Are you grieving true to you?
Judging our process as right or wrong can be a disservice to our grief.
Grief is so misunderstood in our culture, I often hear the bereaved express worry that they’re grieving “wrong.” Yet, I don’t believe in a right and wrong way to grieve. I do believe we can grieve well, with intentional practices and support that connect us to what we’re feeling in any given moment and invite us to move and express our grief so those emotions don’t remain stuck in our bodies (For more on such practices, read my recent piece for Spirituality + Health magazine) .
To me, grieving well also means grieving in a way that feels true to us — which can be hard to do in a culture that perpetuates the notion of grief as an experience we move on from. When we, the broken-hearted, are shamed and judged as weak, too emotional or otherwise flawed if we haven’t mastered or risen above our grief, or we’re continually subject to attempts to cheer us up or talk us out of how we’re feeling, how do we trust our own instincts and impulses? Make space to meet our grief in its raw and awkward messiness, in the ways we’re feeling called to do?
When my dad died, my sorrow was immense. So was my anger. Gone was my hope of ever having the kind of relationship I’d longed for with him. I did and do love my dad, and I have never doubted his love for me. But after his death, there was little I could root in that felt sweet and happy and beautiful. I had so few memories of fun times. Could barely unearth a fragment where our loving rose pure and unfettered from the chasm of all that was unhealed between us.
It stung to acknowledge the truth that we had never moved beyond recrimination and regret and our colliding, wounded stories to let our love speak larger than our pain. Yet, I needed to sit with the sting, with my anger, with how colossally unfair it felt to have never had the father I wanted. I couldn’t tip-toe past the hurt, elevate the flawed to the saintly or conjure a version of us that would satisfy the needs of everyone else.
Still, I was repeatedly told to hold onto the good memories, to think of the happy times. Reminders of how proud he was of me and how much he loved me were offered as salve when, because of the complicated history we’d inhabited, such consolations and wishes landed like a sad and bitter joke.
I had no place to freely be with my anger, no room to meet my dad for who he was, with all of his failings, and all of my longing. But I didn’t surrender my truth. I also didn’t realize that in embracing the honest breadth of our relationship, I’d eventually create space for the tenderness and beauty I was craving to seep through. That the memories I initially couldn’t find would begin to surface, filling me with their sweetness.
That was the gold I received for staying true to my relationship with my father and how that truth showed up in my grieving. I finally brought all my anger and buried stories to therapy. I also worked with an energy healer to help me move through the inarticulate, to unwind and release some of what I couldn’t see. Though I’d always preferred fast-moving, cardio workouts, I listened to my body when, to my surprise, it found a home in a dedicated yoga practice. And because I’m a writer, I found some of my greatest solace and acceptance in taking a writing course on grief from a poet in my community who’d experienced profound loss.
I learned to follow and trust what called to me.
Grieving true to who we are is as much about honoring the full range of our emotions as it is about learning to listen to what feels like genuine nourishment and support on our journey. It’s about being able to set boundaries around the people and circumstances that feel unhealthy or misaligned, that deplete and gaslight us, that keep us contorting ourselves to show up as less than authentically human.
Grieving true can look like slowing down when the world tells us to hurry up and be done with our pain. It can be offering ourselves patience, kindness and grace when we’re tempted to feel like we aren’t doing enough or should be in a different place than where we are. It may be reaching out for support when all we’ve known is the stigma of doing so. It’s respecting our own unique process and pace, allowing that what we need and how we feel are part of an ever-shifting landscape.
And it’s making space, when coping with the death of someone significant in our lives, to acknowledge the truth of that relationship, so we can perhaps come to hold it with a little more gentleness and generosity, a little more ease. And yes, even more love — if not for them, then for ourselves and all the ways we’re growing around what we’ve been given.
Our reality, our story, our reckoning and reconciling — there’s room for all of it, and all of us. And in a culture where so much is toxic around grief, finding the courage to honor our journey can be where our healing and liberation begin.
7 WEEKS TILL THIS MAGICAL MOUNTAIN RETREAT
This group of shiny humans recently captured my heart. I will be one of the facilitators at this year’s Rise Gatherings Weekend Getaway in the beautiful Pocono Mountains offering “Writing the Broken Heart: A Grief Tending Workshop,” as well as one-on-one grief coaching sessions. Last week, I got to meet some of the facilitators, including several who are repeat Rise attendees, at a gathering planned for us to get to know each other. And I have to say there wasn’t a woman there who I didn’t delight in meeting. The warmth, laughter and wisdom we shared as I learned more about each of their gifts made me even more excited and honored to be part of this retreat — especially as I heard from past attendees about how transformative it is for the women who attend to take time for themselves to connect with who they are, what they’re longing for and possibilities they may not have imagined for themselves while making new friends and having a blast.
Every Rise attendee gets to select four workshops from a vibrant and varied list of offerings including spiritual herbalism, SUP yoga and floating, crafting rites of passage rituals, holistic period care, cooking with tahini, belly dancing, career transitions, decluttering the home and creativity as a contemplative practice.
Find out more about the workshops and facilitators here and save $50 off your ticket by registering with the code NAILA23.
AN ECO-GRIEF RITUAL WITH SALT TRAILS
We are all feeling the devastation and heartbreak of what is happening on Maui right now in addition to all the other impacts of climate change across our globe. Join Salt Trails, a Philadelphia collective of healers, artists and ministers, for “At The Waters of Life: A Ritual to Honor Our Eco-Grief” on Monday, August 28, in Strathmere Beach, NJ. Register here to receive more details closer to the date.
A FREE GRIEF WORKSHOP WITH PEACE DAY PHILLY
Shaman, teacher and writer Martín Prechtel has said “All war is unmetabolized grief.” He attributes the predominance of violence in our society, along with many of our other societal and individual ills, to the grief we haven’t expressed. I’ve partnered with Peace Day Philly this year to offer a free grief workshop for caregivers, service providers and others grieving a loss. We’ll connect to and express our sorrows through writing prompts, meditation and ritual while witnessing and affirming each other in community. Registration is required by September 12.
Peace Day Philly is the local initiative for the UN International Day of Peace on September 21. Peace Day Philly organizes, collaborates on and encourages programs and actions related to personal, local and global peace on and around Peace Day. See the schedule for other programs and activities that are happening this year, from Sept. 16-Sept. 21.
SEE ‘IT’S COMPLICATED’ AT THE PHILLY FRINGE FESTIVAL
Can a play about organ donation and grief be funny? Yes! Follow one woman’s moving story about how her husband's tragic death led to making new meaning in witnessing and being witnessed. This short and powerful interactive, darkly comedic and multi-disciplinary theatre performance about organ donation, mental illness, grief and hope is written by and stars Philadelphia playwright and performance artist Michelle Pauls.
Performances run September 15-18 and 22 & 23 at Vox Populi Gallery, 319 N. 11th Street. I will lead a talk back following the September 18 performance. Learn more and get your tickets here.