“If you cannot grieve, your creativity is locked up.”
Matthew Fox
I’ve been writing an
essay on the impact of my father’s death when I was sixteen because I’ve been
invited to read at a night of loss and remembrance in December. His heart attack feels like the central feature
in my emotional landscape, the river that runs through all other relationships.
Although I’ve told this particular story of loss many times, I’ve come to new
awareness as I attempt to be utterly true and faithful to the events of that
week.
For instance, because I was told not to cry minutes after
finding out he had died, I turned my attention to the many people at our home,
most of them crying at his sudden, tragic death. How often today do I privilege
another’s experience over my own reactions, sometimes to the point where I don’t
even know what I’m feeling?
REFRAMING THE
FAMILIAR
Back then, I focused on organizing the food that acquaintances
brought by, and when a neighbor asked if we needed anything, I dead panned “yes,
we’re running low on potato salad.”
Another woman looked at me sharply, as if to suggest this was no time to
joke.
For years I’ve interpreted that moment as my inept defense against
sorrow. But recently a new thought
emerged—what if I was channeling my father’s dry humor? What if that sentence
was a signal he was right here with me? What if I didn’t do it wrong?
No matter how many years later, we can reinterpret our
actions through a lens of compassion, and thus heal from what might have been
silent, secret, or even false.
RETELLING IMPORTANT
STORIES
What are the major stories of your life? Have you shared
them with someone recently? Even if you’ve told them to dear friends, siblings,
or partners, tell them again, because you’ve never shared from today’s
perspective, and something new could emerge. Our lives are not movies or news
where we only share the latest with hungry consumers.
BE A SACRED CONTAINER
FOR OTHERS’ GRIEF
Publicly we are in the midst of listening and telling our hardest
tales. We are called to be sacred containers for the difficult stories of those
we love and those we’ve never met. Yet, I
am able to hold another’s trauma without looking away, diminishing, or
dismissing it only if I’ve faced my own
heartbreak. As Carl Jung noted, those who don’t face their own shadows project
them into the world.
May these shadow stories seep into our hearts and soften our
rough edges.
And when the grieving is over, perhaps we can then create a
new world where kindness prevails.
