Hot Grief Summer
For some reason, I’ve grieved the most during the summer. Maybe it’s nostalgia for those aimless days that stretched between school years when I was faced with enough time to ponder what had shifted and what was to come. Maybe it’s the relationships that blossomed in the spring then died before maturing, yielding to a summertime tinged with melancholy. Grief isn’t cute or convenient. It doesn’t pair well with adorable floral bikinis or Aperol spritzes. Grief, in its truest form, doesn’t spike numbers on Instagram. Grief is a friend we’ll spend time with whether we like it or not, so we may as well get to know it.
Grief isn’t reserved just for physical death, it can be for any form of loss or longing that blows through our lives and makes us forget our plans. We can grieve a friendship ending, losing a job, or the state of the whole damn world. Sometimes, we don’t even know what we’re grieving. Dr. Pauline Boss coined the term “ambiguous loss”, the grief that we feel without a sense of conclusion — this can refer to infertility, the loss of our body’s physical abilities, or losing someone to an illness such as Alzheimer’s. All these experiences deserve attention and care. I’m curious about reimagining our culture around grief, which is a natural response to all forms of loss, though ritual, creativity, and rites of passage.
One of my somatic teachers Kimberly Ann Johnson speaks to the necessity of underworld journeys. The journey to the underworld is a mythological template for how we experience pain and transformation. It is intrinsic to rites of passage. In modern society, rites of passage are few and far between, so perhaps we find ourselves searching in the dark, cobbling together the remnants what our ancestors left behind. I’ve found myself seeking in different ways to initiate myself in the ways of the underworld, sometimes consciously, and many times, not. If we recognized the framework of the underworld journey, how would this impact what we’re quick to label as depression, anxiety, or trauma?
I recently took an online workshop with Mirabai Starr and Willow Brook called Unraveling the Myths of Grief, not knowing how much I would need it. In Western culture, our grieving process has become deeply isolated, hidden, and shameful. We’ve don’t know how to hold grief, not only our own, but for each other as well. We’ve forgotten that we can grieve for our ancestors, our childhood, and for something we will miss in the future as well. My intention in taking this workshop was twofold: How can I better attend to my own grief, whether that be current, past, or future? How can I support my friends and community in all stages of their grieving process? One of my favorite parts of Mirabai’s teachings, (if you haven’t read Wild Mercy, you simply must), is that she embraces the depths of grief and loss as a sacred experience.
When my grandmother passed away, I helped my mother create an altar with photos, flowers, and some of her favorite items. This simple ritual, done by many cultures throughout history, gave us a living place to pour love into during a time of loss. We can draw upon rituals from a particular religion or culture, or simply make them up. One thing I love about grief rituals is that they slow us down and give us a space for reflection. I’ve been shocked by friend’s and family member’s brusque responses to their own grief: “Life moves on.” “They’re in a better place.” “Nothing you can do about it.” Or most recently, “Sorry for the bad vibes.” When these sentiments or platitudes are directed at you, the griever, it can be an arrow to your heart. Even responses that are scientific or psychoanalytical feel like a closure rather than an exploration. The best we can do for ourselves and others is to not look away and offer our honest presence.
We allow grief to do its work on us when we stop trying to fix the unfixable.
Many of us have forgotten how to grieve. We remember though ritual, stories, and sharing. I think one of the most difficult parts of grief (besides, you know, everything) is that there’s no clear ending to it. It’s not a straight line, it’s a spiral. It’s not a problem we can somehow find a solution for. You can’t meditate your way out of grief. There’s no right or wrong way to do it. We must allow ourselves to be messy and uncivilized. Perhaps we could numb out with less healthy methods, but as we know, these come with consequences. Me? I prefer to make a cup of tea and sit in the mess. When attended to, grief can open one up to greater states of clarity, compassion, and fierce inner knowing. Sitting with grief has taught me that I don’t need to control my inner experience. The body has a profound way of processing when left undisturbed.
What is your experience with grief and how are you holding it?
x kat