Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final…
Ranier Maria Rilke
This is the quote on the handmade cards I’m giving my kids for for Christmas this year. I want them to remember, as tragedy and sorrow swirls around us, to allow themselves to feel everything, even the sharp and jagged edges of pain, to allow it in, let it change you, invite the pain in to teach its lessons. It hurts to lose people we love, and what can this brutal lesson teach us? I’m still learning myself, but I have noticed a deep and abiding compassion growing in me, forged in the fire of loss and pain, that urges me to show up for others who are in pain.
If I was a in a superhero movie, the grief I’ve experienced would show up in a magic crystal I would wear around my neck, and when other people lost their own beloveds, the crystal would glow and send me to them.
It hurts to watch families lose their own beloveds, and maybe before our own grief we would have felt sad for them, we would have wrung our hands, feeling helpless and saying, “What can I do?” But now we understand on a deeper level, and we show up for them. We drive to their houses with tea and honey and listening ear. We hop on planes and ferries, cross oceans just to stand next to them, put our arms around them, look into their eyes so they understand we are not flinching. We are not turning away from their pain.
I always tell my kids that this is not a gift we ever wanted, but our own grief and loss gave it to us anyway, the gift of being able to be present for others in the worst grief imaginable. We can’t help, or ease their pain, but we can stand next to them, witness it, and carry it with them for a while. I know when we were in our deepest grief, I deeply appreciated the people who showed up for me, who came to my house and sat next to the fire with me, telling me their own stories, even the people I never really saw again — the people who were physically present. It almost felt like they were on another shore, holding up a lantern for me, showing me it was possible to get to the other side, even though I couldn’t imagine ever getting beyond the pain I was feeling. Strangers would hug me in the halls of the school, and I found myself crying on the shoulders of mothers I didn’t even know.
So with all the tragedies swirling around at this time of Christmas 2022, my human mind wants to solve them, make sense of them. How could something so terrible happen? What kind of world do we live in where these beautiful souls can leave our realm?
There were the questions I asked myself yesterday as I rode the ferry to the funeral of a 20-year-old boy who was killed in a car crash last weekend, along with three other young men.
The sea was pink and calm, the sky achingly beautiful. I had known the boy as a baby. I called him Mr. Cuddles because, well, when you held him on your hip, with his chubby cheeks and pudgy hands, he just molded to your body. His brother was in my preschool class, and his mother would appear at pick up time looking like a goddess walking in slow motion, with her big gold hoop earrings, her boots and sweaters, mirrored sunglasses and long black hair flying. Her name was Ona and she laughed loud and joyfully with her 3-year-old holding her hand and Mr. Cuddles on her hip. That’s when I knew Mr. Cuddles. I loved this family, and kept in touch with them over the years, but I didn’t know Riley as a young man. Someone sent me the article about the car crash last weekend. 7 kids in the car on their last days of finals at the Maritime Academy in Maine, 3 survived, 4 didn’t. 4 families lost their sons that horrible night. My heart goes out to them suffering unimaginable loss, and my heart was back on its searing plate of grief again when I thought of Riley’s Mom Ona. I wanted to show up for Ona, for Riley’s grandmother and aunts, and for his brother. The one winter I taught preschool on the island, the matriarchs of the Wampanoag Nation all drove down from Aquinnah every Thursday night to attend my belly dancing class. For that one year, I taught belly dance to the mothers and grandmothers, and taught the island children how to bake bread, sculpt clay, and collect feathers on long walks through the woods.
I stood on the bow of the ferry, surprisingly warm and calm for December in the open ocean, and I watched the large boat skim across the water. The West Chop lighthouse came into view, and I just felt sad as I thought about all the textures of grief. I would say “journey of grief” but that implies there is an end, a destination, and with grief there is none. It never ends, we just learn to live with it. Just like my Dad used to say that your heart explodes with love when your first grandchild is born, and you think you will never ever love any child that much again, it isn’t possible, there isn’t room in your heart, your heart expands with the next child. And it keeps expanding. That’s how it is with grief. Maybe the breaking and shattering and healing expands the heart so you can fit more love? Break and heal with the golden light of love, break and break some more even without the healing, the love expands into something different, something even deeper, something you never thought possible.
If you survive it. And guys, it’s not easy to survive it. Nothing about the path of grief is easy.
People always say you have to process grief, but they don’t say how to do that, so I wanted to write today about what has worked for me, to help me move through my darkest moments and still stay on the planet.
Did you know grief actually rewires the brain? Dr. Lisa Shulman, a neurologist who specializes in how grief affects the brain, writes: ““Grief is a normal protective process,” says Dr. Shulman. “This process is an evolutionary adaptation to promote survival in the face of emotional trauma… Traumatic loss is perceived as a threat to survival and defaults to protective survival and defense mechanisms,” says Dr. Shulman. This response engages the fight or flight mechanism, which increases blood pressure and heart rate and releases specific hormones…The brain’s goal? Survival.”
In my deepest grief, I went through panic attacks so severe I felt like I was having a heart attack, I would gasp for air and if I was driving, I would have to pull over my car and get out, put my hands on my knees and catch my breath. My doctor told me that when the brain responds to tragedy, it shoots out random adrenaline because it thinks you need to run and get away from the threat. That made sense to me, because grief did feel a lot like being chased by a T-Rex. I didn’t know what to do, and no one seemed to have any answers, or maybe they did and I couldn’t hear them talking.
So for those of you reeling in grief, or gently touched by grief, here’s a list of things that have helped me process my grief:
- Beloved Book: Buy or make a journal that reminds you of your beloved. Keep it special. Let your tears anoint your book and make it holy, your sacred book of grief. Every time you miss your person, every time you want to talk to them, to tell them a funny story, or how much you love them, write them a letter in that journal. Years ago, when I went to school in Florence, I bought a leather journal with the Three Graces dancing on the front. It is now my Sacred Book of Grief for Kim. I print out poems, like “I carry your heart” by ee cummings and glue them in. I stamp it with the stamps she gave me years ago, and I write on the textured handmade paper inside letter after letter, everything I am feeling, everything I want to tell her.
- Sacred Storytelling. Invite everyone you know who has walked through grief to come to your house and tell you their story. I even invited people I didn’t know over to sit by my fire and tell me how they made it to the other side. I couldn’t imagine the path forward, I couldn’t imagine ever feeling light, or joy again. I didn’t understand how they were still functioning in the world after tremendous loss. Hearing their stories helped me know that even if I couldn’t see it, there was another side waiting for me if I could just hang on.
- Dance. There is a divine connection in dance that is very powerful for moving through grief. Out of everything on this list, this is by far the most powerful, a sacred tool to get you out of your head and into your body. In my dark swampy loss, I did not know the way forward, so every day, I laid out my mat and lit a candle. I turned on music that takes me to a place beyond, for me it’s “Toward the Within” by Dead Can Dance, and closed my eyes, inviting Kim, my Dad, and all the other soulds I have lost to join me. Then I danced. Sometimes I pounded my chest and screamed. Sometimes I collapsed on the floor sobbing, tears pooling in my ears. Sometimes I doubled over, screaming her name from the depths of my loss, and sometimes I imagined Kim balancing on me as a joyful golden light, just like she did when we were dance partners and she would backbend over my feet or balance upside down in a handstand over me. Sometimes I imagined her actually intertwining with me like a braid or a double helix, the very symbol of DNA, and I understood she will always be part of me.
- Read. Many books have been written by people who have made it to the other side. Read them. I sought out books by people who had been through wars, the holocaust, terrible loss, to see how they got through it, how they could still function in life after experiencing so much pain. If they could do it, maybe I could too.
- Paint. When you feel destroyed, creating helps to counterbalance that. In my dark days, I set up an easel and started painting canvas after canvas of 2 things: Wonder Woman and my Grandma Lupe as a child, based on the only photo I have of her as a child. I played Sinatra, lit twinkle lights and candles, and painted away. I am not a painter, but something about painting them gave me strength. I didn’t know why I was doing it, I just knew somehow I had to.
- Tattoo. Tattoos aren’t for everyone, but when I was in Scotland a few months ago, I had Kim’s handwriting and signature tattooed on my arm, and I love it. I wanted my body to reflect that I am not the person I was before I lost Kim, or my father. I am changed, and the tattoo was a physical representation of that. Kim always addressed her letters to me: “To My Monarch of Magic” so I had that written on my arm with her signature. It comforts me to look at it, and when I have those unbearable moments, I touch my arm and feel close to her.
- Write their story. The beautiful part of writing is that you get to still be with your beloved again, they live again through storytelling. I don’t mean a book meant for publishing, although it could be that. I mean a book just for you. I started writing memories of traveling with Kim and the response from readers was healing. Some understood my loss because they too had experienced their own. Others just had tremendous compassion. All of the support was healing.
- Be kind to yourself. Let others be kind to you. Counterbalance the darkness with things that bring you light. Find people who make you laugh and spend time with them.
- Nature heals. Walk on the beach. Visit a waterfall. Go somewhere you’ve never been before. Walk in the desert, in the forest, on a mountain. Close your eyes. Breathe.
- Serve. Life has brought you to your knees. Now it’s time to serve. Find a way to volunteer, to get out of your head and into your heart. I chose Horizons for Homeless Children and the Make A Wish Foundation. Serving lifts the human spirit and fills you with love. Find the things that do this for you, maybe an animal shelter or a hospital for veterans. Nothing snaps you out of sadness faster than taking action to help others in need.
- Be around children. I go into schools to teach Harry Potter and Magic Treehouse as my own form of healing. Being around children who don’t think of the future or the past teaches me over and over again how to be present, how to keep a light heart, even when it’s broken, and how to laugh when all I want to do is weep.
- Primal Screaming. I don’t love this one, but it helps, and it was Kim who showed me this. After my father died and my marriage shattered a few weeks later, Kim took me on a walk in the woods. She made me climb to the top of a hill, sat down next to me on a rock, and told me to scream. I said no thank you, that sounds like a terrible idea, but she said she would do it with me. She started to scream, and I joined for about half a second before I was collapsed in her lap sobbing in chest-heaving gasping sobs. She rubbed my back and said, “That’s the point you know. Let that emotion out.”
- Honor your own journey. Sometimes it’s the right thing to make yourself leave your house, and sometimes it’s the right thing to curl up in a blanket and distract your mind with a movie. Both are right. Say yes. Say no. Do what is healing for you.
- And most importantly: Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.Just keep going. No feeling is final…Ranier Maria Rilke
- And: Come Away O Human Child, To the Waters and the Wilds With a Faery, Hand-in-Hand, For the world’s more full of weeping, than you can understand. Yeats.
