Grief is ubiquitous. Like REM sings, “Everybody hurts — sometime.” I lost the most precious person in my life, in all my lifetimes: my son, only child, and best friend. I’ve been navigating the grief process for nine and a half years at the writing of this blurb. I write about the improvisational nature of grief; it’s a day-by-day thing.
Some days we soar and some days we sink. I write about the ways we manage our grief from the sunbeams to dark nights of the soul. I’ve managed to create purpose from my pain. I went back to college and earned three degrees. I help raise our grandson. We have cats who entertain us for hours at a time. I spend time reading, writing, and visiting with people I love. Life is short; my son was only 32 when he died from alcoholism and heroin addiction.
Life is very short. In the interim between the time of our birth and the time of departure from this earthly trip, we must grab hold of all the amazing things life has to offer.
I miss my son more than there are words to express, but life goes on; it must. There’s still so much beauty, beauty we shared with our loved ones. Beauty they left behind for us to remember them. Their beauty shines through our lives…let’s do them proudly.
“Raise a child in the way she should go, and when she is old, she will not depart from it.” Proverbs 22:6
Another lie I learned from fundamentalist and evangelical doctrine – screamed from the pulpit – finger of judgment pointing at me…and only me. To be fair, it is not Jesus, Buddha, Allah, Krishna, et al., I’m angry with; it is the people who give lip service pointing to their sinless and forgiven Jesus-emulating lives while they hate and judge.
I know from experience. I was raised with a very religious mother and a religious father because he feared hell … I’d never seen anything like it … but I see it in droves now. I even saw it in myself for decades.
I think of the Hebrew and Christian Bibles (as well as many other sacred texts) as among the most amazing cultural sagas we have as another cosmology to add to our growing number — as we are able to have more contact through the internet. I love the above verse, not because I believe it’s true, because I don’t believe it – not in the way it’s been taught to me for decades, and the way it’s still being taught from the pulpit … whose maladaptive behavior does not model for others prosocial/loving/compassionate behavior like the Christ, Buddha, Allah, Krishna, et al.
So again, it’s not “Christianity” or even God with whom I am angry; I’m angry with the leaders of our churches, like the Southern Baptist Convention president who just said women should not preach. I’m angry at the interpretation by those who have bought the doctrine of punishment and hell, those who peddle an angry and wrathful god – because for them the Hebrew and Christian Bibles are the “actual” word of God — not putting the text in its cultural context.
Here’s the thing, one’s spiritual location, i.e., the place one goes for comfort and guidance, is a personal and unique experience. I used to “witness” when I was fundamentalist. I never felt right shoving my beliefs down the throats of people who were already amazing and wonderful – and certainly didn’t need me, a forgiven, terrified-of-hell “Christian” woman telling them what is right for their lives. How does one judge and tell someone she is going to go to hell if she doesn’t conform to one’s way of experiencing the God of the universe? I did it — once upon a time.
See, even as I write this, I’m very aware that others believe differently, and I, decades after deconstruction, also believe differently – different from a woman who was successfully indoctrinated from childhood despite a rocky road religiously to the day I was on my road to Damascus.
I know the Hebrew and Christian Bibles well. I was required to take classes in both Books during seminary. Why did I go to seminary after deconstruction? I did so because I had lost my son despite how tightly I had clung to that old, rugged cross. I was a mother sopping with grief. I was looking for relief. Pain was all I felt…pain and, sometimes, absolute despair. My son was dead and I went on a journey looking for Something that would comfort me with satisfying answers to all my whys.
I did find answers in seminary; it was a wild ride. I am a theist. I am also agnostic –. There are days when I doubt my way to atheism. Proverbs 22:6 is very clear that raising a child with a Theos will assure that she will return – even after she strays, runs, or abandons It.
My husband is atheist, although he would describe his understanding of a god as unknowable. We have riveting spiritual conversations. I was fortunate to attend an interfaith and open and affirming seminary where empathy and compassion were modeled by the staff, the student body and the faculty. I admit, I was still paring away harmful theology from my worldview when I began seminary. Four years later, my God is different from the one with whom I grew up…the one who sent people to hell, children, the elderly, all who were not “saved” at the time of their death.
1 John 4:7 should be infused in every cell of those who identify as Christians. And with love, there is no room for hatred and judgment. I’m guilty of a past, and so I am humble when I say I’m angry with Christians who take the predatory and patriarchal bait and force others to defend themselves against things in which they do not believe.
Allow me my own interpretation of Proverbs 22:6, at the risk of sounding heretical to my Christian “brethren” – because men rule in both Hebrew and Christian Bibles. Before we became savvy about posttraumatic syndrome disorder (PTSD), we called it shell shock, battle fatigue, and even soldier’s heart. In my sixty-three years (64 tomorrow), I’ve seen our military troops return home broken and, some, with mental illnesses that presented alongside diagnoses of PTSD.
The word “resilience” is a buzz word for posttraumatic growth (PTG). Posttraumatic growth occurs when a person can navigate an emotionally and physically traumatic event and return from it a person who thrives in her life. How many of us know, or maybe even are, a person who lands on her feet every time – stronger than the trauma that could have sent us over the edge.
Perhaps, because interpretation is always a “perhaps” – Proverbs 22:6 is early psychology about indoctrination, enculturation, socialization, and the formation of a self-sufficient spiritual self. I believe the God of the universe presents Godself to each who choose to believe in a Theos, in the way we most need to find the Sacred. I love the Twelve Step programs, those that offer the choice of Higher Powers.
Do we each have a god-shaped space? I don’t know about everyone else, but I do. My mother was raised Southern Baptist. She raised us in a Church of God; my father was a lapsed Catholic because divorced people were shunned at the time. We made first holy communion and then Mom got us and made sure we knew about Jesus and hell. If the Catholic church didn’t terrify me, the Southern Baptist and Church of God’s god – had me hating myself for my inability to be perfect before a wrathful god.
Tragic. I spent decades afraid. I had people to groom me, to indoctrinate me, to witness to me – all the way to the Sinner’s Prayer, a prayer that had no cleansing power. I was a sinner.
No, I’m not angry with Christ, Allah, Buddha, Krishna, et al. Maybe I’m angry with myself because I fell prey to the damaging theology of Christian nationalists – but see, I was only a child – and when I was a child, I spake as a child …
I’m no longer a child.
One thing I can say, and I can and will speak only for myself, is that because of a space my parents filled with god-talk, I do have a space in my worldview where something sacred lies; it’s holy and it’s wholly accessible – and it needs no explanation; it is my spiritual location, the place from which I heal and grow.
We each have archetypes that resonate with us, from a savior to Superman. My first and so, dominant spiritual archetype, Teacher, is Jesus, the Christ, because I spent decades in the churches where Christ was offered as our one true sacrifice – to get in god’s good graces. – so as not to go to hell.
The archetype of Jesus has had the most staying power with me. I love the logic, the empathy, the penchant for calling people on their shit, and the love he showed to those who were struggling, suffering, broken. I have a model in Jesus, and his mother speaks to me as a mother who felt her child kick inside her, and as a mother who watched her son’s descent and death, I know she gets me.
I’m no Jesus, Buddha, Allah, or Krishna, et al., but I do want to emulate the traits from great teachers, the traits of compassion, empathy, and all-consuming love. Some people choose to search for a God who enlists only love as an approach to one another.
So, no, I’m not angry with religion; it’s a non-entity. I’m not angry with Christianity; I’m disappointed in the lack of love some pastors and teachers of holy scriptures interpret the word of the ancient Jews and the Christian Jews and now, gentiles. God is love.
I can’t define the ineffable to anyone else’s satisfaction. The God of my understanding is neither male nor female; God is not a murderer in this life, or in the afterlife – should there be one. The jury’s still out. I sat bereft in our living room a few weeks after my son died. My younger brother was with me and had not dealt with a grieving mother, so he had no idea how to handle my question. He is a fundamentalist Christian. I asked him, “What happened to Rikki’s spirit? What happened to the energy that animated my son? Where did it go?” He went white and then he went silent.
See, the only answers to those questions are ones I had to wrestle against grief for … pain or progress? I grew through my pain because, for me, I had a Higher Power guiding me into my own darkness so I could plumb its depth, acclimating while I searched for jewels in the grief process. My “Christian” friends worry about my “relationship” with “their” Savior; I’m not worried though. There was a time when my relationship with the Christian god was fear-based. So much self-loathing has emerged from damaging theologies that it’s understandable how many neuroses come from them.
I will always have a constantly morphing God-shaped space in my worldview and God keeps filling it with things that keep me returning to a Higher Power. Perhaps we do stray from our early indoctrination, but then, as life proceeds, so too does our need to return to something that comforted us like a mother’s warm breast, nourishing us, and helping us to grow into our greatest self.
I have so many people I love who are bound by their religion, even when it makes no sense, or it requires them to hate and judge others. I love them still. I remember when I was bound by a false doctrine, and how seminary helped set me free.
Am I a Christian? Am I a Buddhist? A Muslim? A Hindu? Ad infinitum?
I don’t want to identify with my spiritual location. My religion is fluid, ever-changing, every day with a newness of being, life-saving self-awareness, all the way to entrance into the collective consciousness, where there is only love. I know this may sound like woo woo to some of you. My husband doesn’t get it sometimes either, how a person whose entire life has been directed by the scientific method can be a theist.
Well, I am. I can’t explain It. I can’t define It. I just know I feel it deep in my healing heart. So for my Christian “brethren” – I’m fine. I’ve never been happier or more whole.
“I saw the Light” – and it had my name on it; and it is uniquely mine.
I’m generally a calm person. I pray. I meditate. I take great psych meds. I’m even keeled, even in crises. I haven’t been unhinged for so long, I can’t remember the last occasion I was graced with a manic meltdown.
With this being said, I’m very close to a primal scream.
The importance of education in my life has been my North Star for decades. I wasn’t raised in a pro-female climate. Women were second-class citizens, and the men in my family suffered not a woman to have a brain. Imagine my delight when a handful of teachers and professors recognized my hunger for knowledge and my ability to express myself in words. No one had ever told me I could learn – and so, for a very long time, I could not.
Jump ahead four decades and I have an associate degree, a bachelor’s degree, and a master’s degree. My associate degree was conferred upon me while I was working on my master’s degree; it was that important to me. Perhaps my trajectory was not “conventional”, but it was my trajectory, necessary and meaningful.
I’m proud of my academic accomplishments – I had very little confidence for most of my life, and yet – I pushed through. I pushed through poverty. I pushed through single motherhood. I pushed through systemic misogyny and racism. I pushed through cancer. I pushed through grief. I pushed through both hell and high water. I pushed through.
When I first began my academic journey, I was a psychologically broken, and intellectually underdeveloped and terrified woman with a baby and no clue about what to do, professionally, or personally. I was twenty-four. I’m now a postgraduate and so damn proud of myself. My father and brothers were wrong about me. I have a brain, and a well-stocked one at that.
All this is to say, education is right after family in my hierarchy of emotional needs.
The United States Department of Education under the Trump Administration has put some professions on the chopping block. These are professions the Department has deemed non-professional degrees and therefore will no longer receive funding through the Department. One of those professions is mine, although I straddle the fence in a few places. Because this administration has a hard on for Christian nationalism, my master’s is in religious studies, can I be a consideration in the Department’s “necessary” theology category? Will I have to bow down to a false god, one in whom I could never believe, and chant a creed which I vehemently eschew?
Nursing
Physician assistants
Physical therapists
Audiologists
Architects
Accountants
Educators
Social workers
These are the programs the Department of Education has deemed as not worthy of funding those deserving of scholarships and/or federal loans. I’m watching talented people with mad energy to make their dreams come true acquiesce to the powers that be. Sometimes there really isn’t anything you can do.
I’m upset because I know in this political climate, with this administration, and with an anti-intellectual movement in my country, many of our dreams may lay deferred until this administration is no longer leading, pathetically, my country. Perhaps our next leader will truly be fearless about promoting prosocial behavior, including the importance of an educated class, recruiting from all walks of life. Education should be accessible to every person who hungers for it.
I now have a decision to make. Will I change majors because under this Department of Education and this administration — religion, hence, theology is still deemed as necessary and therefore fundable? Would that be selling out my comrades who don’t fall under any of the categories not being axed? I’m in a unique position here. Where will I be of greatest service – as a religious/spiritual practitioner or as a clinician? If the former, that is my heart’s desire, if the latter, being a clinician is the last thing I see myself doing, and if I allow myself to fall prey to a second-best, I would be doing myself and anyone with whom I would work a terrible disservice.
As I prepare to defer my dream, not abandon, not relinquish, and unequivocally not surrender, just defer, I gather all the juju I can muster and soldier on with dreams which are in my control. Sadly, some people spend their entire working lives in jobs they hate. I nearly did. But even with jobs that were led by buffoons which trickled down to the staff I learned and I learned and I learned. Some managers have never had a class in management in their entire lives. I’m a little bitter right now. I’ll move past it.
Some people never get to do what they always dreamed of doing; I have. I am blessed with working with people who inspire me and teach me important lessons all the time. I was fortunate enough to be with my husband during the last half of his teaching career. What a champion. He was fortunate to have a profession he loved all throughout his 40-year career. I worked with a therapist who is 82 and still practicing. I want to do what I love until I drop.
I had the most difficult time getting through algebra; I thought it would be what would keep me from getting an associate degree. I persevered and it was easily as difficult as poverty, single motherhood, cancer, bonehead mistakes, ad nauseam.
I’m rarin’ to go toward the Light, where I’ll continue to dream and work toward making them come true. I’ve never believed in fairies (except a few of my friends). I never believed anyone would come rescue me, mostly because … no one ever did.
No one came for me, until I faced the heroine within and rescued myself from all the places where I was not welcome, loved, or celebrated … and I took responsibility for the rest of my life. I’ll never throw in the towel, but under this administration, I’ll be a bit later to the party.
Hang in there nurses, PAs, PTs, audiologists, architects, accountants, educators (for Pete’s sake), and social workers. I have a background in spiritual development, but one that is interfaith, open and affirming, and ecumenical. Will the Department of Education nix me because I don’t adhere to its Christian nationalism?
Too early to tell. My husband is a Negative Nelly and sometimes a Debbie Downer, or perhaps he is a realist when he waves his fist in the air and bemoans the downfall of democracy. Whittling away at the educational infrastructure creates an unstable society…and boy, do we see it now.
I’ll be okay. The news has been crushing, but I’m an optimist…and I’ll never stop striving toward becoming a light that leads to wholeness through training, compassion, and the desire to serve humanity.
I had to walk away; you see.
The memories of shame and
Survivor’s guilt no longer serve me.
I made it out
alive, so alive,
moreso than you have.
I’d be lying if I said I don’t
worry about you and hope
that you’re thriving
away from me.
You really can’t go back home,
and sometimes there really is
no good reason to return
to the battleground on which
you were born.
I get it, but as your
Good Book says, “Get behind me, Satan.”
Nothing good will become of us.
Some wounds never heal.
I wish you well. I hope you’re healing.
But yeah…it was absolutely the
best thing for me to walk away …
with wings.
The truism “absence makes the heart grow fonder” works well for those in grief. Over twenty years ago, my father died, and during that time, I’ve developed a greater understanding of who and why he was. I’ve even developed some grace, maybe not forgiveness, but definitely … understanding.
In the ten years since my beautiful son died, I no longer ruminate on all the days he was sick from addiction or the hell he put us through. I force images of him laughing when a painful memory arises. Am I postponing my grief process? No, I am not. I’m making the choice not to allow pain to override my ability to live a wonderful and meaningful life.
I miss my son – of course I do, but … life waits for no one, and we owe ourselves the best life we can give to ourselves…random chance and consequences notwithstanding. There are some things over which we have no control – and there are some we do.
Grief is expressed differently by everyone. Some people collapse under the weight of the constant pain, and some people walk between that space and the space where a person can launch with greater purpose and posttraumatic growth.
Some of us find ourselves in that cycle of repetition: collapse, middle ground, launching pad for several revolutions; I did.
My mother has been gone for nearly three years. We had a tempestuous relationship; I loved her fiercely. I’ve learned, in three years’ time, to give her grace. I did this while she was living so I have no regrets with my mother, and I try to remember the things about her that touched my life positively; it’s easier to love her that way.
My biological sister was gone exactly one year ago on May 18th. I have not felt the need to grieve. We were not close, and there were several estrangements throughout our adult lives. I do have some grace for her though.
I don’t idealize the dead … when they were alive, they may have been monsters. I’ve seen the phenomenon many times; a person raises the dead up on a pedestal as if their crimes against them had never occurred. Nope. I grieve the loss of what might have been a lovely father/daughter relationship, even as I acknowledge the abuse, and all the social reasons why abuse happens.
Grief requires that we not be afraid to flip that coin … to see what arises for us in our grief process – an exercise in chance. Triggers are unpredictable. Grief is never about a single event. I learned that when I was first grieving, the days and months following my son’s death, I had no control over things that came up during the day. I’d weep until I couldn’t breathe. A shift in the wind would have me in the fetal position … until I learned to repurpose my pain and transform it into personal growth, all the way to being able to help someone else.
I thought I’d grieve my hometown – but since my family is no longer there, there is no reason for me to go back. Maybe you can’t go back home – again. Maybe. I love our new hometown. Who knew the desert would be so healing? I wish everyone had the opportunity to leave places where no amount of idealization can make its opposite true.
Each time since my son died, the embarkment on the grief journey has been less intense. I mean, I had been angry with my father for thirty-nine years when he finally passed away from cirrhosis, so grief didn’t come ‘til nearly two decades later. My son…I will grieve his loss for the rest of my days, but even then…life has moved forward and I with it.
My mom’s death jolted me; she was my longest relationship. She gave me life. I did weep for my sweet momma … but not long and certainly not with the intensity like when I lost my son. There’s a sense of fairness when an older person dies, when a young person dies, very little makes sense – until it does. All crises will reach critical mass and then a decline in intensity and finally…balance (homeostasis).
My mother loved to awaken me at an ungodly hour to chat about every little ol’ thing, or about the latest heinous crime she just read about. We’d chat and laugh for hours; sometimes there were serious talks. I cried in my husband’s arms once and then — I returned to my life, deep in an internship.
I’m often asked, “How long should grief last?” It’s an innocent question. I don’t have the answer, other than to say that grief is a perpetual experience in varying degrees of intensity; it undulates in our consciousness. I know that I juggle grief, grit, and grace every single day. There is a sound I make when something hits me like a bag of rocks; it’s barely audible; but I hear it. Things can pierce your soul – even when you’ve had the most amazing day.
I think if grief causes us to be self-destructive, i.e., addiction, high-risk behavior, bitterness, or isolation, then we need to seek professional/pastoral assistance. But grief is painful and it’s unrealistic to expect that there is a timeframe to which one must adhere and finish it up with a nice box and pretty bow atop it. Life is messy, and it doesn’t suddenly organize itself into more digestible chunks when crises occur. Since life is messy, it stands to reason, grief is messy.
We heal in proportion to how hard we work to face our demons, i.e., old stuff from decades ago, from our childhoods, from the most recent heartbreak, from the loss of a child, spouse, parent, etc. Grief is much deeper than your most current loss – even though your current loss is crushing you, you’ll dig much more deeply as your grief process gets underway.
I’m not suggesting that there is a point a leading to point b, because the process can be hellish repetitively and in no particular order until we learn to tame the beast. I have grieved the loss of my son for ten and a half years. I will always have a void in my life where he should be. I’m still alive though … with “miles to go before I sleep.”
My memories of him and of us together were also beautiful and I choose to replace a tough memory with the good ones. Today is a summer day (early in the desert) –. My son hated hot weather, but he would have been amazed at how cold our swamp cooler gets the house. He’d have it on and cocoon himself on the couch and fall asleep under the roof of his momma’s home…but he’s not here, and all I have are memories, so…
Dripping colors swirl in the fire blending and stretching in the skilled and scarred hands of the glassblower — until she learns how to coordinate breath with white hot flickering flames. I can’t imagine the learning curve for a newbie. I’m fascinated by fire – not like a pyro fascination, but I see the beauty and the danger, the life and the death, the ability to feed ourselves, keep ourselves warm, and to create with it.
Balancing breath with fire…
So much requires balancing acts – and we often don’t even realize that we are balancing, sometimes on the thinnest tightrope; it is just what we do. We are heroic, perhaps not daily, but just being alive, navigating the world in a prosocial way is damn heroic in my book. My husband says I set a low bar for humanity. For the most part – every person is, in fact, doing the best she can with the resources she has had modeled for her and which she later adopts as her own.
Sometimes those resources are adaptive, and a person can use them in the world in ways that help her navigate it prosocially. When we behave maladaptively, life may have moments of comic relief, but mostly, living with an alcoholic, let’s say, someone active in her addiction – even with brief moments of relief, chaos is always only a brain secretion away.
I’ve lived in small towns my entire life, and if I found myself in a bigger city, I found small communities and settled in to make friends and a life for me and for my son. Small towns are amazing places to grow up. There’s a song I love by a musician named Michael Tomlinson. In his song, “All is Clear”, he sings goodbye to his hometown. He remembers the landscape, the sunsets, the rain where — he began.
If we’re very fortunate, we get to leave our hometown – even if it’s just for a year or two. Small towns can be stifling. I think small towns are amazing places to retire. I haven’t been to my hometown for three years, since my mom died. There’s no reason for me to be there. I raised my son there. I worked there. I had shitty neighbors there. Sometimes you don’t ~want~ to go home.
Home is where the heart is, and I mean this too; it’s not just a cliché.
I have a dear friend who I can sit and talk with for hours, on the phone, in person, you name it. We have discussed our very similar backgrounds, and I said to her that I have worked my entire life to build a life in which I am safe, loved, respected, and celebrated – and a peaceful home. I know “success” is relative, and in America, the more wealth one amasses, the more power and prestige one has. It’s the law of the land … ever since the genocide of millions of native Americans, swindled and murdered out of their birthright.
Sickening.
And, per usual, I digress. I currently live in a small town, a town which I absolutely adore; it’s smaller than the town where I grew up and because it’s so small the prevalence of addiction and homelessness is very visible. I cruised Los Angeles during my internship, and my director drove us around through Hollywood and other places I’d not been to, even as a California native. I was shocked and saddened by the number of homeless people who lined the streets – in front of dressed up picture windows as their background. My director drives in it every day and so no longer sees the downtrodden. I was horrified and disheartened.
My little hometown is much like the one in which I currently live. There are old timers who built the town, their children, my generation, my son’s generation, my grandson’s generation, and on and on. Then newbies move in and want to change everything without consideration for the natives – again. I hear about the Los Angelinos moving into the desert with their faux suede and ten-thousand dollar cowboy boots in a one million dollar concept house trashing up the landscape. Gentrification occurs very quickly when the newbies don’t really care about the places they move to or the natives they upset.
I was at the DMV, always a lesson in human behavior, and there was a gentleman, and I use this term only as a nicety, who was wearing a threadbare shirt, unbuttoned, with a hairy beer gut and sagging shorts shouting a conversation on his cellphone for God and all the world to hear. Sadly, it was not an interesting conversation. He promised to pick up a six-pack on the way home from the DMV (I’m not so sure he hadn’t stopped at the liquor store on the way to the DMV).
My first reaction to him was disgust, but then I remembered a mustard yellow threadbare shirt my father wore to town, beer belly hanging out and having few inhibitions, if any, when he spoke in public. He could settle down for eight hours a day … but once his uniform came off, so did any shred of decency or decorum. My father was a hardworking man. Yes, he was an asshole, but only because he’d been broken before he broke me. He gave me a strong work ethic, and he modeled for me many behaviors and a worldview which I’ve had to excise from my schema.
Glass can be reused; it can be remelted and reshaped into beautiful things. Our lives can be reshaped – as often as we need them to be. I love kaleidoscopes … and like my mom’s holy butterflies, I’m in awe of the infinitely many beautiful configurations there are.
Eight-billion and counting. We are variegated … colors of the rainbow and full of life…even the slug at the DMV, and even my father, a slug in his own right. The last time I was “home,” the drunks in threadbare shirts, who were there when I was a kid, have mostly passed on, but their kids, my generation, are aging, quickly, and some of the apples didn’t fall far from alcoholic trees, and I’ve lost a few classmates to addiction, to cancer, to high risk behavior.
I’m of the mind that a person can change at any point in her life; I did. I was a late bloomer and I resisted the total reconstruction of my worldview, and of the ability to care for and love others, the least among us, the slugs and the successes, in whatever way success appeals to you.
There was an England Dan and John Ford Coley song in the late 70s called, “Love is the Answer.” I thought it was cheesy back in the day, but as I’ve traveled my life trajectory, the one I create and the one created for me by random chance, I’ve learned that love is truly the answer. If little children can be loved from the get go, they will have the ability to love others and imagine the world under the common virtue and enculturated value of love.
I’m not so Pollyanna that I expect the mobilization of love throughout my country in my lifetime. We’re too big of a mess right now. I hope for the swirling glass to be multicolored and blended in such a way that each individual color is expressed boldly.
I don’t know where we get the idea we are not one species of different colors, cultures, and creeds. We are so wonderfully and beautifully made, and we are creative in how we survive our lives. If we’re very lucky, we learn to thrive in our lives, pacing ourselves against the heat of the fire, with careful breaths and exhalations.
Sometimes leaving the people, places, and things that have consistently hurt us is our first step toward freedom. One cannot love, truly love, without the need for utilitarianist motivation, unless one is free from maladaptive coping skills. I’m certainly not saying it’s easy to walk away from hurtful things, or maybe it is, once you’re sick of the constant fallout from pain.
I have several glass blown pieces, and I marvel at the skill and courage it takes to create a piece of great beauty, and I compare it to the ways we fashion our own lives, in the heat of purification, in the heat of re-creation, and in the heat of an all-encompassing love that transforms us into people who can transcend the impurities of this social reality. Love is better than competition, in my humble opinion.
Love is better than competition.
Love is cooperation, collaboration, and connection. I don’t know about you, but connection is so important that when we don’t have it with others, we realize there is something missing in our lives.
Find a metaphor that heals you in its ability to perfectly describe your life circumstances. Words are so important. Naming your dilemma is personal growth. Take time away from the heat of the fire and find a nice cool place to replenish yourself, and then, get out there and share your ability to see deeply into another’s soul because you have the love to offer, through the breath and through the fire.
“Light of the world, shine on me,
Love is the answer.
Shine on us all, set us free
Love is the answer.”
England Dan and John Ford Coley, “Love is the Answer”.
Old school grammar and composition dictate the rules for writing an essay; there is a structure; there is, in every culture, a common syntax. Granted, some syntaxes are more sophisticated than just a formulaic subject and a verb. In America, in 2025, twenty-one percent of our population was unable to read, and so, they are not able to write effectively. I love language. I know only American English, and I do speak conversational Spanish, but I’m not fluent – by any stretch of the imagination.
In basic comp, we started with a problem/issue and the rest of the essay was our opportunity to resolve or to show that at the time of your research the problem was unsolvable; I found both positions elegant and I lusted after precision. When I first created GRIEF TO GRATITUDE, I incorporated the word joy in its name. My objective is to show how you can go from the visceral pain from losing a significant loved one to soaring in your life, finding purpose, and transforming your grief into glory, into a victory story.
I appreciate constructive criticism, and I take it to heart, about my writing, typos, ad nauseam, because I do get a lot of mean-spirited criticism too. No harm, no foul. Mean people do truly suck, but as a trauma-informed spiritual mentor, I get the whys and what fors for people’s antisocial behavior. I was raised to be caustic, and with the help of our amazing mental health providers, I’ve learned to tame the beast. But I get why people need to strike out. I’m sad for them; life is ever so much more beautiful when you can let go of the ruptures in your life, people who consistently cause you pain, behaviors that hurt you that are in your control … and the list is truly as infinite as our species may prove to be.
I no longer relish being nasty — exponentially. In the nineties I worked in the English Department of a fine community college. I was fortunate to work with the finest professors who took me, a thirty-year old, a very developmentally young thirty-year old receptionist under their wings, educators from basic comp to Shakespeare and so many amazing writing classes in between it was always difficult for me to choose which classes I wanted as electives. I’m one of those students whose transcripts are heavy on the humanities.
I’ve always been the kind of writer who pushed herself and when it came to choosing English teachers, I chose those who would kick my ass and force me to shoot for the stars linguistically. Sandy Burns fit the bill. I’ve always loved writing, since I first picked up a pencil and was able to express myself. I’ve been practicing telling my story until it became universal. Perhaps that is why I work diligently to hone my language skills – toward a voice, because as is the case in some Latino-American families, I was not heard as a child, and women today, are silenced, silent, or just plain dismissed in my culture and in many cultures around the globe.
I want to impress upon you grievers and readers, that joy does come after a time of mourning, or at least it can. I want to start with the problem, and society asks us to resolve chronic grief and find the x that will bring us into balance. I begin with the problem because this is the manner in which I learned to lay out my arguments/positions. Perhaps my critics are correct, and I should begin with joy as my lure to get people to jump for it. Maybe. I hope I’m not all doom and gloom. I’m a believer in hope, transformation, and ultimately, transcendence.
I’ll be frank, when I first started my grief process, I was a right mess, and it took me four years to find any relief. I ached every single day; I couldn’t see beyond my grief, and I was barely functioning. When I started showering every day – again – I was, in essence, beginning to heal. The slightest activity had me exhausted and in the fetal position. I want to share the common experiences we have, tears, screams, numbness, bloody stumps where your loved one functioned as an appendage – creating forever phantom pains – until the problem is resolved.
What is your problem today? Is it/are they resolvable?
Grief is natural; it’s a process that makes sense. Sadness comes with loss and we are sad, sometimes for our lifetime, but not always chronically. When I first began this trip, around the sun ten times now since my son died, I reached out for professional help because I ached deep in my soul. I attended a GRASP meeting three weeks after my son died. Big mistake. I was too raw, and so was everyone else. Oh, my G_d, it was a room full of pain. I left and never went back. I found some Facebook groups with members with whom I share common experience(s). I read about the exact kind of pain I was in because others had lost a child to addiction too.
I started After the Storm nine months after Rikki transitioned. I was finding no relief with therapists; my pain was too great for most of them. I asked a psych friend of mine about grief education at her university and she informed me that her program required one semester of grief education, and it was an elective class. I did research; it helped me to begin healing. I found that peer-to-peer experiences catapulted healing in people who participated in groups with common experiences. I read everything I could get my hands on, and I started to make meaning and rediscover purpose in my life; I reframed the pain and turned it into purpose.
That’s good news.
Did it take too long to begin to heal? I started the Facebook group shortly after Rikki died because I needed to vent. I needed to share my utter despair with someone, anyone who understood – because I had a problem that needed solving: how to find relief from my profound grief. Have I resolved my grief? No, but I’ve managed to reach a point, finally, where joy is not only accessible in my repertoire, but it is easily accessible too.
So, my journey started in despair, just as do most of my blog posts. I know people die every day, and so, grief is a huge part of our collective consciousness. I was lost before I found my way to people who have grieved before me, all warriors, but some are left forever battle fatigued and unable to move forward from their despair, while others, heal in great leaps and bounds and find purpose in their pain. Some even begin to reach out to others with similar losses to help them begin to heal too.
We start wherever we do, beginning, middle, resolution, and sometimes we even retrace our steps and return to the unresolved issues that keep returning because, despite our current pain, we have not handled our previous shit. I had fifty-five years of tragedy and triumph to sort through before I could begin to sort through the profound grief I was consumed by. My son has been gone ten years and four months.
His death was the end and the beginning of so many things, there is not enough room, even in cyber space, to tell the tale; and, each day brings with it both problems and resolutions, and as we take the time to restructure our emotional syntax, we give voice to our grief – we begin to heal – and, we begin to help others to find their voices too…from the darkness to the light, and sometimes, from the light back into the darkness, temporarily, best-case scenario, or for the lifespan if we can’t find a way to express our pain. Where does yours begin? At the time of your greatest loss, or even farther back than you’ve thought about for decades?
I don’t know if there is a solution to every problem, and if there is, maybe sometimes the solution is: not yet. My husband likes to argue with our grandson about current and established science that explains phenomena in the natural world. My grandson and I are optimists. When we don’t have an answer for something we say, not yet.
Is there a solution for grief? Is it something that must be resolved? I don’t know, even after ten years of grieving, if my pain will ever be gone, and while it no longer fuels everything I say, think, and do, it rears its attention-seeking head from time to time, and sometimes, I relent and surrender to it and allow the tears. I do. Other times I push through the pain and force myself to be solid when a pang hits me.
Is grief a problem? I would say, grief is a problem only if it begins to stunt your personal development, or if it leaves you raw for a very long time. You lose a loved one, an appendage, a job, a relationship, your business, etc., and there will be a grieving phase which will be acute until you begin to define the problem, i.e., what specifically am I grieving, a thought, a person, a worldview? How does this knowledge help with my healing process? Do I start at the beginning, the middle or what I hope and anticipate will be the end of the dilemma?
I say, find a loose piece of thread in your life tapestry; start where you see the greatest need. I had a childhood of domestic violence, a failed marriage at a very young age, hell, a marriage at a very young age, single motherhood, poverty, cancer, a son killing himself with addiction, and finally, the loss of the most beautiful person in the world, my son. I had a lot of places where I could begin. I started in the pit of my most current loss, and as the convulsive sobs began to subside, I moved toward the past sins of the father and of my own. Quite a journey.
Where is the thread the loosest? What is it most apparent in your dysfunctional grief process, if indeed it is dysfunctional. If it’s hurting you and preventing you from moving forward, it’s a red flag that something needs to change.
As the clichés go, “You gotta start somewhere” or “Just start.”
I start wherever I happen to be on any given day. Today I start with the beginning of how I build my blog posts, those that begin with the problem and end with joy, and those that begin with joy and lead to relapse into hard core grief…where I may choose to stay to sort through it, and sit with my grief until I have dissected it into its many parts and looked at each one … until I find what I need there.
Where are you today on your grief path? Are you soaring or sinking today? Today … I’m in a good space. Today I’m grateful for the joy … alternated with pain; to expect to escape it is arrogant and unrealistic. For everything there is a season … comedy and tragedy … life and death.
Are you stuck because your iceberg runs deeper than your current experience of loss? Start somewhere – even if no one understands why you’re starting there. This is your journey –. We didn’t ask for it, but here we are, navigating the ride of a lifetime, smooth and choppy waters alike.
I saw an angel today; it flitted by and I watched it land on a gorgeous tree stump I rescued from the woodchipper, and which I plan to do something artistic with it on that elusive someday.
I thought of you when the white moth flew by and I remembered how you romanticized those pesky plant predators and about how I fell for it – even now.
I get a tug on my heart strings, and nostalgia is plucked one memory at a time; it’s just a moth, one a gardener might use an insecticide on. Life is short for these angel moths, death by fowl – or pesticide. We each have an end date, yes?
Butterflies, moths, — the entire Papilionoidea family, and its incomprehensible ability through natural selection to metamorphose into truly new creatures. I see this phenomenon as one of the few miracles in life, but only because I’m not an entomologist.
Of course, I’m talking myself out of the belief that white, pesky moths are filled with the spirits of our dearly departed. I find joy and wonder in scientific explanations based on evidenced-based research; I really do. I get charged up about rational explanations to “mysterious” activity. Maybe it’s a god, the holy spirit, source, or sheer human determination, but something drives us toward immortality, real or imagined.
There was a giant yellow and black Monarch that flitted by your picture window after he died. You said hello to it every time it flew by. I humored you, wanting desperately to believe, but what were the chances it was the same butterfly each time I came to visit? And what were the chances, the butterfly carried a message from him on its wings?
Chrysalides in their various stages are in plain sight on elephant ears and cyclamens, even as fully formed butterflies fly above your head or land on your shoulder. Am I in love with butterflies because my mother gave me a romantic perspective of them? How do I make meaning of a silly memory? Why is it significant that I need an extra layer of knowledge to maintain the wide-eyed wonder I have always had over butterflies. They, as are we all, fearfully and wonderfully made.
If you’ve ever had the gift of being pregnant, it is a remarkable experience. My son used to kick every day at four p.m. I could actually watch my very large stomach shift and see his elbow or foot through the taut skin of my pregnant belly. Another true miracle is the development of a human being from sperm and egg to a fully formed person. I read that among the animals in the food chain, humans remain helpless for the longest period of time in comparison to other animals. We live in the desert, and we have squirrels and rabbits that come into our yard frequently. I had to know what their patterns are, and so I did some research and found out that rabbits are on their own as soon as they can open their eyes. Damn, that’s harsh.
Humans are helpless for years (and for some, for decades).
Butterflies sit in the sun allowing their wings to dry and to strengthen – and then? They fly off to live for a very short time, three months, and some, for only weeks. And still, Solomon himself was not dressed so regally.
They are beautiful in my culture and in others. They are beautiful to me because of my mother; they are beautiful to me because of entomological research and classification. My mother’s knowledge was beautiful folk knowledge; so was my father’s. To every [wo]man is given a measure of faith; faith is defined in Greek as fidelity and a firm reliance on a god, rather than a reliance on one’s intellect.
How do we make meaning from an inkling to a fully developed thought; do ideas fly like butterflies? In a sense, yes, they do, or … they don’t. How did we get from butterfly to resurrection to reincarnation to evolution to transformation and finally to transcendence? If I lived in a cave with all my books (a very large cave) but had no human contact, after years of socialization in mainstream American society, I’d still have everything at my disposal to make meaning. Are there butterflies in the darkness? Hmmm.
I still feel the love of my mother who tried to give us small gifts amidst the violence and chaos whenever a butterfly flew by, especially those parasitic white moths; trust me, the contrast is not lost on me. Memories can disrupt or enchant. We make meaning of memories in the same way we make meaning of anything in life. We take what we can from all the places from where we found pieces of knowledge through life experiences, ours or someone else’s, and we pare away what will not work toward a satisfying life, one in which we may thrive for the time we are gifted with.
My son died when he was only thirty-two years old. Children die every day while some live into their hundreds … some despite the neglect they have exacted on their bodies and minds. There is no meaning to be made here; the facts remain, domestic violence in all its manifestations affect us through the lifespan, i.e., mental and physical illnesses/disorders.
I saw a man who looked, but may have been much younger, about eighty staggering across a busy highway in the small desert town where we live. He was so high on something he actually zigzagged. I don’t know what he was seeing blurrily across the street, but he was determined to get there, even if he engaged in high-risk behavior to get there.
Meaning? Larval and high … butterfly material? I’m afraid, and I’m no clinician, that the guy was lost. He made it to the other side of the street; I made sure, but I don’t know how much longer he got to try to find a purpose for his life before it ends from the consequences of his high-risk behavior. Have I made peace with the experience? Do I forgive him for living longer than my son got to? If meaning is to be made from the experience, I will find a way to make it beneficial to myself and to others who need a butterfly to flit by offering hope – of a spirit world that is very present in the actual world, an afterlife, a remarkable experience of great entomological significance, or just something pretty that catches your eye on a crazy busy day.
I learned to love symbols early, i.e., the moth that flew by my picture window that evoked this piece. I thank my mother for the pretty things I’m able to appreciate in this great, big, magnificent universe. I thank my father for the dark and dismal interludes with brutal reality; believe me, there is a balance I work hard to maintain.
I’m in awe of the people I have the gift of and opportunity to work with; I’m watching their metamorphoses and I’m inspired to burst out of the cocoon I sometimes hide in, when the world gets to be too overwhelming. How can I be of service when I’m hiding because coming out into the blinding light of reality feels too frightening? Be brave, Joan of Arc. Pick up your sword and slay those bastard dragons that keep you in your cave of isolation.
“I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.”
I carry my mom’s love, from larva on through to her physical release – every time I see a butterfly I’m reminded of her … on her good days. Sometimes I see the pesky, white moth – and other days I see the regal Monarch. Sometimes I see the addict stumbling through life, and other times I see the potential for a living reincarnation – a metamorphosis of remarkability, a symbol of hope, or one of despair.
There are painted ladies that fly across the highway during spring. I clean them off my car windows because they appear to be suicidal. I wonder why I don’t get the feels when I’m cleaning them off my windshield; they’re a plenty, maybe that’s why. They are so pretty, but disposable because of their massive annual migration across the desert highway, as overpopulous as carnival goldfish.
And so, then I move on to things we throw away, including people. I have come to the conclusion that we are each butterflies under construction; some have pushed their way out of isolation and confinement and flit against clear blue skies – even amidst the storms of life. We are fearfully and wonderfully made, and but for poor socialization shitty parenting, we would all live to our fullest potential.
This is not to say that the darker your origins, the less chance there is that you will transcend them. I’ve seen giant wood moths at campgrounds that freak me the hell out, but they grow among the fungus in the wood. We all grow in different environments.
I have found meaning for the cocoon and it is a safe space to build self-love to critical mass, fissioning away until like the big bang, there is an explosion of such incredible love a new creature, a new creation, a new perception of others, the holy I-Thou relationship with the world and all that’s in it are born.
I’m sure the moth that made me think of Mom and all these stream of consciousness thoughts graced my life for only once in this physical realm; I’m certain; if facts hold true, it will be dead in a week, if it’s not eaten by a predator first. I’m grateful for the romanticism my mom held for the mysteries that made her life livable – despite her reality.
My life is good. I’m in a space where I love to flit – no longer across busy highways. I spent too many decades hidden in a cocoon of safety, but I outgrew it, and so … here I am.
The sky is blue and the predators are few in my life – now. My wings are not overladen with the pollen of the past. I fly lightly landing where I find beauty. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. One of my professors wrote a book called FINDING GOD IN THE GRAFITTI, and isn’t that the truth? The Divine can be found in the anticipation of a pudgy worm becoming a butterfly whose life is just a wisp of time – or in the pictographs of native Americans on cave walls … ad infinitum.
We create meaning from words and experiences. The butterfly was a tired old metaphor for me after sixty-three years of using it in my writing. Even I got tired of it. But today, this white moth was a Monarch … and an angel … and from its wings was a message from my mother; she whispered, “I love you.” I think; therefore, it is.
I’m “listening to my jam” as our grandson used to tell me when he was very small and when he didn’t want to go to bed. I’m a morning person. I get up at 4 a.m. and play music and dance my way through the alone time I’m so lucky to have. My husband says that the success of a relationship requires two people in a three-bedroom house. We each have our home offices to which we can escape into our own space – this is a good thing. I hit up Mexico once in a blue moon to have some crazy time with my younger brother – in my otherwise very calm life I live with my husband. He is more introverted than I am; I need a little bit of social – too much, exhausting, just enough, not exhausting.
I’ve been looking at certificate programs I can do before the Ph.D. program begins. I’m looking at one on grief and trauma, no longer for myself, but to be a trauma-informed spiritual practitioner. I thought, during my introspective morning, how much I’ve grown, transformed, and how much grief, pain, and emotional paralysis I’ve managed to transcend, so much so that I want to learn on behalf of others. I want to offer people who are hurting hope that they won’t be in acute pain forever. I want others who are grieving significant losses to know they are responsible for their own healing – from birth to our current age and social location.
I read a book by Steven Pinker, OUR BETTER ANGELS, fascinating. In his book he shared his findings of the research he had done on the progress of our species; and he did this statistically.
Statistically, says Pinker, we no longer kill entire races of people; well, some of us don’t; I’m speaking globally, of course; so, the homicide rate is down. Illnesses that were once pandemic are stunted, and in some cases, eradicated. We, as a species, learn, adapt, survive, and pare away behavior that doesn’t engender social and spiritual fitness, i.e., trading in chronic pain for a bit of joy in between random chance’s tragedies and periods of smooth sailing.
I’m grateful for therapy and spiritual advisors whose lives intersected with mine for a season, a reason, and some for their lifetime. I’m fortunate for all the Teachers in my life, teachers from whom I learn and inculcate life lessons of great magnitude.
One of my teachers was my first therapist, nearly one-hundred (feels like it) years ago, I would credit her with saving my very fragile self until I could stand on my own; it took decades before I was able to shed all the poor coping mechanisms I’d learned in my family of origin.
So, this is not a diatribe lamenting my fucked up childhood; I’ve spoken about it until I’m blue in the face; and, I’m moving forward with the awesome and wonder-filled life I am creating, along with the G_d of my understanding, and all the people who bless my life, from clients to friends, and most especially to family members who are willing to navigate common experiences with honesty, courage, and empathy.
I love the term “family of choice”; we don’t get to choose our families, but we do get to choose the people we will allow to be in our lives, people who have the capacity for prosocial behavior, and hence, the ability to love wholesomely and navigate conflicts with sound minds and self-awareness. We, truly, deserve nothing less than emotionally sound people in our lives, and if your life is filled with pain, suffering, anxiety, unresolved trauma, and people who hurt you, ask yourself why these people are allowed in your life.
In the nearly ten years since I started my grief blogs, following the tragedy of losing my son to addiction, I’ve run the gamut from visceral pain to almost manic joy and many days of a mixed bag – through the muck and through the mire of grief, and not just from losing my son, although losing him is the most profound grief I’ve ever felt. I grieve other things too, relationships, social locations, life events, my uterus, my youth, ad infinitum.
I found so many answers for myself in seminary, a very liberal and progressive seminary, that I’ve been able to pare away so much from a life-limiting theology and worldview. There is a question, certainly every seminarian, and we must ask ourselves as we navigate the inconsistencies in life: If there is a G_d, or G_d is truly omnipotent then why is there suffering in the world?
This is a question I found the answer to in seminary, and because of the stellar academic experience I had in seminary. My Ph.D. advisor, with whom I interviewed asked me a series of questions, some I answered well; others, I had no idea what I was doing. I even told the director of the program that I had four pages of notes I had drawn up after looking up possible questions for an interview for a doctoral program. I was ready, of course; but when it was my turn to speak, my notes did not help me, despite the great amount of time I spent organizing and outlining my talking points. To be quite frank, often my ramblings yield fruit, and this is one of the things I adore about language; we each want to be heard and when someone hears me, truly hears me and we connect, what a jolt to mediocrity!
Right after my son died, and I mean “right” after he died, I had a “friend” tell me to get out there and help someone else and my grief would begin to subside. Right information, wrong time. To be fair, she has not lost a child, fortunately for her, and so her insensitivity I now chalk up to ignorance. Ten years and four months later, no harm, no foul. I’ve since walked away from the willfully ignorant; they’re out there too, people who refuse to educate themselves toward the pinnacle achievement, in my opinion, of humankind: self-awareness. There is nothing greater than to truly understand yourself; take what you need and leave the rest.
We are creatures of habit and so we can sometimes operate as automatons, rigid, mindless, and prone to boredom. I don’t know who said it, but I read that it is a sign of unintelligence to allow ourselves to become bored. I agree and disagree; it’s a blanket generalization assuming we all have the same educational opportunities; we don’t. My mother went to the eleventh grade, but through her years of trauma, drama, and all the building blocks that created her person, she was among the wisest broken women I’ve ever met. I learned a lot from her – even when she drove me crazy.
Education, whether formally or informally, is a gift to yourself and self-awareness is a gift to our world.
I knew a woman who, during my fundie days, I called Sister Lily. She went only to the sixth grade, but this woman knew her Bible, both exegetically and through memorization. She was doing exegesis before it was a “thing” for women. She had folk wisdom that even the most elegant formula cannot produce. She taught me to see what’s between A and B and about the many shades of gray and the fog I must navigate to be close to her G_d.
I’m so grateful for quiet time in the a.m. My husband is retired and so he can sleep in every single day should he choose. I’ve always been an early riser. I need the silence before the onslaught of routine tasks, people, people, people, and learning as much as I can in every place I can. I guess, to be honest, if I didn’t have something in which to pour myself, my grief would still be as intense as the day my son died, and the months and years following. As my former friend tried to convince me, feeding the unhoused, fostering a pet, releasing the pain; easier said than done. I’m no longer acutely mourning; don’t get me wrong, grief is for a lifetime. The intensity has lessened and I’ve become more emotionally healthy; it’s been a bit of a hike.
I’m no longer acutely mourning my childhood; and I’m no longer nursing the wounds from my past, from my childhood to losing Rikki. I have found relative peace and depending on your “definition” of success, we are successful, in my opinion, when we experience both joy and sadness and can navigate the fluctuating storms and calmness in a spirit of gratitude and without falling prey to the Job-ian plight of victimhood. I know I’ve spoken many times about the book WHEN BAD THINGS TO GOOD PEOPLE by the Rabbi Harold Kushner. Kushner was the first person who made sense to me as I navigated early grief, a fucking mess. Pardon my expletive; there are just times when an expletive is the only word strong enough to express an intense experience or emotion. Kushner said, basically, that when bad shit happens, it is the luck of the draw, often with no rhyme, no reason. There is/are a specific answer(s) to our existential questions, but they’re individual to our unique carbon imprint. We are fearfully and wonderfully made.
But I digress (again). Grief, I’m sorry, is forever, and in between pangs of pain when we remember we’re missing our loved ones, there are also wonders we’ve yet to experience. If you’re newly grieving, or you’re having a difficult time letting go of experiences that no longer need to control your behavior, read Kushner’s book. Read everything you can get your hands on about self-awareness and see a therapist to get to the core of the grief that holds you back, from zero months and on through the lifespan.
I’m sixty-three years old and I’m just getting started. I want you to know that you can heal as a process and thrive as a result. If you’re holding on to unresolved trauma, see someone who can help you to unwind it, and send it off and packing. I have healed, mostly, from my childhood, with vestiges of occasional poor self esteem and an occasional “why me?” But I have all the answers about life this side of heaven. They may not be your answers, but they satisfy my soul. When an existential crisis arises, ride it out, and see where it takes you. If you lose someone you love, there will be a period of adjustment during which you will be in a great deal of angst. If you’re navigating a childhood rife with domestic violence, find a therapist who can walk you out of the perpetual cycle of pain. You/we don’t belong there. My son died when he was only thirty-two. A friend of ours died when he was only seven. And still again, a young man we adored died when he was only thirteen. Life is so daggum (better than cussing) short – if everything happens in and with the breath of an angel, then there is so much to enjoy on this side of our deaths.
My playlist has ended, and my husband is still slumbering. I feel free this morning; it took a lot of hard, painstaking work, but when I say I went from grief to gratitude, I mean it.
Three months have passed since the ten-year angelversary of my son’s transition, and it took me a while to adjust to his death. I’m not sure one ever gets past the death of a loved one; we just learn how to navigate the world without that person who felt like an appendage that was ripped from our body – without anesthesia. I’m not kidding; there will always be a touch of pain that fits like a glove for each of us. Again, we heal in proportion to our emotional health. Some of us have a lot of shit to work through before we can even get to the core of our grief – so we may mourn properly.
See, I’ve been in and out therapy for many decades. I touch base with my therapist when I feel the need, which, BTW, is far less frequent than in years past. I have worked painstakingly hard to be well from the domestic violence and terror in which I grew up. I was in so much pain after Rikki died, I had no idea that one could physically ache from the loss of a loved one. We do.
I still feel the pangs from the greatest loss of my life. Yes, the longing for unreality, “Lazarus, come forth”, is very real in the early days of grief. I ached even during the fantasies that he wasn’t really dead, only gone on a trip, but would return to me. In my earliest grief, before and after my son died, my dreams stopped coming to me because it hurt too much to dream – dreams that will never come true. I’m not a magician; no matter how much I begged the God of my understanding, Rikki was gone – and he is never coming back to me – in this lifetime.
When Rikki was so sick from addiction, I was given anti-anxiety medication. After he died, my psychiatrist upped the dosage to three times a day, instead of the one I’d been taking for a few months. Death rocked me. My beautiful and tortured son’s death just shook my entire universe. I’ve since, ten years later, no longer need them, but early in my grief process, I could barely manage life.
As I began to feel all the pain inside me welling up, grief was the tip of the iceberg; there was so much crap to sort through that I couldn’t even be self-aware enough to see that my pain was intensified by past traumas that had not been resolved. I read everything I could get my hands on about grief and navigating the grief process so that I could begin my healing process. Grief must be processed, just like anger, resentment, terror of the future after the death of a loved one, etc.
How much unresolved trauma do you still carry, in addition to the utter and profound grief you carry from the loss of someone with whom you had a tight relationship? Please, start looking at all the experiences you’ve never grieved; they matter.
I haven’t written here for a bit, and I have started and halted writing something because – I’m in an excellent space right now. It’s taken me years and seminary to begin to thrive again. I miss my son more than there are words to express the loss of my only child. I’ve had to repurpose my life. I was a mother for thirty-two years; my purpose had to change after Rikki died. As much as it hurt to move forward in a great deal of pain, I began to see that I still have relationships that need me to be present if they are to survive. I don’t know about you, but I love that we are an adaptive species; we learn, best-case scenario, from our life experiences, those which are kindly memorable, and even those which are not.
I found my new purpose in seminary and in the challenging internship I was in for two years after my coursework. I found a group of amazing women I’m blessed to work with. They are amazing and inspiring, and I learn from them every day. What is your new purpose? Have you traveled in your grief process toward healing and wholeness? The journey begins with you and that first revelation that “this is not it.” Pain should not impede our ability to transform and to transcend our emotional dysfunction from past times and soar into a brand-new world, one in which we learn to navigate our very compelling and yet, temporary chronic pain.
I no longer double over in pain – even though I still feel it when there’s a trigger; and I’m always aware that my child has died. Uber aware. My son flows through my DNA and placental evidence of having had a child. My child. The relationship is eternal. Those who have adopted children also know the pain of the loss of connection, temporarily, with your loved one. Grief is truly an exercise in soldiering on – with your backpack of tears to take out when you need them, and we do need them early in our grief process.
I was aching on the ten-year angelversary; I booked myself solid, just as I always to. I’m not saying at all that to shelve one’s grief is preferable, but sometimes, it is necessary for us to get through the day and God help us during the dark nights of the soul; my dark nights are no longer pitch black, but they do still occur when I’m not mindful of my cumulative healing – after so many years of tough experiences, including the death of my son, my mother, our good friend, Eric, ad nauseam. We lose people and that is a fact of life.
We must be proactive in our post-traumatic growth. How does one heal from the death of a loved one? I encourage you to read everything you can on the grief you carry. I reached out to other parents who’ve incurred the same loss as I have. We click. We understand the lead up to our losses and the crosses we must bear – for our lifetime. I know I’m no longer in chronic pain; but occasionally, a trigger will present itself and I must feel the pain elicited by it. I must feel it and process it – whether it’s old stuff or new stuff – including grief.
Today I get to head out to work with some people who, again, are amazing, and whose healing process I get to witness and to learn from. Have you discovered your purpose post the loss of your loved one? I was a mom, and for good, better, or worse, I had to find a new way to live in the world without my son. His pictures cover my walls. My computer is full of files of pictures of him and artwork that touches me from his childhood to his death. He was my compadre. How are you handling your grief process? Are you finding that it is overwhelming? Does old shit come up for you, unprocessed trauma and therefore, unprocessed grief from times past so that current grief seems too difficult to get to the other side?
I wish I could guarantee that the pain is minimal when you lose someone, but I can’t. The fetal position in a darkened room is not uncommon after the death of a loved one, even if you knew it was coming, as I did with my own son.
He “went gently into that good night” – and I’ve been left to coach myself through old trauma and the new trauma of watching my son slowly kill himself with alcohol and heroin. I’ve worked hard to heal, and I imagine, the healing process is lifelong.
I urge you to get professional help or turn to a trusted clergy member if your grief is crippling you from living your fullest potential. I don’t know that my son knows anything beyond the grave, but I’m willing to entertain that notion, to save my sanity – the sanity we lose temporarily when we lose a loved one. How much pain can one endure? How much pain from the loss of a loved one are we willing to endure, and for how long? I don’t have a time limit for grief; it took me four years before I felt like I could proceed with my life, return to the university, hit up seminary, rebuild neglected relationships, and learn to be fully alive.
To be fair, other than cursed algebra, cancer, and losing a son to addiction, the grief process has been painful, transformative, and transcendent. All I can tell you is that you must read everything you can get your hands on about grief, your specific grief, healing from grief; and you must reach out to safe others for counsel and comfort.
None of these things are easy; and it takes as long as it takes. If your grief paralyzes you, it is imperative that you reach out for emotional support. I never did find a therapist who was well-versed in grief; it’s an art. I did, however, create two blogs in which grief is the topic. I went back to college and finished three degrees. I found a job in which I can be of assistance with helping people adjust to loss.
What’s your dream? Do you still have dreams? What’s holding you back from pouring all that pain into purpose? Death hurts like a …. I’m a seminarian….trying to not cuss – but just like grief, I relapse into a foul-mouthed daughter of a Marine. What’s your outlet? Do you have one (some). I find it’s helpful to have many tools in your emotional tool belt. Grief is not easy; it will never be easy, even when death is imminent.
I wish you continued healing from all the places that hurt – past and present – and as is true of all experiences, I wish you to heal as you navigate this world without your loved one.
I listen to Taylor Swift’s LIFE OF A SHOW GIRL at least three times per day; it speaks to me; it speaks to me about an innocence I was not fortunate to experience in my childhood. Sixty-four years later, it’s really okay now. I’ve learned to absorb all the amazing experiences in my life and place those firmly in my brain, where all my memories are stored. I will keep the beautiful things easily accessible – and hold on to, in the back of my brain, all the lessons that I learned in the shadow world. I know I need them to prevent me from allowing myself to be hurt by the same people who have hurt me my entire life: family; and … those shadow memories are there to keep me safe from family and from things that will only hurt me. I’ve given up self-inflicted pain and traded it in for self-awareness.
How does one feel safe when a loved one is ripped from this world? If it happened once, it will happen again. Death is part of life – and I know, no one wants to hear this when she is deep in her mourning phase. But, yes, it is true; death is a part of life; it is inevitable for those we love, and ultimately, for each of us. Chipper, I know.
As you know, it’s been ten years since my son transitioned/died. I’ve grown through the most painful experience in my life; nothing else compares to losing Rikki. And … nothing else ever will.
My son. My heart. My soul. My life before he left us.
My life has changed dramatically, for many reasons, therapy, self-examination, self-awareness, self-love, working the grief process, but mostly, my life has changed because of the loss of my son. I still feel the tug at my heart when I think of him, and he’s always just a thought away. I will always have an air of sadness because I will grieve for my son until I soar off into the sunset, hopefully, if there is an afterlife, to dance with my son in the Cosmos.
Hey, anything is possible.
I remember dancing with my son throughout his life. The last time we danced together was when he was visiting and it was just the two of us. He wanted me to hear his favorite “oldie” at the time, “If You Wanna Be Happy for the Rest of Your Life,” a funny song, a very danceable tune. He had a hillbilly dance he would do to make me squeal and we laughed until we couldn’t breathe. He died a few months later.
Life is full of double-edged memories, soft and gentle, or steely and cruel. I know I say it all the time, and the insight didn’t come easily to me; I had to fight for it, but after we have sorted through the most painful parts of our losses, comes the ability to choose things/memories that bring us joy rather than pain. After a spell, the need to feel bad will morph into the desire to feel good again; trust me, it will happen.
I’m a firm believer in post-traumatic growth. I don’t know how the DSM-V categorizes grief from the death of a loved one, but I know for myself, my son’s death was exceedingly traumatic. I also know that in ten years’ time, I’ve managed some monumental feats. I’ve found reasons to dance toward productivity and generativity.
Speaking of dancing, I remember the first time I danced to my jam after Rikki died. I wept pitifully afterward. How could I go on when my son was torn from my life – like he was torn from my body when I gave birth to him? I did; I wept for an hour, curled up in the fetal position, wanting to die so the pain would stop.
I love music and I love dancing. Dancing was a natural thing for me; I grew up with the disco beat, and I love rocking to it. Years would go by before I would dance again; it was just too painful. I have Rikki’s son now and we dance together, silly dances that make the other laugh hysterically. I still feel that pang in my heart because Rikki should be here with us – dancing and laughing with his son and me – but – he’s not.
I’ve had to reconcile the dancing seasons in my life with the deepest pain – sometimes, like Cohen sang, “[…] with a burning violin,” and other times, jamming to “When the Saints Go Marching In,” with Louis Armstrong’s raspy, celebratory voice. I’m fortunate to have been exposed to a wide variety of music; one might even say eclectic.
Rikki loved music too; and he LOVED to dance with his momma – just for shits and giggles. I miss him. I miss dancing with him. I miss him for his son whose memories of his father are beginning to fade. I will keep them alive for him. I will dance with his son – and we will laugh like Rikki and I used to.
If one can analogize the act of dancing with the process of healing, then that’s what most grievers do, those who are self-aware enough to navigate the process in a healthy manner; we dance accompanied by a frenetic composition of adagio and allegro – the adagio the leitmotif veining the piece, but it will always be heard, sometimes faintly and sometimes, so loudly – one must tap it out until she collapses in exhaustion rewarded by further healing, never complete, but always occurring.
Does this make sense?
This morning, our grandson and I are early risers, there was an “oldie” playing in a movie he was watching, and it was my jam, so I started dancing and he burst out in joyful laughter; it was a great way to start the day. Of course, it made me miss my son. Of course, I thought about how he should be here dancing with his son and carrying forward our tradition.
Sometimes, I stomp dance like Shiva and sometimes, I dance like Ginger Rogers, stomping or graceful, both dances are to the tune of deep, life-long grief. I spent too long with the dirge, marching toward a lifelong sentence of visceral mourning. I don’t want that perpetual darkness to enshroud me like a mourning shawl – always visible to everyone – so they can avoid me like the plague. I know how much it hurts; I also fell into what is called complicated grief. I don’t know what the right amount of time to be in acute grief; I wish I knew for sure so I can answer that question for the parents at my other blog. I spent three-and-a-half years in deep, paralyzing grief. There was no dancing during those years; it hurt too much.
In retrospect, I wish I knew then what I know now: life goes on – even after great losses. The music doesn’t stop until we do. I wake up at 4 a.m. and turn on my music, of late, Taylor Swift, and then … I dance and I sing … and I miss my son … and I welcome those I love into my dancing – and I laugh, stomping out the rhythm of my healing process, until the music begins to wind down into the grace of a waltz. Both types of dancing have their purposes.
Tears can sound like, one, two, three, one, two, three, grief, a dance of its own. Lee Ann Womak sings a song in which she shares her wish for the world in, “I Hope You Dance.” I hope you do – even when the tears flow because of a memory of the person with whom you should be dancing.
Dance anyway.
I love interpretive dance, i.e., the dance of anger, the dance of jubilation, dancing naked before the Jewish God in ecstasy, free-form dancing, mosh pit thrashing, and the dance of deep sorrow. Sometimes there are no words, even in my jam, and so I dance the dirge until I no longer need to. I don’t need the dirge as much as I used to. I prefer the dance of ecstasy.
But grief is as incomprehensibly as deep as the ocean, and equally as unpredictable in its intensity. We can sink, or we can dance on water; the latter is a miracle of post-traumatic growth.
I encourage you to believe that you will grow from your grief, even when you buck; if you hang in there, you’ll be dancing again – even when you weep afterwards. I wish you the music you need today.
[Dance] with me, [dance] for the year [Dance] for the laughter and [dance] for the tear [Dance…] with me, if it’s just for today Maybe tomorrow, the good LORD will take you away. ~Steve Tallarico, Aerosmith~
For everything there is a season […] a time to dance and a time to mourn […] Ecclesiastes 3:4
Grief to Gratitude 