It is my last day in Nashville and I am sitting outside at the charming Just Love Coffee Cafe, my heart awash in a wave of gratitude. Yes, I’m about to dig into a gluten-free waffle sandwich — and finding so many unexpected gluten-free options here has been a constant delight — but that is not the sole source of my gratefulness. No, as my eyes fill with tears, my prayer is one of expansive praise. I keep up a steady, whispered hum of “thank you, thank you, thank you” — to the one I call Magnificent Beloved, to the day and its sweep of blue skies, to the nourishing solitude of my morning walk, to the coalescing moments marking this weekend unforgettable, to the smiling face of my dad, whose presence fills me … and the list keeps going.
Mostly, I am thankful for the miracle of my life, for this one perfect moment that will live among so many others I’ve inhabited but could never see coming since my father died.
I am in Nashville for the 10-year anniversary celebration of Faith Matters Network, a womanist-centered organization that accompanies spiritually grounded leaders in their work to heal themselves and their communities. Since last October, I’ve been part of FMN’s Wisdom Learning Journey cohort, one of the organization’s many initiatives to help nurture personal and collective transformation through resource-sharing, trainings and learning experiences.
The gala celebration was the night before, and the beauty, inspiration and electric joy of it are still pulsing through me. I’d never attended a gala before, and to be in a room with so many radiant Black women celebrating each other with unabashed adoration was a gift I won’t soon forget. The very air around us felt affirming and empowering as we admired each other’s style, danced and ate together and applauded the evening’s Wisdom Keeper honorees, Valarie Kaur, Cara Page, Emilie Townes and Krista Tippett.
In some ways, the night felt surreal. Was this me, dancing and beaming and ecstatically sailing toward every woman who crossed my path to compliment her while still freshly nursing a broken heart? Was this me, former journalist and greeting card writer, making her way through a room of community activists, organizers and faith leaders with a sense of belonging? When I introduced myself as a grief advocate and guide, when I talked about my work inviting us to be human together, when I shared how much I valued the tenderness and compassion reflected in her own work with bereavement counselor Mirabai Starr (there to present a Wisdom Keeper Award to her good friend Valarie Kaur) — I sometimes felt as if I were outside of myself, watching this other woman in a world I’d never imagined.
Ten years ago, I visited Nashville for the first time, beyond excited to land in this city of musical genius and creative fecundity. I was a journalist at the time, interviewing musicians and singer-songwriters, from the rising to the renowned, for a column I wrote called Sound Stage. Nashville was where my family decided to vacation that year. I woke up each day euphoric to be in the place where so many artists had shared stories with me of writing songs, making albums, performing on iconic stages, finding untold inspiration and support to steer their careers forward. I caught a live music performance every night, including at the famed Bluebird Cafe, checking off a list from a publicist I’d worked with, and fell in love with the city.
I did not know at the end of that year, I’d leave my job at the paper and effectively quit my decade-plus career in journalism. I did not know how much would change in my life, how many iterations of me I’d come to embrace, how many evolving chapters would carry me to unexpected landing places. At the time, I was two years into grieving the death of my dad, still for the most part living the life he’d known.
Now, as I sit at Just Love Coffee Cafe with my quiet fervor of gratitude, I’m aware, not for the first time, this is the me he’ll never get to see. The life he’ll never get to step into to share and celebrate with me. Yes, I feel his presence all the time, know he’s beside me with a love that honestly feels bigger now than it did when he was alive. But I can also appreciate the fear of moving forward many grievers feel, the hesitancy to start or try anything new that, in their mind, takes them away from the person their beloved knew.
Will they still feel connected to their loved one if they start a new job, move to a new town, enter a new relationship, say yes to an emerging facet of themselves that longs to be expressed?
Yet this is part of the journey and invitation of grieving: we are not meant to stay who and where we are. Just as there is no getting “back to normal,” stasis also isn’t an optimal state. But many find themselves here. Scared to face their grief, unequipped with tools and resources to gently turn toward the ache, burdened by internalized messages that center strength and soldiering on, they remain stuck — as closed to the heavy, uncomfortable emotions they carry as they are to the joy and wonder of being alive. They lose their connection to self, if they’re even able to remember who they are underneath the ever-shifting layers of grief. They lose touch with hobbies, passions, the things that lit them up; struggle to be fully present in their relationships; move tepidly through their days wary of trusting life.
But I believe life is always waiting to love us. The moment we decide to love it back opens us up to possibilities that may challenge us but also bloom us into the fullness of who we’re meant to be. If we allow space for the alchemy of grief and what it has to teach us, if we can be patient and compassionate as we sit in the dark, if we can face the unknown with curiosity and invite in beauty and connection to gentle the way, we begin to thaw. The heaviness and overwhelm starts to fall away. We begin to slip off the rigidities of our stories from the past, our harmful beliefs, our mistrust. We start to recognize we’re not alone and that, in fact, grief has a way of enfolding us more deeply into the human family. And we begin to honor our sorrow, our anger, our disappointment, our melancholy, grief’s every wild permutations as a gateway that draws us closer to our authenticity. To the full range of our self-expression and into the heart of what matters most to us.
A month ago today as I write this, I was hours away from a breakup. A breakup that has splintered and tenderized my heart more deeply than I expected. That had me weepy almost daily before my trip to Nashville, thinking, here is a moment, a grand, shining moment that I will never get to share with him. Yet that willingness to be open to the pain, to allow the moments of falling apart followed by grounding with care and support, are also why on my last morning in Nashville I’m eating breakfast with a side of happy tears.
Each “thank you” I murmur celebrates the largeness of my life. A life I couldn’t have foreseen from the shadowy sadness that draped so much of the early years after my dad’s death but that I kept stepping toward every time I allowed my grief to free a little more of me. Every time I seized the courage to say “yes” or “no” to a direction, an invitation, a desire, an emerging or abandoned part of myself. I followed the cracks of my heart, letting them be as much a guide as the joy and magic I’ve always trusted.
I let life in again, as one client recently shared she was ready to do.
“I’m not sure what that means yet because I’ve changed so much,” she told me, after enduring the long loneliness of wondering if she’d ever be happy again. “But it feels like I’m coming back to life and trusting myself again. And I want to live and soak up as much as I can.”
Learn more about my journey at Circle of Miracles
I’m honored to be this Sunday’s Spark Speaker at Circle of Miracles in New Britain, Pa. I was ordained as an interfaith minister through Circle’s ministry school in 2007 and I’m excited to be back speaking about “Making A Home for Grief.”
Join me for a morning of beautiful community, music, meditation and inspiration as I share my journey to becoming a grief tender, along with some of the lessons I’v learned from grief along the way.
The service can be accessed in person or via Zoom. Find the Zoom link and learn more here.
Join me for a free grief careshop at Pagan Pride
In her poem, “Wild Geese,” the poet Mary Oliver writes:
”Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”
What are the calls from nature, the messages and medicine that are waiting to meet us in our grief if we slow down to listen? I’m looking forward to holding this grief space at Philadelphia Pagan Pride Day on Saturday, August 31st, in Clark Park B, West Philadelphia. In this 50-minute careshop, we’ll take time to be resourced by nature, connecting to her generosity through meditation, journaling and ritual. All griefs are welcome.
Pagan Pride Day runs from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and features an incredible lineup of workshops, entertainers and vendors. Stay tuned for the exact schedule of the day on the website linked above or social media.
Nourish returns for the fall with BIPOC grief care
If you’ve spent any time with me at all, you know that “nourish” is one of my favorite words (along with all variations of “tenderness.”)
Join me in this weekly BIPOC space to offer your grief some gentle attention and care, alongside practices, inquiries, framings and encouragements to soften into what feels hard and cultivate a welcoming warmth for what wants to be acknowledged. Among the topics we’ll explore are how to approach grief from a place of reverence instead of dread, listening to the body in grief, connecting to our ancestors for support and learning to be with darkness. Sessions will include poetry, writing and art-making, guided meditations/grounding exercises, ritual and group sharing/reflection. All griefs are welcome, as we navigate the inner and outer landscapes of these times, holding them as inseparable.
Sessions will take place via Zoom starting Tuesday, September 10, from 3-4:30 p.m. EST, and will run at the same time every Tuesday through October 1. Zoom link will be sent upon registration. Energy exchange is $125 for all four weeks.
Sign up here. Or pay via Venmo @Naila-Francis or Zelle or PayPal at naila.francis@gmail.com