TALKING, LISTENING

Why do people seem to need to talk when they are going through a significant loss?  As I said last week, one important reason is that we need to try to put our world back together. When our relationships have been dismembered, we need to find a way to re-member them so that they can continue to exist in us as part of who we are without creating too much dissonance.

But, it is more than that.  Talking things out and telling the stories of our life and our loss is also about rediscovering meaning in life. When we lose someone or something significant, we lose touch with the construct of meaning that we have created. When we were in relationship with certain people and played a certain role in that relationship, our meaning was wrapped up with the existence of those relationships. When they end the meaning we made of our life is challenged. "Did  my life really mean what I thought it meant."

And we remember and talk our way through the loss because we also try to figure out what our life will mean in the future.  By telling our story, our life and our loss, we try to stay in touch with what we know about ourselves.  As we rehearse my life, we discover things about ourself that we think are worth developing in our future.

At it's core, this remembering and meaning making is about reconstructing faith.  We place our faith in that which helps us know how we relate to the world and what we mean to ourselves and others. This is why these losses often produce a crisis of faith. "Can I really trust that life is good, or that God is good?" "How does God really interact with this world?"

This is why it is so important that we find good companions who will pull up a chair and patiently listen to our rehearsal of our life. The re-membering of who we are and the re-constructing of meaning and how we relate to the world around us is hard work and requires all the love and support any of us can give. 

CLEANSING TEARS

What do you do when you are overcome with pain, when sadness absorbs you? What do you do when you can’t find words to express your sadness and anger?

I once wrote the following: “Feeling the pain is . . . . important for helping the body release the toxins created by suffering.  The bone and sinew in the body are scarred by emotional trauma and hold the hurt well beyond the heart’s ache.Tears can provide a healing release for the whole system when they are allowed to flow.” (Lose, Love Live, The Spiritual Gifts of Loss and Change, p.43)

And I would add, Find someone and hold their hand. It helps to know you are not alone.

FLOODGATES OF MEMORY

Endings are powerful events. When relationships are ended, we are often faced with a flood of memories. When life as we have known it comes to an end, the space created seems to be invaded by thousands of memories. It is as all the pieces of our relationship to others were held behind a concrete dam. While we were still in relationship with the other, those memories were released a little at a time. But, when the relationship ended, the flood gates are opened and it is hard to control the flow.

One of the reasons this happens is that we may not want to let that relationship go.  Or at least there are parts of it that we cherish. But, our connections to important people and organizations are so important in our own self-understanding that it scares us to let it go. We may not know who we are if we are not in relationship to that person or institution. Our identity is up for grabs.

So, memories clamber over each other to get our attention. The members of our mental and emotional family were integrated as long as our relationship was a living one. But when there is a death of a relationship, the chaos scatters those stories and we don't know who we are.

So, we remember.  We are litterly trying to re-member what has been dismembered. We are trying to keep the relationship alive in our vision of ourselves. It is terribly disorienting to have important parts of our self taken away by an ending relationship. And because the relationship has been important to us, we have to put it together in a new way within our psyche/soul. Because the relationship is no longer a living presence, we need to construct a spiritual presence.

This is why it is so important for people who have had significant losses to keep telling their story--continually rehearsing what happened. They know that who they are is a collection of all the relationships they have had the the events that they have been part of. They need to integrate the experience of the ending of the relationship with their experience of the relationship. 

And that takes as long as it takes--generally longer than some around them would like. So, be a patient friend to those who need to talk. They are doing hard work of spiritual integration.

JOURNEY

Grieving significant loss can be a long and arduous journey. That is why many people try simply to "get over it." But, it is my belief that grieving loss is an opportunity for self-discovery that ought not be missed. When we lose someone who has been critical to our self-understanding and self-identity, our lives are broken open. It is like an earthquake has severed the ground and suddenly you can see the life that was lived centurys ago in the striations of the earth.  

And grieving is a journey in which we can explore dimensions of life that we may have simply ignored before. The journey of grieving, that is, the journey toward creative new life, is learning to live again in the absence of someone or something significant. Therefore, it does have pain and anger because our sense of self, our sense of what is right, may be threatened. By feeling our pain and anger, we see more clearly what we value. 

The journey is also filled with remembrances.  When we lose something that we value, we often spend time remembering it. Telling stories of the recently deceased is a way of re-membering that person within our heart.  They are no longer here the way they were, so we need to create an internal presence by conversation and story-telling. This includes rehearsing the loss, the pain and the anger, all part of the experience. By remembering well we see more clearly the gifts that life has given to us. 

Loss almost always sends us looking for someone or something to blame. Sometimes we blame ourselves for not doing enough, or sometimes we blame others for doing something to make it happen.  Guilt is related to our effort to make some sense out of life.  When we go on this journey of grieving, we try to reconstruct a meaningful world in which our life makes sense.

But, those who learn to live again in the absence of someone or something significant eventually learn to forgive the past for not being permanent. When life is good, we want it to keep going.  It is painful when it doesn't. That pain can lock us in the past. Forgiving is what frees us from the power of the pain of the past to control our future.  It is what opens us up to the energy to embrace what new life and gifts come to us.

In the moments when the forgiving spirit visits us, we discover that we are imagining and playing with new ways of living. We are exploring new practices that will help us figure out the future we will embrace.  We experiment and discover the adventure of new relationships and opportunities.

The journey of grief is painful and challenging. But, it can be an opportunity for self-growth and an opportunity for discovering new dimensions of the self.

TAKING FOR GRANTED

I got up and made the coffee, did my stretching exercises, mediated, and read the sports page and ate my cereal. My calendar had a  list of appointments. As I showered to get ready for the day, I began to feel sick.  I lost my breakfast. I was chilled. Nothing to do but call and cancel my appointments, put on my PJs and crawl into bed.  

It is amazing how we take things for granted. All day, every day, I take things for granted.  I assume that tomorrow I will be well like I am today.  I make my plans as if tomorrow will afford me the same gifts of health that I had today. I plan as if the ordinary pattern of life I am living will be the same one I will be living tomorrow.  This seems natural.

But, sometimes that "taking for granted" gets interrupted. Sometimes what we assume will be challenged. Sometimes we will glimpse a different life--and that life isn't always as we would like. 

When that happens to me, my "taking for granted" turns into gratitude. When I see the empty space where I used to see what I assumed to be real, I see gifts that I had ignored.  I see the energy and healthy spirit that I usually have.  I see appointments and people whom I appreciate.

Now, I know that it is very difficult to go around all the time not taking things for granted.  We would be on edge wondering what was going to happen next.  Taking things for granted makes it possible to think ahead and plan our lives. But, those times when my assumptions are challenged have been insights into the important gifts of my life.

I soon got better.  I had a virus--and it had to run its normal course. And I admit, when I was feeling crappy, I was not very appreciative of those gifts of dependable ordinariness.  But, when I came out from under the covers a few days later, I appreciated life and people around me much more.