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.
The moon refused to disappear into the sky this morning greedily taking away from the sunrise. I do not begrudge the moon refusing to submit; it lights our nights, along with the stars on a clear desert night – and it holds space for the sun, until it must wrestle for top position in the universe — and lose. I doubt there is anything that can eclipse the sun – besides the moon…and perhaps the loss of a loved one.
I’m aging. My husband is aging. We all are, but those of us who still have verve and vivacity, remain charged up for life and energized to keep finding purpose and creating beautiful and memorable moments in our own lives and in the lives of others.
My husband and I discuss the aging and dying processes, not to be morbid, but because we will leave others behind and we don’t want to leave them with a mess to clean up, my library, for example, is pretty extensive…books that I’ve collected over the years on different interests on my academic journey. My education has been epochal – every era. In my sixties, my mind is still able to be blown away by emerging science, literary classics I’ve been too caught up in science to take the time to read, music – ancient and new – and people, oh my god, I’m still able to be inspired by others’ life stories. I’m also able to have extraordinary experiences (formerly “religious” experiences).
My husband and I discuss profound topics. We are so different and yet our conversations are fissioning and producing further insight and the desire to know more about the other’s thoughts on a particular subject — that is never exhausted. Perhaps this fusion of minds is what “love” really is – admiration and respect. Perhaps.
One of the topics we’ve addressed recently, as he turns seventy-two this year and I just turned sixty-four, is what happens to us after we die. The jury is out for me, but not for my husband. I straddle the fence between hypotheses and things that hold up to scientific scrutiny, and yet, still “There Are More Things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, Than Are Dreamt of in Your Philosophy.” (Hamlet, Act I, Scene 5)
I begrudge the reality that it is impossible to “know everything.” I’ve spent the better part of my life in pursuit of knowledge, and I’m still racking up educational points in competition with myself only. I have a hunger for knowledge, and yet … there are things I simply cannot know in this, possibly singular, lifetime. I would like to know that I will see my son again in a perfect world, but … I have no certainty about this that I can find in a religion or in a philosophy.
Will my husband and I find each other on the “other” side? See, how incredulous does that sound? Pretty weak … except for those whose convictions about an afterlife are airtight. I wish I knew with absolute certainty. I listen to those who’ve had near-death experiences (NDEs) – and I’m too stubborn to entertain the possibility that their experiences are real.
I tell those closest to me when they are freaking out about something that may or may not happen, “Can we know the future?” No, we cannot. So, my husband and I are in agreement that it’s not possible to know what awaits us after death, if anyone awaits us, or do we blend into the universe whole at last – fading memories in the minds of those we leave behind?
We don’t have answers. I was with my son when he died, and again, with each of my parents. My son died twice and if he is somewhere in the cosmic ether, I hope all the pain he had in this life has been erased – if he is.
My parents each died peacefully. Mom just fell asleep, Daddy crossed his arms across his chest and said his parents were in the room and we each said our goodbyes, and the look of certainty on my father’s face told me that whatever happens, peace, just like in life, is the goal. Will Ben and I leave this ol’ world with a satisfied mind. I hope so. In the interim, we live life fully and never lose our purposes. We each have one, and even little children who live but a few moments, touch us and inspire us to grab hold of life … every single second of it.
Don’t worry about things that may or may not happen. Plan for every foreseeable event … financially, emotionally, spiritually, and physically. We may not know what’s on the other side of mortality – immortality? Maybe Daddy knew; the look on his face the night he died was peaceful and … resigned.
I love my husband and will be here through thick and through thin, through our blessed lives and when it is time to say goodbye, we’ll have no regrets because we loved each other, perhaps into eternity, perhaps. The love we leave behind for others hopefully will inspire others to live fully and love completely.
The Teacher, Solomon, said that we should “eat, drink, and be merry” – that is the fruit of our labor, for years of hard work, wherever we make our living … in many different places, and some, are arenas.
I’m not a mystic. I would love to buy into Van Morrison’s song and feel the holy spirit in the ocean mist as it moistens my hot skin. I don’t. I will admit, I feel something, physically with a relief from the heat, a pleasurable feeling, both exogenous and endogenous … something extraordinary, but it is not a mystical experience.
I’m not prone to “woo woo” – most of the time – except when I’m hurting because I miss my son, and then … rationality, holding something up to scientific scrutiny flies right out the window. “Help my unbelief” – there’s a part of me that, in desperation, reaches for a solution to my pain – and sometimes it is in the hope that I will, in fact, see my son again.
Like the proverbial conflicted archetype in stories across cultures, I am torn between what I see and what I wish to see. In my heart of hearts, I hope “this” is not all there is; and I wish there was a perfection that humanity is finally able to achieve after a lifetime of bipolar sweetness and struggle. Finally – total perfection.
I’ll see – or I won’t and I will just rest in eternal peace … nonexistence … pain-free. I think today, I feel like that’s a peaceful ending. After losing a child … the pain is perpetual. I mean, I manage it well, so I can live a full life, but it’s ever present.
I have so many people who I adore … and I want to be present for them. I want to love here, not in some hypothetical heaven, but here, where it matters how I affect others’ lives. I still can affect my husband’s life, and he mine. As long as we’re here together … for as long as chance allows us to cheat death … for just a while longer, life is good.
The condensation drips like diamonds onto my glass table, a thrift store find. I’m mesmerized by the beauty of drops of water, and I marvel at the ecosystem contained within each tiny drop – and I drink the tiny globes on my glass. As the sun rises in the sky from the East, it creates tiny prisms on the wall. My mother taught me to love rainbows from the story of Noah, a promise to the ancient Jews that their god would never send flooding again. Mom had a few floods, and whole mines of diamonds.
Of course, these words are an attempt to illustrate that even floods can’t rob you of your joie de vivre. I went to a concert last night. A patriotic rock and roll band played, and the music was good and people had a great time. One gentleman, an older chap, danced by himself through every song. A little girl with cowboy boots and a straw hat who also danced all night.
I wish I’d had her confidence before I became an adult; I would have developed it too, if my parents had known how to nurture a child through her development. They didn’t, so it took decades for me to get my shit together. I’m happier now than I’ve ever been. You may wonder how that is possible after losing my only child to heroin and alcohol addiction. Please understand; I miss my son in a way there are no words for.
But … I soldier on. My husband and I were in a car accident two years ago, and then he was injured by the fire department EMTs as they tried to restrain him so he wouldn’t injure himself further. He is now in chronic physical pain. He is handling it well; I don’t know if I would.
We each carry wounds in our bodies, and in our hearts and psyches. I still carry my wounds, or rather, my entire being is one gaping — but healing wound. I still have pain associated with every happy memory I have about my son. Life for anyone who has lost a child knows the memories are bittersweet. I smile. I laugh. I enjoy my life, and sometimes, I weep for the greatest loss of my life, the loss of my son and only child.
How does one go on after losing someone who holds a piece of her heart? Well, therapy, antianxiety meds, exercise, reading everything you can get your hands on about healing from the greatest loss of your life, and if you’re fortunate enough to have a life partner who gets you or at least is trying to get you, consider yourself very lucky.
David Kessler wrote a book, The Sixth Sense: Finding Meaning about grief and about losing his son and finding a way to get through the pain to the other side where hope and joy abound. I know it’s hard to believe, but there will be dancing again. Trust me. I found myself jamming to “Obladi Oblada” by the Beatles this morning, and then almost immediately after I had some sadness because Rikki and I used to dance together, and we even danced together shortly before his death.
We clapped and danced to “If you want to be happy for the rest of you llfe”. He loved that song and pulled it up on his phone and we danced and laughed until we couldn’t breathe anymore. I had him for thirty-two years. He was a gift, and I miss him terribly.
All the sadness and the bittersweetness are true, but it’s that giant helping of sweetness that we find in nature, in a baby’s cry, in the recovery of someone who struggles with addiction, and other extraordinary experiences. Even with a sadness that will accompany you for a lifetime, there is sweetness. Once my husband and I were near the coast of Pacific Hwy 1 and we stopped by the beach. Placed on top of a beautiful and giant piece of driftwood was a perfect strawberry right on top. Someone placed it there, maybe for a photo op, but at any rate, I got to experience something that was probably special to me only.
My father and I planted strawberries together when I was a little girl; it’s one of the few lovely memories I have of my father who was kind in fits and starts. He tried to be a good father too late, but he did try, and he was a wonderful father-figure to my son whose own biological father bailed on him when he was only eleven months old, with no emotional or child support.
Rikki was a diamond in my heart; he still is. He remains my North Star. Every good thing I do is inspired by the life and death of my son. I’ve certainly had other losses, both of my parents, a sister from whom I was estranged, friends, and other family members. Losing my son hurt more than all of those losses combined; it just does.
How have you managed your grief all these years? If you’re newly grieving, how are you handling your process? I know grief feels too deep to be a process, but it is a trip around your broken heart several revolutions until the wound is bound by love and healing.
I wish you each the time you need to begin to heal. I’m sorry for your losses. Losing a loved one just hurts, even if you’re expecting it after a long-term illness, like addiction or cancer. Perhaps dependent upon the severity of your loved one’s illness, sometimes death can be a relief. No one wants to see her loved ones suffer from emotional and/or physical pain, and sometimes grievers are dead before they actually die a physical death.
I don’t want that for myself. I don’t want it for my grandson. I don’t want it for anyone. Death is final and when someone is yanked from your life, it is a visceral experience, like when my son was pulled out of my body, forty-four years ago. Time flew as I raised him and watched him grow up. Time has flown by since he passed. I’ve had time to mourn and dance and to … heal.
The sun is shining in the desert and it’s going to be hot today. Rikki hated the heat, which brings a smile to my face as I remember how he’d cocoon himself in blankets and blast the AC until he fell asleep. He should have been born in Alaska. He would have loved it there.
The water drops have evaporated, the tiny ecosystem teeming with life is now floating upward until the next glass perspires on my glass table. The glass is now spotted with water stains, which I will wipe up later, but for now, I want to see traces of diamonds, reflections of my son.
I want you to see your own diamonds and let their brilliance light your way. Our loved ones were jewels in our lives; wherever they are, IF they still are – somewhere in the cosmos, perhaps they do want us to be happy. I’m a doubting Thomas. I WANT to believe, but I’ve seen no evidence, and yes, “Faith is the evidence of things hoped for, but not yet seen.” Seems I’ve read that somewhere. I’m not speaking in terms of faith in a supernatural deity, although sometimes one’s faith is hugely instrumental in a person’s healing.
Healing and restarting your life are possible; they are enviable when I think of all the parents and others who lost months, years of their lives because of grief and mourning…all necessary, but navigable toward joy, always intermittently. I hope you hear my voice, my healing voice telling you to hang in there, and look for diamonds in places that are sacred to you.
At the end of the day, you are your own soul’s physician; heal thyself.
The sky has reluctantly given me ten drops of joy – in this gray and orange sky – our colors mother and son. Is your Spirit a joyful witness of my life trajectory? Or would my occasional sadness bring your angel spirit down. I’d prefer to know you’re happy rather than have you have even one more second of sadness by seeing me on days when I’m overcome with missing you.
The humidity is stifling – but it feels like a mother’s arms cradling me – and constricting my breathing — too tight, and so I return to thoughts of you – with wings. The thought comforts me for a while, long enough to regain my bearings and merge back into the traffic of life … when it is bumper-to-bumper – and when it is smooth sailing – as it were.
The sun is peeking out behind our clouds, Son – and I allow myself the tears of joy evoked by the gift of having you in my life – accompanying me on your short one. Death is neither fair nor unfair. Eternal? I wish I knew. We speak of heaven, colloquially and in terms of faith in a Theos – I want to believe you are somewhere and so, I do.
If there is a god/God/esses, they would not allow a person to suffer life’s problems one second longer than she has to. Enter in my good and faithful servant. How can we be good when we were not created in environments which would grow an emotionally and spiritually healthy person?
God, how I miss our conversations. You were the best conversationalist ever. I remember at your Celebration of Life, so many people, people who knew you since you were just an infant, so many were there.
Tim M got up to speak and confirmed to everyone that you and I spent hours on the phone. I don’t know why I needed that confirmation, but it was important to me at the time. Those people who knew us, knew of our tempest and also of our smooth sailing when we laughed and laughed, spent hours sharing our home together – and the ferocity with which we loved one another – through hell and high water.
I put up hummingbird feeders around the house and now the yard is full of them – darting back and forth for a drink and chasing their comrades away. You know we were always about science and theories and evidence and so, after you died, I read everything I could get my hands on about the metaphysics of death. Metaphysics! I was desperate.
I have talked myself out of immortality so many times since your death, ten and a half years ago, that I demanded evidence. I read about near-death experiences, alternate realities through medically induced hallucinogenic trips, and other methods that will take you deep into your consciousness so you can conquer death?
I read in several books very soon after your death, that hummingbirds make appearances and they are the spirit of your loved one. With my hummingbird feeders I’ve increased the hummingbird population, right? So – my dear boy, we would deduce that the spirit-infused hummingbirds could not all be you. So, there it is – a doubting Thomas.
I suppose we would each pick a side and try to convince the other of nihilism or eternal bliss. You’d take the former and I’d choose the cheery latter position. I drove you nuts with my optimism, and I was saddened by your early cynicism. The gods from every religion and those of us who know, people in your life, people you loved really hurt you and disappointed you – including me. Some of us are sorry.
Do you remember, because, fortunately and unfortunately, I raised you during your formative years in a fundamentalist Bible thumping church, the story in Luke of the NT about the rich man in Hades who begs Abraham to release Lazarus so he can return from Hades and warn his brothers to follow the god of Abraham, so they won’t suffer the punishments of the fundamentalist doctrine of hell?
Foolishly, I hope there’s a heaven because my greatest dream is not just getting my doctorate, but above and beyond that earthly dream, is the dream/fantasy that I will see you again, that we’ll laugh in each other’s arms until we can’t breathe. I remember when we laid under the stars in our driveway one night to wait for the meteor shower that did not make an appearance. The sky was full of clouds – like the ones trying to survive in my desert – and so, we couldn’t see the stars. All I felt was love that night.
We pointed out different shapes we saw in the clouds – and like a blindfolded person trying to describe a shape with only words, it was pointless, but we laughed and all was well with the world.
If you’re still around in the ether somewhere – and can see what I’ve been doing since you died, I hope you’re proud of me. You were the kindest, most generous person in my life, and even though I truly am thriving, god, how I miss you. How’d you get so kind?
I don’t grab my phone to call you the second I hear or read something fascinating. I know in my entire being that you are not here anymore. Like the rich man, if I were a superstitious person, I would beg the god of my understanding to send you back to tell me you’re fine – because, in all truth, the tortures of hell are here, not always, of course, before someone thinks I’m nihilistic … not that it’s necessarily a bad worldview.
I may actually, like emotional DNA, have a smidge of nihilism, Boo. What of an afterlife? I know you wouldn’t find it difficult to believe that I’m thriving. I finally got my degrees. I wish you’d been here to see me graduate. Your son, big and beautiful, was there. I didn’t think I would ever go on without you. I wanted to die because everything hurt exponentially, every day emotions fissioning into critical mass.
I miss dancing with you, silly and with great joy. I dance with your son now and we laugh and laugh. One glad morning when my life is o’er, maybe I’ll get to dance with you again, maybe. I miss you, Son.
I don’t understand how reflections work. Narcissus stared into his own reflection and in his vanity, he fell in love with it. I’m looking out my window at 4:30 a.m.; it’s dark. I can see the reflection of this room in my office window. I can see a few of the pieces of art and my degrees in the reflection from the wall to my right, and if I look a little further into the reflection, to my left, I can see across the room, all the way to the other side, a piece on my wall. I don’t understand physics, except romantically.
When I look into my mirror, I see the flawed outside; and I always see the flaws first. Depending on the day and my mood, I may see only the flaws. On a good day, my makeup is perfect and I see only the perfection of my eyeliner, perfectly lined lips, and a woman who means business and can tackle it with confidence.
On a bad day, I will dress colorfully to boost my mood; sometimes it works. On good days, I pull off black with finesse…always with a brightly colored scarf and equally colorful jewelry. One of my group members for a group I facilitated made a necklace for me, brightly colored beads with a frog as a pendant; it is one of my prized possessions. I wear it with black to remind others that life can also be fun and beautiful.
When I see a person in brightly colored clothes, a ray of sunshine in a sometimes-gray world, I tell them they made me happy today. Maybe they’re like me and dressed in celebratory clothing because they are sad. We find ways to boost our moods, some healthy, some not so much.
“Laugh, clown, laugh.”
I get up every morning to check out the sky for sunrises and beautiful clouds against a desert landscape and to take pictures of our horizon, the blueness of our sky this morning, the precursor to the heavens, maybe where my son is now, or perhaps … once our journey here is complete, we’re done; I mean totally done.
What I see when I look in the mirror sometimes isn’t what I want to see. The mirror of my past is particularly difficult, but it is a huge piece of my puzzle. The task the God of my understanding has for me is to find each piece, no matter the pain; it is the pathway to heaven on earth.
Self-awareness helps me to see clearly as I search for my puzzle pieces instead of looking for others’ pieces. I had a friend tell me that her purpose/calling is to counsel people as a psychologist, and I’m here to tell you, she’s an excellent listener with a lot of insight and wisdom. I see myself in her puzzle; I am a piece of her puzzle and I’m grateful. She is a piece of my puzzle, too.
The clients in my support group are part of my puzzle and when I look at them and listen to their doubt and their wisdom that comes from decades of hard work – through hell and high water until our murky reflection shines through the sludge, I’m inspired to work hard so I can continue doing what I love to do.
As a griever, I could see only pain when I looked into the mirror. I had lines around my eyes that appeared older than my pain.
I’ve said it many times here, and to my friends, we heal in proportion to our mental health. The more shit we have underneath our greatest losses, the greater the work that will need to be done before we can begin to manage our healing process.
My current reflection is one in which I have a big ol’ shit eating grin on most days. Who doesn’t have an occasional slump? I’m grateful mine are few and far between, miracles of psychological healing and self-awareness. I urge you, if you can find low-cost mental healthcare, get in there right away. The sooner we begin to heal, the greater benefit we are to society. And, the more beautiful … our reflection.
Do you have a calling? Do you know what will make your life more purposeful? Let that be your journey, find your calling and live purposefully. Are you happy with your emotional reflection today? I tell my students that when life gets tough, we have to work harder to maintain equilibrium.
Breathwork, meditation, prayer, physical activity, and getting out in nature are just a few methods we can incorporate into our healing process. When the going gets tough, the contemplative souls get going. I’ve seen people I love lost in their unprocessed grief and/or their unresolved traumas, including enduring a significant loss.
My calling is to help others to see their reflections as their burgeoning self-worth begins to take shape for them in the mirrors of their souls. If we’re only about day-to-day survival, where are peace and joy?
My trajectory was to heal from all the places and the people who have hurt me and to find understanding … and where I’ve been able, to extend some grace from the humility of my own imperfection.
There was a time, not that long ago, when I couldn’t stand my reflection; my flaws were deep and wide back then. I’m certainly not alleging that my flaws are any less visible – to me, and to those closest to me. I’ve worked to decrease my flaws’ prominence. I’ve also worked hard to let go of my former self-image, the wounded one.
The sun is out and the reflection of my walls is no longer visible in my window – it’s kind of like that in life. Since I’ve taken the steps toward mental health and emotional sobriety, my walls have also been taken down and in their place have been the most tremendous healing, transformation, and even transcendence.
I have all the feels when I see my reflection now; I’m able to see the love of the God of my understanding in the depths of my unfettered soul. My soul is the filter through which I now see myself and others, and all is well with my soul, all is wellwith my soul.
“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.
Grief to Gratitude 