Grief In Public Day
Today is Grief in Public Day. As I’ve been awakening to just how deep my own grief has been these past few months in the face of some big transition and loss (amid amid amid), I’ve been sitting with a question I ask a lot in my grief circles.
What do we deny in ourselves when we deny our grief?
And, in that denial, how am I minimizing my own heartache?
And, when I deny and minimize this in myself, how does that normalizing the suffering and heartache of others?
I ask these questions with great compassion. I know my heart and mind were doing their best to protect me, to help me get through. I understand that I alone am not to blame for systemic issues of oppressive violence.
AND. I know that the “personal is political” and so is grief. There is a vast amount of power and possibility in my ability to be with my own grief. (And when we are able to do that together?! My goodness <3)
Tending grief is messy and challenging because grief is expansive, alive. Because loss impacts us on so many levels - from the physical, the heart, social connections, and even our own perception of self. Grief is not easy to turn towards. And many of us are kept from turning towards it, towards each other.
For this Grief in Public Day, I write this in an effort to resist and lean in. To hold a mirror, a light to my grief, and offer the messiness some witnessing. (Thank you for also witnessing me). And I wanted to extend the invitation to you all to be public with your grief. We are not ok and this world is not ok right now. Our communities are being targeted. People are being disappeared. Put on lists. Access to so much from affordable food and rent to gender affirming health care to covid-conscious spaces is even more greatly impacted. All the while genocides have been/continue to be normalized.
To stop to grieve, to grieve aloud, is one way to resist. (Grief as liberation, resistance work takes many forms - from street art to protests to planting seeds to wailing to meals together). Our hearts, spirits, communities, ecosystems, and future kin need this, dear ones. I fear that turning away from grief also aligns with systems that want us to normalize our suffering and the suffering of others. That want us to forget the sacredness of our aliveness. As well as our connections to one another, to land, and to our more than human kin.
When we turn away from grief, is there also a part of us that turns away from love, joy, hope, possibility, too?
AND
When we turn towards grief, rooted in love and hope, what becomes possible for us? For the next generations?
a grief ritual:
* Create the space however feels good to you and what is available to you. (i.e. go to a gentle spot in nature. Light a candle. Put on your favorite songs to rage dance to.)
* Set a timer for the amount of time that you have and feels appropriate to you (I suggest at least 5 minutes).
* Bring your hands to your heart and ask yourself, “where has loss been showing up in my life?” And, “how have I been tending to the response to that loss?” And/or “how would I like to be tending to that response to loss?”
* In the time you have left, can you take a few moments to tend to your grief in these ways? Whether that’s a few minutes to cry, to journal, to rage dance, to ask for a hug, to scream into a pillow, to draw, to listen to bird sounds, etc.
* Be sure to close out this time with intention and care for the transition. Blow out the candle, take a few breaths to center, etc.
* Lastly, because it’s Grief In Public Day - can you share your grief aloud, with someone or something beyond yourself?