Let it Be: Grief and Integration
This weekend, on my way home from a hike, I had the opportunity to drop into deep inspiration while listening to a powerful combination of talks. Driving alone for hours is rich with the opportunity to dive deep into conversations that inspire me while allowing space for the content to resonate and integrate within me.
As I listened to two inspiring podcast conversations, the theme of letting go, collective grief, and being honest with “what is” emerged. As a pretext, over the past year, I have heard from many people, “I am having a hard time, but I should be grateful because I have ____, and it’s not as hard for me as some others because____.” From where I sit, this minimization of our personal feelings contributes to rather than reduces our individual grief and magnifies the sense of isolation we are experiencing collectively.
I recognize the difficulty in letting ourselves feel deeply while simultaneously admitting the privileges we have. However, in using this as a bypass lane around our feelings and experience, we miss a ripe opportunity to gain insight and awareness. It is difficult to grieve everything we have lost and sit alongside others who may have lost “more” without comparing feelings or experiences. Yet, it is possible to recognize privilege and work through collective grief and integration. This is arduous work.
In the first conversation, “Everything Happens” by Kate Bowler, Kate talks with Ray Hinton, wrongly accused and imprisoned for 30 years. His talk is full of hope, meaning, and love, describing how he found a way to live with purpose and persevere while he was on death row. This is a must-listen interview, and I suggest you have tissues nearby and be ready to shout Hallelujah because this man will move you. Honestly, as I listened, I was simultaneously bawling and inspired while I grieved for those oppressed by systemic racism.
This was followed by a talk with two psychiatrists who operate a group called Widowed Fathers, a grief group for men who have lost their partners to cancer. They highlighted that grieving is BOTH the loss of the person/job/experience you have lost AND the anticipated future around the loss. When grieving, we are required to deal with the loss and move forward into a new and unknown anticipated future without what we lost. Their key point was that those who move back and forth between both types of grieving can integrate and move forward and find a new way to live. Wow, this had me at hello, if you know what I mean. More bawling was involved, more inspiration was found.
A day later, what has come up for me is that we are in societal grief right now. So many of us are experiencing individual grief for so many things. We have lost loved ones, jobs, routines, sacred spaces, anticipated events, health, security, experiences, and dreams for ourselves and our children. (You fill in the blank for what fits here for you, we are each experiencing very different challenges and limitations.)
My experience with loss is that it is easy to look at others who grieve and say “at least you had” or “just let it go” or “you are lucky that you _____.” This way of sitting with the grief of others minimizes our own feelings, so we don’t have to feel the loss or empathize. Meanwhile, as we are grieving and integrating, the world is demanding we move forward to survive. How do we “Move forward” without our loved ones, without the presence of others, without our job or our paycheck, schools, sacred spaces, our beloved pet? How do we grieve our losses AND mourn the anticipated future, all the while moving forward and doing the things of life?
On this long drive, my own grief and loss meta-process rose to the surface. As I sat with the heaviness of what I have lost this past year, the Buddist concept of “Let it be” arose. I began to wonder, “What must happen to let it be? What do I need to say, do, feel or express to let grief move? What vision do I have for myself as I let go?”
My realization was that personally, what allows me to “let it be” is to notice and reflect. I need to feel and cry, explode or laugh, chop wood and carry water and allow the thoughts and feelings to move through until the letting be happens on its own. I need to walk and move, then sit and be quiet and sense what exactly I am clinging to and ask if I am willing to let it go yet? Do I want to? Is it helpful, or am I still holding to something that is positively serving me?
Exhale; final thoughts.
If I made a list of what I have lost, it would be long and detailed. And if you added to that list what you have lost, it would be even longer. Some things might be the same and some very different. And if we are brave and compassionate and empathetic, we might pause and hold one another’s hand and say, “This is what it has been like for me, “and you might say, “Yes, and this is what it has been like for me.” We might agree to sit and hold one another’s hand while we feel all the feelings. We might agree that until we have that vision for the new future, bringing along as part of it the memory of our beloved person/past history, we will hold one another up and cry for one another and say, “Even if I don’t completely understand, I am right here beside you.”
That friends, is my truth today.
Links to the podcasts mentioned above:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ray-hinton-the-sun-does-shine/id1341076079?i=1000486392781
photo: Liza Summer
About The Author
Susan Mathis, M.Ed., E-RYT 500, RCYT, YACEP
Susan is deeply committed to the practice of yoga, pranayama, and conscious living. A Professional Level, Kripalu Yoga Teacher, she offers steady guidance, practical knowledge and infuses the deep wisdom of yoga philosophy into her teaching. A lover of the natural world, adventure, and travel, Susan engages with nature through hiking, biking, and scuba diving. She is the owner and director of alleyCat Yoga and Yoga to Grow.