Last weekend, I went on some snow-shoeing walks. The landscape was beautiful, though at times also somewhat bleak. The weather in my heart was also variable and included some cloudy spots–what I will summarize as grief or grieving–as well as scattered sun–being touched by beauty and feeling fully enlivened by the fresh cool air touching my skin.
Early on my first walk, I saw a white rabbit–a hare. I wondered if I was witnessing a chameleon effect, that the rabbit had transformed to blend in with the landscape, or that the landscape had drawn out these particular shades in the rabbit. Either way, if this was the case, we know that such a transformation is meant to serve the rabbit well, to aid the rabbit in being safe, preserving and supporting life and health as it seeks out food, water, and living.
I was thinking earlier this week again of some presentations I heard a few years ago at a multicultural counselling conference related to grief at the Ontario Institute for Sutdies in Education, which is part of the University of Toronto. I came away from that conference very moved by some of the presentations, moved by stories of people’s courage and resilience to keep walking despite the grief: grief, which is sometimes a terrible, ripping pain that can feel unbearable, and is at some other times more like a dull but persistent aching that comes deep from one’s bones, deep from the wellspring of loss. At these times, grief encompasses a pulling down. I came away from the conference also with the idea of grief as a kind of companion, one that may accompany us throughout our lives, moving in closer at times, right up with us, and at other times fading from view, like a long-standing friend who calls periodically and comes for visits, though sometimes, if not often, with no advanced-warning or consideration of whether this is a convenient or a good time.
I expect some might react strongly to the idea of grief as a friend. I know I do though not to the exclusion of other reactions, including more conciliatory ones with the reaction depending somewhat on the day, on what is going on inside and out, context. I am reluctant to befriend grief, reluctant to want to befriend it. Yet, it is a companion whether I befriend it or not. It will come unannounced whether I invite it or not. It resides in me as surely as it resides anywhere else. So.
Kathy Hunt wrote:
It is possible that each of us has a functional grieving self, which is permanent, contains a cumulative store of pain and is ready when needed. It is located in a timeless dimension of the constantly changing, fluid self, a self that is not just intrapersonal but [is] also located in the interpersonal, physical, spiritual and cultural domain. (2005)
I believe she wrote this in her doctoral dissertation regarding grieving though I can’t promise this. It was presented by Dr. William West from the School of Education, University of Manchester at the conference in Toronto I mentioned attending in June, 2005.
I remember William West highlighting some concepts that he found particularly interesting: that the grieving self is ready when needed, timeless, permanent, functional, changing. “Do we really need grief?” I remember him saying something like that–though he was not necessarily disagreeing.
I remember another speaker, Ann Poonwassie, from CED Prairie Regional Centre for Focusing and Complex Trauma in Winnipeg, Manitoba. She spoke of the resilience she has witnessed in others as beyond comprehension. She worked with individuals and communities who have been ravished by tragedy and loss, terrible and traumatic events. Paraphrasing here, she commented on her observations of resilience, saying something like: “Do people heal? Sometimes yes, often no, but they find a way to have a good life beside the grief. They build their lives around what matters for them rather than what’s the matter. Yes, they cry. Yes, they never stop grieving, but they have a good life.”
And, sometimes you just have to rest, you have to surrender to the grief and cry it out and write it out and embrace what is. And you also may find you need to take it for walks, surround it by beauty, and by love, give it lots and lots of voice and listening and love. Maybe make it a cup of tea. “Here you go, grief. Sip gently. Let this soothe and warm you up.”
Ann Poonwassie also commented (again, in essence, from what I quickly jotted down on a piece of paper listening to her that day, being filled):
You don’t have to help. You just have to support what people need to do for themselves on their own terms–be what they need you to be. And you have to get the word out from what you learn from that.
After the weekend, when I was looking at the photo that has the tail-end of snowshoes in it, I observed how the imprint the snowshoes made looked like leaves. So I walked for some hours that weekend, etching out life, drawn to the walking, needing it, and leaving behind a long trail of leaves.
I believe grief needs beauty and it needs love.
When grief visits, may we find ways to walk with it, to seek out leaf making and beauty and love, and to leave behind a trail of leaves.
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