Beware the urge to fix your grief

A likkle Satdeh maanin savor sermon…

When we think about grief, oftentimes we diminish it as an emotion, and a fleeting emotion at that. But even more troubling than calling it an emotion, or expecting it to be a fleeting emotion, is dumping grief into a catch-all category with the other fixable and often avoidable emotions.

Before I go into the fixable and often avoidable, picture me leaning into one of the most valuable things unschooling taught me when I say this to you:

something not being visible to you does not mean that thing doesn’t exist.

In the case of grief, when we don’t feel the gravity or weight of a loss, we feel like we are not grieving. And when we do feel it, then we say we are grieving.

What I am learning and unraveling from the wisdom of multiple grief circles, and the deep studies that I’ve been immersed in over the past few years in seminary and then Thanatology school, is that grief, like love, is always present.

Sometimes when we love someone or something, we can identify and even articulate how they are loving us (the actions they do that we equate with love), or the feelings we have that we equate with being loved. Just like with learning, there are times where we can say ‘yes, I am learning this and here’s why this counts as learning, and here’s how I can see it and prove it,’

But learning, loving, and a lot of other experiences, are happening even when we cannot name, articulate, see, hear, or otherwise witness them. That perspective is really important because it addresses the other aspect, which is the notion that we can fix or solve grief.

Grief is how we savor loss, and loss is promised. As Weller said in his dope read “The Wild Edge of Sorrow”, everything we love we will lose. That’s that real shit! In these human bodies, as we see from all the other forms of nature, all things end. So, while we might speak to some of the things that often sit at the table with grief — things like shame and regret and guilt — I am nudging you towards the wisdom that those are not inherent traits of grief itself. They are not characteristics of grief, but companions, companions that we can dismiss, resolve, or release, unlike grief.

So many of us are already prone to a type of self-deprecation, or judgment, or lack of grace for oneself. And so this realization about grief not being merely an emotional state of being that you and I can shake off, or fix, can be helpful in learning to be tender with ourselves when we are tenderized by grief.

Here’s more real shit for the journey—we are all grieftenders with varying levels of skill, and grieving is a skill we all need, not an mere, passing emotion to avoid or tuck away.

SELF-REFLECTION RESOURCES

1. How do I typically define grief, and where did that definition come from?
2. When have I experienced grief without recognizing it as grief at the time?
3. What losses in my life have I tried to "fix" instead of allowing myself to fully experience?
4. What emotions or judgments do I associate with grief that might not actually be part of grief itself?
5. How do I respond to the idea that grief, like love, is always present? What resistance or curiosity does that bring up for me?
6. In what ways can I become more tender with myself when I feel the weight of grief?
7. How might my relationship with grief shift if I saw it as a skill to develop rather than a problem to solve?