The text read “She did it. They found her.” Every part of me went numb. It seemed like time stopped as I stood there staring at those words on my phone. I remember looking around at all the women in the retreat center milling around laughing and talking to each other with no idea of the inner experience I was having. I was scheduled to give a presentation next as a final project in a leadership program I had been enrolled in. I had no idea how I was suppose to walk in and speak to this group of women when I couldn’t feel my body and my head was swirling in a hazy fog of disbelief and shock that a friend and long time inspiration in my life had just ended her life.
Somehow I walked into that room and pulled it off. I don’t recall much of my presentation but afterward, in response to a woman who said I had seemed disconnected from my words, I told the group of the news I had received. Without skipping a beat, one of the founders walked over, cuddled up next to me on the couch, wrapped her arms tightly around me, leaning her head against mine. I went limp, sunk into her arms, and little by little I began to thaw; a trickle at first, slowly building toward a tidal wave of sobs mixed with anger. The group agreed to take whatever time was needed to sit in support of my emotional process as I oscillated between disbelief, grief, and rage. I wept and screamed and beat the couch with pillows. I can’t imagine having been in a more supportive environment to receive news like that. It felt like a gift from Goddess that I just happened to be at a retreat for the School of EMBODIED Feminine Leadership when I got the news. Whatever I was feeling was welcomed along with my full expression of it. I will forever be grateful to those women and the founders who surrounded me in loving support that afternoon and after. That day I experienced the power and one of many gifts I would come to receive by allowing others to witness my grief and by allowing myself to go to my depths and fully FEEL my grief for myself and our world.
After that weekend, I went into an intense period of grief for months. Unlike past experiences of loss where I would busy and distract myself doing whatever was necessary to push the pain away, this time I sunk into it. I arranged so I could spend days in bed at a time. Under the covers I grieved for my friend, for the immense challenge it is to be a powerful woman in this world and for the very real forces that actively attempt to diminish our light if we shine too brightly. I grieved for the ways I had allowed these forces to dim my light throughout my life. I grieved for my Mother and Grandmothers who were never encouraged or given the support to fully shine their lights. Their message to me was clear. “Play it safe and never stick my neck out too far.”
The longer I stayed in my grief, the broader the experience became, moving from from my own personal loss to ancestral grief and collective feminine grief. I began to realize how layered grief is. I had been carrying around these other forms of grief most of my life but unaware. They lived inside me like an undercurrent. With that awareness came the thought that perhaps for the first time in human history, as a woman, I am living in a time in HERstory where the forces preventing women from living lives of their choosing and expressing their gifts fully are at an all time low. These forces certainly still exist and the pressure to conform and play small can still feel immense but for the first time in perhaps thousands of years, women are free, at least in theory, to shine.
The gifts of grief are many. To spend time in one’s grief is to do one’s soul’s work. It’s a healing ground that offers transformation to those who courageously spend time there. Initially, it stops us in our tracks. It says “Whoa, slow down. Stop. This really matters. THIS was sacred to me.” It demands we halt our busy lives and tend to what we value most. If we stay long enough, the real gifts of grief begin to emerge.
I’ve found in my own grief journey that my big losses were only the top layer of my grief. When I sat with my big losses long enough, the underneath layers began to emerge. They were all the things I’ve been too busy to tend to or not wanting to look at: there are old childhood wounds lingering there that have formed all kinds of habitual patterning in my life. And then there is the collective feminine grief of oppression going back 5,000 years. There’s the collective grief of being born into a world that immediately begins to mold us into something that will fit within the cultural norms. We aren’t given much encouragement to be ourselves and bring our natural gifts forward. This causes immense grief and trauma in our child psyche that knows we are here for a purpose. There’s the grief of approaching middle age and never bearing children. The list goes on…
The experience of grief carves you, breaks you down until all that is false, all the masks, pretense, is obliterated into ash. The only thing remaining is your essence: tender, raw, open, vulnerable. Grace. A grace and humility emerge that can only come from having been to hell and back.
Grief is hard and painful, and ugly and hellish and dark, and it’s also transformation, revelation, insight, emotional maturity, and healing.
I find it no coincidence that grief and love are housed in the same place in the body (lungs/heart). The two are two sides of the same coin. We grieve because we love so much.
Grief is love.
“Grief dares us to love once more.” - Terry Tempest Williams
10 Gifts of Grief
Grief reminds us of what’s sacred. Grief immediately stops us in our tracks, pulls us inward and slows us down to remember what we love and value most. It brings us back to what’s sacred to us. It says “Whoa. This person, animal, place, etc really mattered to me.” Life is short and precious and people and things can leave our lives in an instant. Best we honor what we love and value every day. One day it will be gone and we’ll be glad we gave it the love and attention it deserved while it was in our lives.
Grief demands we FEEL. It’s nearly impossible to avoid our feelings when we find ourselves in grief. We may have gotten very adept in our normal lives at distracting ourselves with social media, video games, or numbing ourselves with food or substances to avoid our feelings. Grief has the effect of throwing us down into our pain without notice. Grief won’t take no for an answer. When it calls, the only response is to surrender.
Grief reconnects us to our true self and is a catalyst for transformation and growth. Grief has a natural effect of pulling us inward. It calls us back from the outer world to our inner world and re-builds an intimacy with ourselves. It has the effect of stripping us down to our essential nature. To go into our grief and get curious is to engage in our soul work. It’s there we have the opportunity to embark on a rich journey of self discovery and get reacquainted with all the lost or abandoned parts of ourselves. It’s an incredible opportunity for re-integration, growth and transformation if we choose it.
Grief builds relationship and community. Grief and loss often brings people together out of necessity and then reminds them of what real relationship and community looks and feels like. We can naturally become quite dependent in our grief for emotional and material support. If we can ask for the support we need, we are often surprised by who shows up to help. Personal losses often bring friends and neighbors closer together. Death within estranged families frequently heals old rifts. Natural disasters often bring whole communities together to support each other, heal and to rebuild. True community often forms out of destruction reminding us of our common vulnerability and healthy inter-dependence on each other. The deepest bonds are often forged out of shared trauma and loss.
Grief connects us to our collective grief that is calling for healing. The longer we explore our grief the more we realize there are many layers to it. The top layer may be a recent personal loss or death, but the longer we spend time in our depths, we begin to feel into the many forms of collective grief we also carry. There are many types of collective grief that can come to the surface: grief around historic oppressions, grief about humanity’s increasingly polarization, grief around what is happening to our earth, grief around the lack of social support to be our most authentic selves and to instead fit into society’s molds. The list goes on…
Grief brings grace: There’s nothing surface or light about grief. Grief throws us into the deep end and it can feel like we are drowning. Grief strips us down and carves us. It shatters our pride and egos, bringing us to our knees and shows us how little control we truly have in our lives. It humbles us in the most painful and, somehow, best way. When we finally stop resisting it and surrender to what it has to teach us, a grace descends on us.
Grief builds inner strength and resilience: You don’t mess with a woman who has returned from her depths. I felt an inner strength building in my back body and shoring up my solar plexus and heart that propels me forward. There’s a fierceness to it, like a warrior preparing for battle, but fueled by love instead of fear or hate.
Grief increases one’s trust in life and the divine intelligence at work that wants nothing more than our healing and expansion.
Grief creates clarity about our lives, patterns of relating, limiting beliefs we hold about ourselves and much much more.
Grief brings self forgiveness: if you stay with the grief process long enough and continue bringing curiosity to it, you’ll start to understand yourself on much deeper levels. This greater understanding brings a natural forgiveness because we can see why we made certain choices.