Last week I talked about asking ourselves “Am I sure?” before responding to a situation and that, in the pause created by asking the question, we can allow ourselves to see more clearly and to let go of unhelpful reactions based on misinformation or our own stuff…now, allowing and letting go are two things I kind of suck at…I read a quote in a book once and the author said something like, “I’ve never let go of anything that didn’t have claw marks on it…I feel a bit that way too…so with letting go in mind, today we’re going to begin a mini-series on grief…
Right now our country is swimming in grief…maybe drowning is more accurate…over 221,000 people have died of coronavirus…almost a quarter of a million people have died in this country alone…I think sadness blankets our country…and it’s not just coronavirus…there are wildfires in California, Colorado, Oregon…hurricanes in the south and on the east coast…tornados in the Midwest…and I live in Colorado where the air is not fit to breathe and the sky is raining ash…just typing all of this is overwhelming…but we are here and we need to figure out a path forward…a way to survive and even thrive again…although that is difficult to imagine right now.
I’m pretty sure we all remember there are 5 stages of grief, and I bet most people can name at least 3 of them easily…denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance…they all just sound fun don’t they?! Don’t ya just wanna jump on in? And so we begin with denial…I’m an expert at that…deny, deny, deny….that is frequently my go to plan…if it doesn’t exist then there isn’t anything to worry about.
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, in her book, On Grief and Grieving,“ says, “Denial helps us pace our feelings of grief. There is grace in denial. It is nature’s way of letting in only as much as we can handle.”
Over 221,000 people are dead in this country from coronavirus….and whether we experienced a loss personally or not we are all heartbroken in some way and we feel the collective loss…I feel it deeply…sometimes it’s paralyzing.
I am disabled and have chronic pain…both of those things also involve grieving because I have experienced great loss from my disability…I have lost so much and others with chronic pain and disability have as well….and we need to grieve…I need to grieve. We share common grief and yet how we experience it may be different…because we all experience and process grief and loss differently. So the process, and how it looks externally, may be different but we are all in pain and we have all experienced tremendous loss…and we need to grieve…the world needs to grieve.
The losses created by chronic pain and disability are not tangible losses…you may not be able to see them and so they frequently go unnoticed by other people, even people who are close to us. When someone dies grief feels clearer…you mourn the loss of someone you loved. You understand the loss and the world around you understands…we offer sympathy because we can see that you are grieving and we know what you lost…or we think we do.
Although, seriously…if we’re honest, we only understand for a period of time…then we become impatient with people and with their sadness…it makes us uncomfortable…we don’t like it. We want them to get over it already.
When I was in my 20’s, I had a miscarriage in between my second and third child. Miscarriage is such a hard thing…you go to the doctor because you’re having a baby and when you leave the doctor you aren’t having a baby anymore…there was no heartbeat. Friends and family expressed their sorrow for us…I still felt pregnant…my body had not registered the loss yet…but then it did. A close friend at the time, grew impatient with me and my sadness. She told me that she was worried about me because I was still so depressed. She said it was time to let it go and move on…I’m not sure how anyone thinks they can decide for me when I should be done grieving…I don’t think you’re done until you’re done…I frequently say…”You can’t do what you can’t do until you can.”
Part of the reason I talked about sitting Shiva, a couple weeks ago, was because I think we need rituals around intangible grief….just like we do when someone dies. In the Jewish tradition people sit Shiva for a week…they are allowed to focus on the loss they have experienced for a week…nothing else just the loss….
I was raised Catholic and so I experienced a few “Wakes” when I was young. I have to say as a kid seeing someone dead in a coffin was a little hard to process…I remember the first wake I was taken to…and let me just say Irish people are serious about their wakes…I wasn’t sure what would happen…although someone must have prepared me…it was my godmother’s brother-in-law…not anyone I was close to. I remember walking in the room and saying the 9 or 10 version of what the fuck!…although quietly because I didn’t want to get in trouble…no way was I getting close to him…and I swear I could see him breathing…clearly I needed more preparation.
As an adult, experiencing a Wake was completely different…I got it…I got the reasons we want to see someone before they are cremated or buried…or whatever they have chosen…because seeing the person helps your brain understand that that person died…you can physically see them…that’s really real. It also provides an opportunity to say goodbye…which is especially important if a person dies suddenly…you can touch the person and feel the death in their body…you can see that the person you loved isn’t in that body anymore…a Wake kind of bitch slaps denial…it’s hard to deny what you see in front of you…it’s gut-wrenching and helpful, although it does not feel helpful at the time.
I have learned that we cannot let go of something or grieve a loss until we know what we have lost…that’s what sitting Shiva and attending a Wake help us to recognize…we sit with the loss for a week or for several hours…and others understand and share our grief…they are there in our grief with us…we have a community around us grieving with us…they see the loss too.
I think rituals around grief are so important…I don’t know of any rituals to grieve the losses of chronic pain and disability…we need rituals…without them we may not even recognize that our grief exists, or that we have experienced any losses…because are in denial…I know this because I live in the house of denial…I may not own it, but I definitely have a suite there. Rituals help to ground us when we feel groundless.
Rituals, like sitting Shiva or attending a Wake, help us begin to move through grief…through the denial…initially…grief is a process…a process that takes as long as it takes…everyone is unique and so is their grieving process.
But what about chronic pain, which is often invisible to other people? How do we grieve? Can we identify what we have lost so we can mourn? Can we feel the death, like we can at a Wake with a casket in the room? What about a community to grieve with? Would anyone even want to grieve with me? Can I make my loss understood so others can feel it?
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross says, “The limbo of loss is in itself a loss to be mourned. Uncertainty can be an excruciating existence.” There is so much uncertainty with chronic pain…not knowing what the future will hold…or what will happen to us…that limbo can be excruciating.
The whole country is in an excruciating limbo right now with COVID….We are afraid and don’t know what will happen next. And there are other losses…the death of people we love, we have restrictions we never had before…(Put your fucking mask on!)…loss of freedom, safety, security, health, feeling isolated and lonely, we fear of the unknown…and so much is unknown. Now the bitchy part of myself wants to say, “Welcome to my world” but that is unhelpful…
Because of COVID people are experiencing some of what we experience with chronic pain…there is the loss of people we love…only there is no casket…instead it’s people who get tired of you not being well and so they leave your life, I have restrictions on where I can go, how I move or get around…I have to plan…I have to know if there are stairs, heavy doors, low seating, chairs without backs, handicapped bathrooms, handicap parking…for safety…I have to watch out because people don’t pay attention and bump into me or kick my crutch…I have to be careful of falling, so my freedom is definitely restricted in all kinds of ways. And I have lost parts of me…of who I am…things I can’t do but used to, like work. So my idea of who I am has had to change more than once.
The limbo of loss is excruciating…for sure….for everyone grieving
We may not see it, while we’re in it, but grieving all of these losses from chronic pain is a process…a similar process regardless of the loss…we need to grieve…we need to talk about our feelings and that we are grieving…we need to let others in and educate them…we need to allow ourselves the process of grieving…we have to be willing to sit with the pain and the loss.
WE MUST LEARN TO LIVE WITH THE LOSS…whether it’s the death of a person or a part of ourselves…BECAUSE WE DO NOT JUST “GET BETTER” OR “GET OVER IT”…We do move and change and so our understanding and interaction with loss changes over time.
SO what do we do? Aside from sitting with grief and pain, and creating our own rituals, we can start a contemplative practice…like meditation or contemplative prayer…A practice where we silence ourselves and our thoughts. Where we move deep into the Knowing part of ourselves. The place we know we can relax and Be…where we know who we are and what we need…maybe it’s where the intuitive part of ourselves resides. Grieving needs silence and space…meditation and contemplative prayer provide that space.
We use the word “grief” when someone dies…death needs grieving. But I wonder if the word “grief” would allow me, and then other people, to understand my pain…maybe I don’t understand either…maybe I don’t spend enough time with my own grief to understand it…if I don’t understand, how can other people understand.
The finality of a disability or chronic pain is hard to wrap your head around…or hard to even want to wrap your head around…you reach a point where the illusion, the denial, can’t stand…even my denying self knows what’s real
LETS BE REAL…Maya Angelou has said, “You may not be able to control all the events that happen to you, BUT you CAN decide NOT to be reduced by them.”
We MUST become more from grief not less…become more compassionate, not less, more kind, aware, understanding, patient, sensitive…share more, not less, listen more…speak less…
There’s a saying that what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger but maybe, what doesn’t kill us can make us more compassionate…perhaps even give us more insight into ourselves and others.
Remember compassion 1st…it’s what we all need…even if we are in denial.
Kai Raines 