Grief: The Final Frontier

keep speaking the years from

their hiding places.

keep coughing up smoke

from all the deaths you have

died.

keep the rage tender.

because the soft season will

come.

it will come...

—Nayyirah Waheed

We lose homes, beloved animals. We lose our health or limbs. We lose capability and

sometimes our skill sets. We lose agency. Sometimes we lose our freedom. We can lose

our dreams.

We lose people. (delete: things) We lose those who depart from this life, sometimes far

too soon, and often without any resolution for who and what they were to us.

Sometimes we lose faith, or whatever we conceive of as God. We grieve the lack of the

communities that we thought would sustain us but perhaps shun us with silence or

denial of our realities.

We think of the places that shame us now, but were once sources of survival at another

time.

We grieve the periods that we lived outside of our own hearts, our own warmth, our own

kindness just to survive.

We mourn for what we lost through the sexual, physical and psychological violations

that created a warped sense of what it means to be the gender we inhabit. We may have

lost the sense of what it means to be sexual, affectionate, playful, or powerful in the body

we live in.

We grieve for what is within us that was never touched by love or never touched period.

We struggle with the worn out strategies to survive, that no longer give anything to us

and in fact harm us: our addictions, our old patterns that used to seem like they were

helpful to others that neither served ourselves nor the ones we were trying to fix.

Our healing has to include finding a way to reckon--and perhaps respect with kindness--

all we hate inside ourselves and all we that we reject because of shame. This is the

demon of self-contempt that spilled over on us from the perpetrator’s own self-hatred.

Our healing has to incorporate the present circumstances of the time we are in now: the

world, the climate, the wars, the body of the earth, the landscape of fear and violence we

ourselves may be victims of. Our healing may need to face how we somehow contribute

to these circumstances by our own actions or inaction.

We grieve the loss of species, environments, cultures, disparities. We recognize the

horrific conscious and unconscious racial injustice, and profound violence to the

genders who love one another differently than we do. We note our own blindness and

disgust toward those who do not see the world as we do. Yes, this is also grief.

We ache for the loss of country, culture, family, histories, or what we hoped would be

family that would sustain us.

We look at the selfishness that we witness or engage in because of our fear.

In the words of Francis Weller, we grieve the soul of this world.

Mending ourselves must involve touching into that complicated space called

compassion--for ourselves and for others-even those we cannot love or forgive. This is a

word that has been overused and perhaps compromised with shallow lip service. The

work of recovery and grief is about release. We do not need to pretend everything has to

be okay with what has transpired nor allow rage and revenge to infect us with its own

toxicity. We release ourselves.

If we can include honest unflinching truth about ourselves, we can grieve our

depression, our isolation, our fear, our anger, our crippling disappointments and

discouragement. We can let go of the coldness or numbness that we take on as shields

of defense against the pain.

We grieve for all the time we still believe the lie that we are small, that we are unworthy.

We grieve for the ways we might have bloated our persona to be included or recognized

in ways that were not authentic to our own true self. All of this is grief beneath the mask

of who we really are and how, in the end, we long to love and be loved.

This journey is essential to being human and healed. This is recovery. It will set us free.

Founder's Blog • The Dilemma of Joy

...one morning
we will wake up
and let our empty hands hang empty at our sides.
Perhaps they will rise, as empty things sometimes do
when blown
by the wind.
perhaps they simply
will not remember
how to grasp, how to rage...

                        Wahtola Trommer.    One Morning

The Dilemma of Joy

It never seems to leave us--that demon of shame or fear that surfaces with a certain play of light in the afternoon; a smell; a phrase or offhanded remark; an inadvertent touch.  Even a friendly encounter can set us off.  For a survivor, there were many components of the abuse that engender these responses, including neglect, a most potent form of abuse.                                            

The power of the trauma--the old messages or memories--can persist as the stench of the perpetrator surfaces with these reminders. 

We contract or dissociate. We regress. We rage.  Perhaps we turn the music louder, dive into work, or succumb to whatever addiction that feels like the only way to numb the pain. 

No matter how much processing we have done, trauma can hold us hostage, embedded in our very cells..  It is why years of talk therapy, self-help and cognitive narratives often fail us.  

The brain swivels.  We believe the lies,  silence and coldness that were delivered with or without words.  All of this created a hypnotic trance that surfaces  again when we are overly tired, triggered, or occasionally even confused by our success.

It is why we need to dehypnotize ourselves from the evil that was done to us. 

We watch the mind spin and ride the waves of fear and self-doubt that were programmed to believe.  

In theatre training, one is encouraged to embody the rage, where the sorrow lives, until it shakes down to grief. Then the power of true feeling comes through the rage and fear, shame or self contempt,  If we allow ourselves to experience the culprits in this way, with grief instead of fear or the shame, we dilute the power of the old ghosts.

But sometimes,  there may be a moment, an occasional sunburst of joy that can pierce through the darkness.  This experience is deeper than pleasure, unaided by drugs or distraction.  It is young, curious and free. This joy can create a dilemma however. How is it that we can feel something so pure, so unself-conscious, open and true when there has been so much pain and suffering?   We briefly touch into that first moment of existence, when we were everything.  It is as if the crust of trauma is briefly cleared as we remember who we really are.

Long ago I met Howard Thurman,  a mentor to Martin Luther King and cofounder to one of the nation’s first interracial, interfaith, intercultural congregations of the time. To him, the inward and the outward journeys of a human being were inseparable. He shared a story that that has stayed with me in my own journey.

Dr. Thurman grew up poor and isolated with his mother and grandma,  a former slave,near the edge of one of its many swamps.  a former slave. He told a story about himself as a little boy in the extremely segregated Daytona Beach of the last century. One day,  Howard ventured off into the swamp singing to himself, fingering the goop and the slip of leaves and moss, immersed in the sounds of the birds and crickets.  He lost track of time or markers—losing track altogether—until it was suddenly dark.

He looked around in the gloaming mist to discover he was lost. A cloud cover had thickened over the stars, and it started to rain. What began as a trickle soon became a downpour. This being the south, the monsoon of a summer storm can be quite relentless. So there he was in the stormy night, a small boy groping in the dark to make his way back home. The lightning opened the sky—then a pause before the thunder. Although it was quite frightful, Howard realized something: if he paid attention to the split-second flash of light, he could take a step or two in the dark, tracing from memory what he had just seen, until the next lightning burst gave him his clue to where he was and where to go. It went on like this—Howard waiting for the lightning, finding his way by that little flash of memory. He trekked between the trees and the swamp, barely missing the bolts of lightning. It took him all night, but he found his way back to his grandma’s house. Seventy-odd years later, he recollected how he had remembered the flash in that dark night and followed it home.

“We travel in the dark,” he said. “Now and again, there are flashes of light. They pass. We cannot cling to them and we still have to go on in the dark. But we remember what we have seen with that flash, until we find the way home.”   

So we grapple with that occasional dilemma of joy in the midst of darkness.  We imagine how it is to be safe enough to be unafraid, or at least, honest enough not to worry if we are. We imagine how it might be if we could create some distance between ourselves and everything else. We could live without the worry about what we say or how we appear even to ourselves.  We would remember that shame, the toxicity of addiction, despair or rage. are the old demons that no longer protect or save us.  We might get some small blink of joyful radiance ,like Thurman’s lightening, that can take us through: a soothing word, a bar of music or some surprising flower's perfume, maybe a moment of peace filled silence that goes deeper than memory.  

Perhaps with that, we can risk the joy-- even allow for love.  

Rage and the Tenderness of Life

Out of a great need
we are all holding hands
and climbing.
Not loving is a letting go.
Listen
the terrain around here
is far too dangerous for that.

 -Hafiz

Rage and the Tenderness of Life

            I do not know any survivor who has not embodied rage at some point in their life:

stuck in both powerlessness and primitive violent feelings, emotions more primal than

anger--beneath words, beyond words. 

            Violation, betrayal, and invisibility can generate a true resolve to change.  It can

in fact create a movement.  But for many, the response to the injustice and grief of

trauma is twofold.  One may seethe in a loop of fury and pain without knowing how or

what to do.  On the other hand, the most natural instinctive biological response to pain

is simply to endure the worst until it ends. For some, retreating in fear and overwhelm

just to feel safe is the only known method of survival.

            But sometimes the force of suffering creates a numbing malaise, or an even

greater depressive spiral downward into despair.  This inward turn can mimic the

original perpetrator's induction into a path of self-destruction.

            We rarely want to discuss this particular response to the rage or the suffering out

loud--that push to harm oneself or to self-destruct.  And we hesitate to mention the

ultimate action: suicide.  But, if we want to truly address rage in its many

manifestations, certainly its darkest side, we also must look at what is most difficult,

perhaps most dangerous.  We do not do this lightly or alone.  It is part of the deep

journey of recovery, as we come to embrace a true alternative to darkness: living life,

tenderly and fiercely, in whatever truth we are.

           I think of Maya Angelou, herself a survivor of sexual abuse, who spoke with such

fire in a conversation with Dave Chapelle:

If you are not angry, you're either a stone or you're too sick to be angry. You should be angry.

You must not be bitter. It eats upon the host. It does not do anything to the object of the

displeasure. So use that anger, yes...You write it. You paint it. You dance it. You march it. You

vote it. You do everything about it. You talk it. Never stop talking it. 1

            As survivors, it is not always safe to speak out, but there are times when we speak,

nevertheless.  Yet, we must also listen to the deep courageous tender place inside, even when

the noise is loud, even with the pull of those same old bad impulses.

1 Maya Angelou in Conversation with Dave Chappelle, 2016

            We cannot get through all this alone.  Life is longing for itself, even in the darkest of

times.  It is why you, I--all of us --need honest, powerful, and real community on this journey of

recovery, so we can remember to embrace this life--all of it. 

            This is one of the biggest challenges for a survivor: trusting the impulse for living that

would lead to a different alternative than what may have been given long ago:  then, to listen

to the quiet friend inside our own breath, choosing this life; choosing connection and yes,

choosing love.

Founder's Blog • 5/31

IT

IT has no name.

IT whispers without words.

IT carries the earthquakes and the stormy thoughts of the past, in the times we are presently in.

IT is rage and fear, violence and disgust.

IT hurts so much.

Look at the events we have just witnessed and experienced over the past few weeks and

months. We are touching into IT by how we respond -- good, bad, and otherwise. Hapless

rage, raging fear, fearful powerlessness. We become hyper-vigilant or flooded, running

toward or running away from the danger and the violence we witness. Maybe we simply go

dark, numb and disconnected, in the mode we have often used just to survive.

Sometimes, and this is the tough one -- our wires get crossed by the abuse we suffered, and

we wish the same harm to those who do the violence. It doesn’t help. It only repeats inside

the very action that left us in this position in the first place.

But I wonder what would happen if we kept the rage tender, the sorrow true, the grief

honored by meeting IT inside head on? This would be the opposite of passivity, or

capitulation: finding the possibility that emerges when we face the beast. Perhaps IT could

bring us to see the cracks in whatever darkness we inhabit, rescuing little ideas that gleam

for a second in our soul then disappear. Coaxing them back. It means attention to

not this or that but possibly both or some other way entirely....*

We are in the midst of great tumult. It is not easy to respond instead of react in the old

ways. But if we remember we are survivors and have already lived through so much, we

can be fierce in our tenderness, loving in our sorrow and grief, creative and authentic in

our response. Perhaps we hold the younger part of ourselves that has no words with

some respect for all we face with kindness, which itself is a form of courage.

However we meet IT, perhaps this is how in our own way, we change the world around

us and ourselves in the process. However large or small our response, this is the

powerful work of life and of recovery as we confront the situation at hand.

And in this, it is activism in the truest sense.

*. Martin Shaw, "Navigating the Mysteries". Emergence Magazine/org