To Winter or Not To Winter….?

Moving On

But when someone is grieving, don’t we hear, “Isn’t it time you moved on? Aren’t you over it yet?”? It shames those of us grieving, it makes us believe we are somehow doing our grief wrong. Please know, we are not. What is “wrong”, anyway?  Rather than turning away from the darkness, rather than going against the invitation of the season – be it the season the earth offers us or the interior season of grief – we can turn towards it. There is wisdom in that. Winter is not dead. Winter allows what has died to settle, to compost, to nourish what is underneath the ground, invisible but full of potential. Winter, darkness, if well used, can be restorative, even magically so.

Here’s what Matt Licata has to say about it:

“To marginalise the experience of grief is to work against nature….There is no final state of resolution.”

Here’s another example. You’re on stage in a play in which you are the leading actor. A death happens. What if the body remains on stage but isn’t referred to? The elephant (body/grief) in the room.  The audience are confused. The other actors keep tripping over it. You know where it is and you develop strategies to avoid it. But there it is, centre stage: the unaddressed death.

Normality and Control

I wonder what those, who so desperately want the ones who are grieving to “go back to normal”, are afraid of. Here are some possibilities (and by the way – that old normal is gone for good).

1 – “I don’t know how to deal with your pain, what to say, how to be, how to get it right.”

There is no right. Just be there, listening, witnessing, with kindness. Saying you don’t know what to say is so much better than saying nothing.

2 – “I don’t want to face the fact that I too will have to deal with pain such as this one day.”

You could use this experience to learn from, and, in time, to develop hope.

3 – “Grief has already visited me and I have buried my pain and don’t want it excavated”.

Use this as an opportunity to tend to your own grief, it is never too late.

4 – “I don’t like change, I like a neat, tidy world, where I know how to be and what is what. I want to feel in control.”

I think this last one is what it all boils down to. We want to feel in control of what happens to us, of our emotions and of our experience: the playwright, director, actor, supporting cast and crew in our own life. This is to deny reality. We are not ultimately in control.  Surely death teaches us that. What we are in control of, what we do get to choose, is how to respond, how authentically, kindly and generously we play our part, how awake we are to what is unfolding.

Disillusionment

This brings me back to something I mentioned in a recent blog: the Native American idea that a newly grieving person is “wakan”. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, my understanding of it is that after a beloved one dies, we are in a sacred state, closer to the mystery that is death and therefore life.

Personally, after my son’s and husband’s deaths, I felt hushed, like I wanted people to be quiet around me, as they might be around a new born baby. I knew, now, something of death, I had witnessed it, travelled alongside the journey of departure and beyond. Unfortunately, nothing in our culture supports us to stay in the awareness of that for as long as we might need.  But one of the consequences of accompanying my soulmate into death is that the illusion of immortality which most of us live with – I’ll do it when I’ve got time/next year/ when I’m ready/when I retire- that illusion was cut through. This is how things are: death happens, life ends.

Expecting a relationship to fulfil us.

Expecting a job/money/new house, to make us happy.

Expecting the future to be better.

Expectations. Disappointment. Dis-illusionment. If we don’t understand it now, we will at the very end.

We won’t “be over” profound grief, we won’t be “moving on” and “getting back to normal,” in a year. Not just because a year is an arbitrary line in the sand but because we don’t get over grief; it is not an obstacle to be overcome. The moon doesn’t ‘get over’ it’s dark side.

Grief is…

Grief is the other side of love.

Grief is a gateway to transformation: it transforms us and transforms with us.

Grief can open us to the depths of our fears and our love, to the authenticity or otherwise of our beliefs; it can shatter us and call forth our courage and resilience.

Grief travels with us wherever we go, informing our decisions and perceptions.

Grief, like darkness and like winter, is the time for dreaming, for moving between the waking world and the invisible.

Grief is a dark, winter blessing and through its restorative nature allows spring to arise in us in its time. If that time is not yet arising in you, I hope you are able to use the darkness well and that through these long nights you come to know the courage, resilience and beauty that is your true self.

With my love

Nickie

News

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is travelled by dark feet and dark wings.