The indigenous elder said, “When we knew a grief ritual was being held in a neighbouring village, we would all run there to be part of it.”
Why were they so eager to be in that space? I have since learned that there is no human life journey that does not have loss, heartbreak, and wounding woven into it. Loss is common to all. This is why a healthy village life rotates around grief as well as around celebration.
The second image the elder gave that stirred me was that sadness and joy are two sides of one coin.
These were strong images that altered my conditioning to sometimes show a happy and joyful front and hide any sadness. I was trying to present only one side of the coin: half the face of life.
The indigenous people were running to grief to keep the door of joy open.
I often wondered why so many men in my early life were short tempered and prone to violence. Many were heavy drinkers or smokers, gamblers, or work addicts. If they weren’t acting out their pain on others, they were vacant, lost, lonely souls, with shut down hearts. These men, starved of nourishment and joy, were approached with caution. One father figure to my young self never smiled once in the four years I was in his care and took the slightest misbehavior from us boys as a personal attack on his authority. His moods or his sudden outbursts of rage were terrifying to my pre-teenage self.
Unexpressed grief can surface as frustration, anger, rage, sadness, tetchiness, envy, loneliness, melancholy, addiction, depression, suicidal thoughts, or constant tiredness.
It took me a long time to realise my body had soaked up the legitimate grief these men couldn’t relate to. They never had safe grief spaces, so their grief was absorbed by us young children. And so, it comes down our ancestral lines.
Without realising it I recycled those undigested experiences into tension, irritability, rage, depression, and an inability to praise and bless anything, including myself. These unconscious emotional hurts in me so often got held in a stuck place or projected onto others. I didn’t know that underlying grief needed a home, a purposeful place for it to go so it doesn’t leak out or be sent in the wrong direction.
Even everyday life has tension in it, created by separation or disconnection. If that tension is not to leak out onto others, or held inside, it needs a natural release, so we return to ease - to avoid dis-ease.
Another thing the elder expressed was that a culture without healthy ritual will live in a nostalgic longing for times gone past, so the availability and beauty of the present moment is contaminated.
Grief tending in community is about slowing down, creating safety, renewing the heart, shedding some burdens, inviting in the sweetness of life. It’s about increasing our capacity and skill to be comfortable in our emotions. It’s about keeping our newness alive, our inspiration, our joy, and about supporting our love and appreciation for this life we are gifted.
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