February’s Theme: Scheduling Time With Our Grief
Sometimes our ghosts devour our growth and try to dim our light. This is where you learn the deep lessons of courage and completion.
Last month I wrote about taking advantage of the stillness of deep winter and giving yourself Permission to Go Within. This month my theme is Scheduling Time with Our Grief. This is not an easy topic for me.
Sometimes it feels as if our grief swallows our growth. But it’s still important to make time for it. Otherwise it remains in the background. This particular image is chilling in its truth because of a recurring dream I’ve had since childhood. One where I was held down by hooded, faceless figures and was unable to scream or cry out. I know now that this was a metaphor for the loss of my innocence, but all I knew then was the terror of being silenced, again and again. Then, my little girl brain, fueled by a motivation for mental and emotional survival, performed the brilliant act of dissociation, pushing it deep below the surface, and helped me create new ways of being that wouldn’t allow fear or grief to rise back up. I practiced and performed this feat for years and years. I got good at it. Really good. But there was one problem: It didn’t solve the problem. It was a child’s way of dealing with grief. Not an adult’s.
January’s post on Going Within held an image of what we imagine going within will feel like, only to be disillusioned by the reality that it can feel rather dark and shadowy if we’ve never dealt with our grief. It’s kind of like playing peekaboo with a toddler. When they put their hands in front of their face and can no longer see you, they assume that: 1) You’re gone and 2) They’re now invisible. I was playing peekaboo with my grief. And I was the toddler, letting myself believe that if it wasn’t front and center, that I’d successfully dealth with it. Unfortunately, unfelt, unresolved grief doesn’t just disappear. It remains present in the shadows of our lives. It doesn’t magically transform into the image from January’s post - clean and crisp and clear, until you actually integrate it. But integration isn’t fun. It isn’t easy.
And often that’s enough to stop us from going any further. Our brains and hearts will always take the path of least resistance if given the choice. Sometimes it’s embarrassing to admit that I’ve made it almost sixty years without realizing how much I’ve been carrying and how heavy it feels. In fact, I’ve put myself into the chrysalis for that very reason - to force myself to choose differently. Otherwise I won’t do it. Obviously…
Having come this far being so perpetually stuck is a testament to my Capricorn nature. My soul is stubborn to a fault. And fiercely protective of my psyche, apparently.
Hell, I didn’t even remember the first inklings of my abuse until I was twenty-four years old with two children of my own. Not an ideal time to process grief with a newborn and a two-year-old.
It wasn’t until later - much later - after raising four kids and realizing I still felt broken, that I finally went searching for the threads to unravel this complex web. By then they were so deeply embedded that I couldn’t even reach their ends. Grief and dissociation had done such a good job that even EMDR therapy, which changed my life in profound ways, didn’t get to the heart of it. I needed to get rid of every other excuse and allow the desire for freedom to eclipse every other distraction. Perhaps you don’t need something so extreme in order to deal with unspoken grief or trauma. I hope that’s true for you, but we all have our journeys, and this is mine.
What that looks like for me this month is scheduling time for grief. Blocks of time with a beginning and an end that are dedicated to sitting with grief and simply allowing it to exist inside of me. And when the time is up I put it back away. I move on with my day. I don’t allow it to swallow me or shipwreck me or steal my joy in other parts of my life. As a self-proclaimed “all or nothing” person, this is not easy for me. I’m traditionally all in or all out. Completely numb or absolutely consumed. So it requires me to learn skills that aren’t currently in my arsenal. To nurture the small light in my lap and to allow the shadows to exist behind me. To focus on the potential for growth if I can learn to truly integrate with intention.
I’ve also been doing quite a bit of ancestor work this past couple of years, which has turned out to be crucial for me in this process. Learning to accept and not hate that which made me.
You might have to read that again and let it sink in. No judgment - it took me years to understand the truth of that statement. In essence, I realized some time ago that hating my ancestors, whose DNA is literally inside of me, meant hating parts of myself that I had no choice in creating. In the end, self-hatred, in whatever forms it may come, is a drain on your physical body, your emotional stability, your spiritual growth and your ultimate longevity. So hating myself through hating them is only hurting me, if that makes sense. And it didn’t make sense, not for a long time anyway. Not until recently. I guess I had to be ready. Kind of like the caterpillar.
How does one heal the things that are passed down generationally, you might ask? Things like grief and trauma and familial patterns and societal conditioning are enmeshed in the fabric of what we know as reality and are almost impossible to extract without tearing down completely and rebuilding.
Hence the chrysalis. In fact, the answer to that question is precisely the journey I’ve been on. One that is deeply personal, often painful, and involves regular interaction with, holding space for, and offering love and healing to persons I have known, as well as those I have never known.
This work involves trust. Vulnerability. And forgiveness. The three things I don’t give away easily. Figures…
Why would I do this? Put myself through this? Because sometimes the only way out is through. Besides, I’ve tried everything else. Literally. And I’m sick of feeling bound and trapped by unnamed grief and fear. Isolated by it. Because the way predators like fear work is that they repeat the same lies until those lies become your lived truth. They convince you to isolate yourself, or hang out in an echo chamber of other voices that are just like yours. Then they feed on your energy. Instead of a single kill, if they can get you alone and keep looping the same messages inside your head that you’ve been hearing your whole life, they have an unending supply of energy to keep them alive. These looping tapes can seem oddly comforting in their familiarity, even if their lies are ridiculous and lead you into line in the procession of the walking dead.
The zombies have evolved. They’ve figured us out. And honestly, it can be hardly noticeable. Part of our fear is change, after all, and as they say “the devil you know always seems more appealing than the one you haven’t met yet”. That’s how fear works. How it keeps us enslaved.
At some point, usually when you’re sick and tired of feeling sick and tired, you’ll have an epiphany, and it’s then that you start to wake up.
When comfort no longer feels comfortable.
I love this quote by Anäis Nin: “And the time came when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom”
Suddenly, staying the same, repeating the same patterns of excess and consumption became painful for me, and I began to long for a set of wings.
I had to stop being content to remain a caterpillar. My dreams of flying had to become stronger, more present in my psyche, than the dreams of being held down. Of being silenced. Of being trapped under the weight of unnamed grief. But ironically, you have to first become aware that you’re focusing on it in order to name it and then stop focusing on it. The alchemical process of metamorphosis requires first an all consuming focus and awareness, then the realization that this fixation is unhealthy for you in the long run, then letting go of everything, then dissolving and integrating it so the new imaginal cells can come online. It’s ugly and messy inside the cocoon, but only after that messy work is done can you start focusing on building those new wings. When they’re no longer weighed down by the past but rather free to dream brand new dreams. That’s the only way the caterpillar can become the butterfly.
So I’m naming it. And going inward to dissolve it, once and for all. To change my own DNA through the epigenetics of healing. Not changing the underlying DNA itself, of course, but changing how that DNA expresses itself in my life, and hopefully within the lives of those who come after me.
Then another sticky thought reared its ugly head: Maybe this idea that it is part of my life’s work to focus on generational healing and tending to the grief of others is just another sneaky tactic my psyche is using to allow me to deny myself and keep putting others first! Well, isn’t that just a bitch…
However, even if that were true, taken to its logical conclusion, it doesn’t really matter either way, because continuing to carry this aching feeling that I am not free, is no longer an option for me. This irony of my existence - this need for resolution - has been present as long as I can remember. I have always been an “old soul”, and in fact, the older I get, the more I evolve, the stronger this desire becomes, rather than the other way around, so what I’m left with - what keeps me going - is the “what if?”
What if being able to fly is everything I ever dreamed it would be? What if the ripple effects of healing can really reach back behind me and simultaneously reach forward into an uncertain future? What if it can set my children and grandchildren up for success in a world that is unkind to the untended.
What if I actually make it to the top of the mountain and throw this ring into the fire and watch it melt away, knowing I’ve finally accomplished that which I was sent here to do? What then? What does life look like without that inherited burden?
February 1st was a Celtic celebration called Imbolc, an honoring of the first inklings of life stirring deep inside the earth. The promise of what is yet to come even without seeing the evidence of it. Seems fitting to be having this conversation with my psyche now.
Never underestimate that first glimmer of light in the darkness. The one we can only see with our internal eyes, wondering if the glimmer is real or just a trick of our imagination. Remember that what you focus on, you make room for, and what you fear, you empower. Straining to search for that light helps clear away the smoke and mirrors and see that which has been there all along: The light at the end of the tunnel.
You take a tiny step toward it, and then another. You keep walking, not knowing what the path will bring but knowing somewhere deep inside that this is right. This is real. Eventually the path begins to slant upward. Become even steeper. Rocky. Hazardous. You stumble. Trip. Scrape your elbows. Bump your knee. But still you walk, and the light gets stronger and you become more and more sure of it with each step.
This is the journey that makes it all worthwhile. And so I continue the climb…
Keep climbing my friends,
With love,
Lynda
