Do you ever feel like you’ve gone through a wormhole…and on the other side is an unfamiliar world? Do you ever look into the mirror and…not recognize the face looking back at you? Do you have days where all you can do is stare out the window and wonder, as your mind wanders beyond distant horizons?
Yes, yes, and YES. So what does it mean?
What if these momentary experiences were signals that you need to grieve? And what if you don’t need to know what, exactly, or why—there needn’t be words for this unnamable, inexplicable feeling. But what if the way back to remembering who you are, and where you are, and why you are, is the medicine of grief?
Over the past two months, I’ve been in the spiritual emotional deep end. Intense spiritual practice is kinda like jumping in the deep end of your own psychology—testing how well you swim, daring you to gaze into the depths of your own darkness. What wisdom do you discover there?
For many of us, grief is the door to our depths. It can be scary, unpredictable, unsettling to go there on your own. That is why we humans have ceremony, collective rituals to gather, and face these shadows together to witness and be witnessed in the depths of our vulnerability. When such ceremonies are created with intention, wisdom, and care, they have the power to heal and transform our own relationship with our personal darkness, as well as healing our communities. What greater gift could there be?
I have learned in my 40+ years on this earth, that you never “finish” grieving. A couple weeks ago in an Ancestral Medicine session with Beverly Castaneda, my mother showed up. She’s been gone for exactly ten years now, and the awareness of her presence tapped into waves of grief, remembering, regret, and forgiveness.
Just today, I was tuning my 12 year olds’ $50 guitar, and I broke down in tears remembering my 1937 Gibson that was recently lost in a fire. To be honest, I have been walking around in shock from that singular loss for months, and it wasn’t until just today that that grief surfaced and finally expressed.
But here’s the great secret: you don’t ever need to justify your grief. Grief is absolutely illogical, it is not linear, it does not evolve from any survival instinct. I believe this capacity to grieve is one of the most precious, wonderful qualities that proves we are alive.
At a recent community grief ceremony organized by my friend LauraRose, 15 people gathered in a cold empty building while it snowed outside. We took turns warming by the fire, and we took turns in the “truth mandala”—playing with the possibility of tapping into our grief. Much of the grief that was expressed in that circle was very specific, very word-y, very logical. Some of it was planned, some literally scripted (as people unfolded old letters they never sent, and fresh poems they have never read aloud).
It is wonderful that so many people braved the elements to gather for grief. It is wonderful that many people came prepared with thoughtful, intentional offerings. And yet…and yet…something broke in me, something overwhelmed *my* plan to stay quiet, observe, hold space. I moved toward the center, and from the depths of my soul an animal scream rent through my being. Something broke me open, something moved through me that bypassed my safety controls, my desire to present myself in a certain way in front of certain people.
The ceremony had just enough structure, and just enough space, to hold THIS much grief. I writhed, I screamed, I allowed myself to become a hot mess. I melted down, completely. I refused to explain, to justify, or to apologize.
Whatever you do when in ritual: do not explain, do not justify, do not apologize. Allow the moment to unfold into the next moment, allow the energy to move through, move through, allow and surrender. Because ultimately that is all you can do—and when I say “ultimately” I mean in those most crucial moments when we are our most human: birth, death, and all the grieving we get to do in between.
I felt supported, I felt held. I felt witnessed, and accepted. Even without having to explain, or justify, or apologize. That was built into the structure of the ceremony, and it welcomed and allowed a relaxing of all the other pre-made plans, pre-conceived “griefs”, and safe recourses to scripts and stories.
These are not easy times.
This is indeed “the long dark”.
We are living “the great unravelling.”
And now, I remember who I am, and where I am, and why I am:
I am built for these times. I chose to be here, and I choose to stay fully present and alive to this great unravelling. I came here—to this planet in this body on this continent—to walk through the darkness with YOU, to dredge the depths and turn over the compost of all the things that are buried and ignored and forgotten, I am here to embody the cries and the rage and the fear of my ancestors of the three times—past, present, and future—I have walked through that fire, and can face it without fear.
That is my medicine, and the power of grief reminds me again and again, whenever I forget: just grieve, and keep grieving, and turn towards, go through the darkness, because there is a bottom to the “bottomless well” and there is renewal on the other side.
In solidarity, courage, and love—