grief both acknowledges what has been lost and ensures that we don’t forget what must be remembered’… Some grief is not meant to be resolved and set aside. Sometimes grief helps us hold what must be carried by a people so that they never have to endure such pain again”.
“It is our job to feel these losses and to mourn them”. I find this infinitely reassuring.
The softening of my anger quite miraculously coincided with the softening away from the hot summer into Autumn. A season associated with grief and loss in Traditional Chinese Medicine. A softening of the leaves towards the Earth as the trees lose their leaves.
I hope to see you soon, wherever you are in this continual dance with grief. And to provide, if I can, attuned, rooted attention - be that over a cup of tea, in passing, at Yoga or on the massage table.