The Necessity of Metabolizing Grief in Community

My teacher Francis Weller, in his profound book, The Wild Edge of Sorrow, describes the 5 gateways to grief.  

  1. Grief for what has been loved and lost.  Death takes our beloved human and animal companions.  Difficult circumstances rob us of health, security, jobs, even cherished aspects of our own identities.  

  2. Grief for the places within ourselves that have not known love. The hidden parts of us that were not shown love when we were children are often shrouded in shame. Grief for these banished parts of us arise to be metabolized when we no longer resist or shame any part of ourselves. 

  3. Grief for the sorrows of the world. Environmental crisis, racial and socioeconomic injustice and inequity, and systems that oppress bring incredible grief, often cumulative and overwhelming. 

  4. Grief for what we expected and did not receive. Humans are wired to expect a certain level of welcome, acceptance and connection but western culture doesn’t always allow those needs to be well met.  Many of us grow up believing we are separate from Love, which causes anxiety and sorrow.

  5. Ancestral grief. We are just beginning to understand the cumulative effect, on individuals, families and the collective over-culture, of generational trauma caused by natural disasters, war, poverty, and systems of oppression.  

Perhaps your life has led you through several of these gateways. Sadly, our western culture has an immature relationship with loss and grief.  

Western culture is perfectionistic and tends to demonize experiences that are uncomfortable.  Anger, depression, sorrow are resisted as “bad” experiences, while happiness and satisfaction are considered “good.”   But the truth is, the full continuum of human experience consists of a range of emotions from despair to joy, and all of them are instructive and can mature us.  

I find it far more useful to think of experiences as “comfortable” and “uncomfortable” rather than “good” or “bad.”  I’ve matured my relationship with the discomforts and challenges of the human experience.  When I’m in an uncomfortable situation, rather than resisting it and labeling it “bad,” I acknowledge my discomfort and make a choice to breathe through it.

Waves of uncomfortable emotion are like birth contractions: each lasts about 90 seconds, and then there’s a pause before the next one arrives.  

Rather than resist the pain, I breathe deeply for 90 seconds.  I have learned to breathe through physical, mental and emotional pain.  I have learned that anger, depression, anxiety, and sorrow can be metabolized, can be broken down into that which nourishes and matures me and allows me to serve others with more compassion and grace.

The thing is: difficult experiences like grief cannot be metabolized alone.  We are wired for connection, and we grieve best in community.  Which is why community grief work is part of my own self-care practice.

I invite you to watch these 2 short conversations I had with Dean Walker, my co-facilitator for our upcoming Grief Retreat on May 20-21.  

And I invite you to join us May 20-21 to metabolize whatever grief and uncomfortable emotions are keeping you from feeling clean, clear and current in your emotional life.  We’ll be utilizing

  • breath work

  • movement

  • journaling

  • altar items

  • and sharing (to the extent you are comfortable)

in order to expand our capacity to metabolize our grief.  I hope you’ll join us!  You can learn more HERE.  https://livingresilience.net/griefretreat/

Melody LeBaron