Grief, Transformed
If someone were to ask you “Do you believe that grief and loss are part of the human condition?” you would probably answer “Yes.” But when it happens—the accident or illness, the death of a loved one, the betrayal and divorce, or the loss of a job or home—loss becomes personal. Loss often descends suddenly, suspending momentum, demanding resources and attention.
We now live in chaotic times, where Covid19, economic instability, and climate events threaten each of us. If we’re paying attention, we sense that our family or community may soon be dealing with disaster. How can we hold this in a way that allows us to open our hearts and become the change we want, we need, to see in the world?
When faced with a loss, our first desire is to recover. To get over it. To recreate the balance and stability we had before. But after some losses, recovery is not possible. We’ll never “get over” the loss of a limb or a child. We’ll never again be that person we were before the betrayal or diagnosis.
And maybe, we’re not meant to be. Loss has been one of my greatest teachers. I’ve experienced betrayal and devastation during two divorces. Death has taken 12 of my closest loved ones, including my 17-year old son Logan.
After the accident that took Logan’s life, as the merciful shock/numbness wore off during that first year and the searing pain set in, I attended the Compassionate Friends support group for grieving parents. There, I learned to understand the symptoms and time-line of grief, and its power to change us—for good or ill.
At the meetings, I met parents whose grief had made them better, more compassionate people. I also met parents who had delayed or gotten stuck in their grief, who 10 or 20 years after their loss were still angry and blaming or depressed. I learned from all of them, determined to find a way through my own grief journey, a way that allows me to honor my son’s life.
On my grief journey, I prayed to receive the support necessary and my teachers appeared. With their mentoring and modeling, I managed to integrate Logan’s death and create a whole new life for myself—filled with more joy than I’d ever experienced before—in which the love I share with Logan informs all my relationships.
So I thought I understood the power of healthy grieving.
But in the last ten years of my ancient-ways training, I’ve learned that there is so much more to healthy grieving than our western paradigm allows us to comprehend. In ancient times, when any member of the tribe experienced a loss, that loss was believed to be a loss to the entire tribe. A loss which would need to be experienced and INTEGRATED by the entire community.
In 2016, I traveled to San Fransisco to participate in, and learn to facilitate, a communal grief ritual. During that training with the amazing author and teacher Francis Weller, grief facilitators from all over the world created a “sudden community” and learned to facilitate collective and individual grief in a way that allowed each of us to access and embody more:
personal power and integrity
life-force vitality
compassion for ourselves and others
peaceful wisdom and courage
I returned home feeling younger, more vital and alive.
Please join my list to learn when I’ll next be co-facilitating a profoundly powerful 2-day grief retreat. Heart-Broken Open: Grief as a Sacred Path to Reconnection and Resilience. In the retreat, we create a “sudden community” of grievers, support you to give voice to your grief—and allow it to give you its gifts. We ponder and journal, do breath work, movement, and art, to heat up grief , to allow it to be seen and heard. We finish with an ancient communal grief ritual, after which the benefit of community grieving is visible on every flushed face.
Our ancestors knew that joy and sorrow can both exist in a mature, expansive heart, especially when our grief has been transformed into sacred medicine by a community of grievers. Please consider joining us at our next retreat.