Welcoming Grief to our Table
‘Where there is sorrow, there is holy ground’
Oscar Wilde
We often avoid the uncomfortable, challenging, and painful feelings of grief, including sadness or loss. It can be so much easier to look the other direction and deny grief, addicted as we often are to pleasure, comfort, and convenience. Yet grief denied does not go away. Any repressed emotion becomes like a stagnant pool within, a pervasive often subconscious force which undermines our energies and well-being, and our capacity to feel the fullness of joy and appreciation for life.
A saner approach is to open to grief whenever we experience a significant loss in our lives, such as the loss of a loved one, or pet, or another significant event. Grief can be seen as the other face of love. Opening to the unique journey of grief is a way of honouring the love we experienced, and essential in moving on from the loss, and not getting forever stuck or defined by it. This is easy to say; the grief journey is hardly easy, but nevertheless its changing landscape needs to be accepted in order to move on fully with our lives. Useful models of such grief exist, such as the three stages of grief; firstly, denial or numbness, when we struggle to comprehend our loss, to secondly anger, when energy arises again and we fight against the loss, to thirdly a growing acceptance, which is the beginning of healing and a renewed opening to life.
Wiser still is the recognition that grief is a natural and essential part of the tapestry of everyday life. Grief comes in many forms: for example, grief for what we have lost, or will lose; grief for our Earth and all the pain we have caused it in the name of human progress; and grief for the unloved or unacknowledged places within us. In our transient world, everything we love, we will lose. In opening to love or appreciation of life, we also open ourselves to grief or loss. Accepting and honouring both is a full expression of the human heart. Conversely, denying grief is a denial of the full flowering of joy or appreciation.
A freedom arises when we gain the confidence to welcome emotions such as grief to our table, honouring their unique voice, without necessarily becoming completely identified with their transient expressions. Developing the trust in ourselves to be able to ride the waves of grief is key to the arising of emotional maturity.
Yet, it is not always possible to open to grief immediately it arises. Depending on the situation, we may need to ‘park’ it until we are in a safe space to open to it. Furthermore, grief can exhaust us initially, before our energy then returns and we often feel lighter as if we have released a burden.
It is also true that certain kinds of grief can be vast. For example, grief arising directly from trauma, or history of trauma; cumulative grief such as that arising from several losses; or complicated grief arising from say a suicide of someone close to us, or the death of a child. This more complex grief needs to be opened to gradually, step by step, with appropriate support, ongoing patience and in its own time.
All expressions of grief are valid and worthy of our attention. While there is no need to search out grief, when it naturally arises may it be welcome at our table, and let its changing landscapes become a teacher for us. Grief opens our heart and deepens our empathetic resonance with others, and our appreciation, gratitude, and joy for life as it is.
‘The deeper the sorrow, the greater the joy’
William Blake
