Getting Grief

In Pixie Lighthorse’s book Prayers for Honoring Grief, she writes:

“Help us preserve the love we came to count on.”*

In the myriad of sensations that feel so terribly unreachable in my own grief process, accessing and preserving the love I came to count on, has been one of the most slippery attempts I’ve made in order to have a real life.

My attempts at this access and preservation of the love I came to count on have oft been wily endeavors that mimic the quick flits of firefly-catching from my midwestern roots. After hopping around, traipsing through the dark wilds of separation, divorce after 22 years of coupling, single-parenting, house-maintaining, financial forecasting, job disillusionment—I’ve chased spotting glows of memories and old ways—reaching only to capture them in hopes of sweet delight. The result? No less than 8 dozen times ending up on my ass in the gravel. I’ve sat there, so hopeful, slowly opening my own interwoven fingers to find dark hollowed palms without a flying, buzzing, living, light.

The endurance required of me to exist through great loss is unmatched. The shattering of connection I experienced as a vast and seemingly insurmountable vacancy. The memory of hollowness in my bones cannot be understated. It was DEEP and it hissed with despair and the loneliest sensations of fear that I’ve ever known. It’s a pain cave I learned to clean up a little and make my home. It reeked of scarcity and longing. It was a constricting and desperate terrain. High winds. Very little survived there for very long. Walking these grief-lands required a woolen cape to hide in, a large stick for beating out my rage, and a high tolerance for the solitary confinement of walking a spiral into the center of my shadows. I was unprepared for the day I took shelter in a landing, and realized there were other beings looking for the same break from the wind. These travelers had their stories—they too, were worn from the spiral-walking. One of these beings, in their storytelling, reminded me on a terrible night of biting wind that long ago, I once could feel my fingers even in the wettest cold. That there was a time before this moment when I could still wiggle the tips of my fingers through the mittens and know they were there. I sat like a good student and listened: I started to remember.

I could remind myself that this life was mine, and all of its jewels remain inside of me even as the messengers have departed.

Even when my brittle bones hurt from the wettest cold of sorrow.

Even when there is no map out of the cave.

Even when all there is to eat is my own tongue.

For me to “get grief,” I am learning to see myself on the pilgrimage of walking through the pain, and at the same time allowing myself the mysterious process of accessing and preserving the love that I came to count on. To do so, to remember and watch my mind count the job, the mother, the partner, and that part of my life all go is the work of a warrior. To watch my mind remember an old life, and learn to let the love from that life sing through to me while also letting the people of it go, is no small magic. Although the structures and people who fed me in these deep wells of love are no longer here and I catch myself again and again in the wilds of despair, the love-imprint—the love punk-rock anthem of my high-squealing delight is not lost.

It is stored safely in my throat—right under my skin, and can be coaxed out in just the right company: my own.

What is meant for me will not pass me by.

What remains, and what I can train myself to access, is the love that I learned to count on in that thing that no longer exists.

As I travel the pilgrim-road of loss, I am learning to “get grief.”

So far, and I mean, I am sure there is a long road ahead of me, “getting grief” is looking like this:

-non-judgmentally partnering myself in tender, and open-hearted ways of understanding and listening to my own needs. Yesterday this looked like an internal conversation that sounded like this:

Me: “I want Ramen noodles for lunch with a salad, and I know they are not the greatest choice for my health.”

(Tender internal partnering response) “Babe, you get to eat Ramen noodles for any meal you want, when you want them, because you deserve to be nourished with something that delights you.”

Me: Fuck yeah I do.

-learning to linger with a scent that smells divine and let it move through my body like magic dust. This feels like a homecoming to a space of smell that is just me and divinely so.

-learning to settle into the habit of tucking myself in, and surrounding my bed with my beautiful Frida Kahlo coverlet and whimsical trinkets of geodes and feathers from my Georgia O'Keeffe foraging walks, I am creating a sacred bedroom-turned-altar—a mirror of what is precious to me.

-setting myself out to ride, walk, or waddle into the unknown arms of ma nature herself as a reprieve that I could have known would be no less than a divine ancient warmth and welcome. Adventures into the woods are the most healing medicine I’ve ever known and it is my privilege to access them freely.

-physically tracing the threads of wrinkles from my palms, and from my face, as memories of steep ascents, and tumbling descents, feels like map-making of a very old world that used to be mine.

-watching my wisdom arrive in a full-body YES and a full-body FUCK NO. And then acting as needed with said knowing and zero explanation needed from my cognitive functioning. The body knows and I trust her.

-saying NO to exploited labor and positional power in “professional” spaces that feed on a flawed system of people who have accepted the patriarchy as “the only way through.”

-watching the turkeys in my yard keep a circle-vigil around my trees. Nigel, the weird Tom, is often squawking around at the females and they make it their main business to ignore him. This mindful presence with the nature in my own space brings me unending delight and I side with the women who keep circling and bring Nigel along once he’s done with his outbursts.

-letting myself be loved by a man who makes it his world to know me and my insides—to know my fears and my joys, and to make space for all of them AS IS.

-parenting my sons with the real-talk I know from my greatest teachers AND the tenderness I never learned from my own mother. I’m giving myself the grace to learn now, at 43, how to be tender and my sons are the receivers of this expansion in a way I never knew was possible for me as a caregiver and trauma survivor.

-learning to ally myself to the good work of justice and equity in public spaces so that I might use my liberation to aid in the liberation of all. No exceptions.

-reading banned books forever and ever and protecting them with my whole body and heart and spirit as a somatic response to the medicine that reading has give me since I was young.

Ass-Saving Resources for “Getting Grief”

Prayers for Honoring Grief by Pixie Lighthorse

The Wild Edge of Sorrow by Francis Weller

The Great Work of Your Life and The Dharma in Difficult Times by Stephen Cope

Monica Bruzza’s Grief Support Network classes as a Mindful Grieving Facilitator

* “Honoring Grief " by Pixie Lighthorse

“Inspire us to grieve enough. Remind us not to strive for completing the process for the sake of being done. Help us with our tendency to avoid. Establish in us a belief that we get to wear the face of our pain, not a brave mask that puts others at ease. Help us to speak and honor our pain with the understanding that we do not suffer our losses alone. Ease our minds when those who cannot relate to our suffering don’t know what to say or do for us. Hold our rage and abandonment while we come to discover what is at the bottom of our deep sorrow. Empathize to us that someone, somewhere understands, despite our contrary thoughts.

It is a comfort for our hearts to be able to access the spirit of what is no longer. Unlock the passageways so we may commune with those we remember. Allow the souls who have been reclaimed to visit in our dreams and visions. Help us preserve the love we came to count on. Teach us to honor our relatives who have taken on another form with purpose and reverence. Instruct us in the art of divine communication.

Remind us that everything that dies will be reborn in some way, even if we do not possess the words to describe this process. While we feel our feelings, help us trust in your mystery. Groom us to take the long road if we need to.

Help us know that tears are cleansing and our grief sacred - that we can take all the time we need to release and cleanse our wound of loss. Point it out, each time we forget that we are equipped with the perfect tools for this process. Give us the energy and strength to weep.

We’re grateful for the visceral experience of flow when your healing rains wash over us, allowing our emotional bodies to be bathed in your waters. Carry our honest pain downstream to join the infinite tributaries of sorrow and mourning in the salty womb of the Ocean. Let us mingle our tears with others in a gesture of sharing. Show us how to honor our collective human experience.

Remind us that we do not have to fill the empty places with anything at all at this time.

Guide us gently through the anxiety of vacancy where love once held us.”