What People Feel About Grief is Adversely Determining Our World
You might feel differently about grief depending on when it is happening in yourself, and/or in others.
It wouldn’t surprise me if you felt scared or sad about grief, no matter who feels it.
How people feel about grief is adversely affecting our world.
I Feel Scared About My Grief
As a person who lost my father to death when I was 24, and has by now lived without him, (and with the consequences of not having him) for 27 years, I am familiar with grief and the fears about it.
I have had time and space to discover much about grief and the consequences of fearing it.
I fear my own grief because it hurts like fuck.
More, I fear my own grief because many tend to back away when it begins to come up and out, and they can make up stories about me for having it:
She is being a victim. Pathetic. She is wallowing. Weak. Just wants attention. She’s using her loss as an excuse to pull people in. She wants to be pitied, rescued. She just won’t get over it. She lives in the past. Will she ever move on? She expects others to just put up with this. Again!
I fear grief in others because, from the outside, it seems, they can go round and round in it and with it, and, it can seem that they do not want to find the way out.
I am more scared NOT to feel my grief now that I have seen the consequences of holding it in for my life. I do not blame myself, because there were scant people and spaces where I could go to let it out.
Still, the consequences for me were dire. I became what is called in Modern Culture, “mentally ill.” I couldn't handle my life, with all the pent up grief happening inside me, and when it started to come out, I, nor anyone around me, could handle that. My family couldn’t handle it. I lost connection with my mother and brothers, and the sense of partnership in my marriage was destroyed. My marriage ended and my life fell utterly apart. My four children all but lost their mother.
An Analogy
Grief can be like falling overboard in a storm, over and over.
Scary, overwhelming, and shocking most of the time. If you can swim, you will probably make it to dry land, where you can rest and recuperate. You learn to swim by swimming. Maybe you didn’t learn to swim before you fell overboard in the grief storm the first time. Maybe you are still learning. Maybe even though you end up on dry land time after time, you still wouldn't call yourself a strong swimmer.
If there were others in your boat when you fell out the first time, maybe they fell overboard in the same storm. Maybe you didn’t notice, and as you flailed you wondered (and may still be wondering) where the fuck they are and why are they not coming to help you to dry land?
Maybe they are busy underwater, pretending to be on dry land: business as usual.
Maybe they are drowning and wondering where you are, why are you not helping them to dry land? You asshole!
Maybe they are watching you flail and wondering why the fuck don’t you notice that everything is okay on dry land underwater with them??
I am scared of my grief and the grief of others, even while it makes sense to me that all of these kinds of things happen. Can people overboard in a storm help each other?
I Feel Sad About My Grief
I feel sad because my grief was something I hid, denied, swallowed, pretended not to have, so that I could push through and be ‘okay’. I feel sad to have suffered alone, and that others took themselves to greater distances when we might have shared our grief and thus grown closer.
I feel sad about grief in general, because so many people have been carrying grief, as if they are not okay for having it.
I feel RAGE About My Grief
I feel intense anger about how my grief, this evidence of my love and bond with my father, was not tended, and about how this fucked with my life. Again, I do not hold blame. This is how Modern Culture is. Lose a loved one? Here, have a week off work to get over it. Want to cry? No, not here, not there, not anywhere.
She is being a victim. Pathetic. She is wallowing. Weak. Just wants attention. She’s using her loss as an excuse to pull people in. She wants to be pitied, rescued. She just won’t get over it. She lives in the past. Will she ever move on? She expects others to just put up with this. Again!
Yes, other people have other kinds of experiences. I still personally meet more who had experiences more like mine.
I Feel Joy About My Grief
I feel joy because, arising from my many devastating experiences with and about grief because they have driven me to learn and do things differently. I have thereby discovered that the answer is yes, people can learn to help each other during grief storms.
It is possible to learn to swim, to learn to swim with others who do not yet know how to swim, and to find dry land.
It possible to be with others who are overboard, flailing, scared, while they make their way. I can do this without being in a state of overwhelming grief myself, and without pretending.
It possible to encounter a person pretending to be on dry land who is really underwater in a storm. It is possible to learn ways of being with such a person so they can discover that they have other possibilities.
I sometimes still suck at all of this, but I suck far less than I used to. Sucking in stormy water can be scarier than being in a storm in the first place, after all.
Good Grief: A Sharing Space
Did you learn to weather the storm of grief?
Maybe you are one of the people who is in a slow intense storm as you notice the effects of a numb and mentally ill humanity on Mother Earth.
Would you like to feel your grief and feel joy about feeling it? Would you like to discover how to hold space for someone to grieve and find that it can be a connective and beautiful experience?
An Invitation
If you want to discover more about grief, I invite you to come on Thursday February 3 to a 90 min call on Zoom about Grief, featuring four panelists (me, Philip Be’er, Christine Ploschenz and Meaghan McQuade), who have been working with our own grief and holding space for others.
Come with your questions and with the wisdom of your own experiences. We panelists will also share about offerings for you to consider. Mine will be a 4 week series, called Good Grief.
Good Grief: a 4 Week Series
During this 4 week series, I will hold space for 4 calls (these will happen on Thursdays at noon-2pm Mountain Time), as well as for an ongoing Telegram Group. This series is for anyone who wants to become more skilled at feeling and honouring their own grief, and who wants to learn to more skillfully hold space for the grief of others.
Each participant will expand from where we are, and discover together more about what works and what does not about grief. We will look for what might go differently as we grieve and hold space for grief, and how to empower ourselves to make it go differently, alone and with others.
This will, I anticipate, be a tender and sometimes intense month. Therefore, included in the series are 2 additional one-on-one calls for each participant.
These calls will be with experienced space holders who the participants will meet during the first week of the series.
To Join the Panel Q & A Call Feb 3
Send 10-25$ to nicolebradford110@gmail.com using e-transfer or PayPal (or email for other possibilities)
Arrive on time at 12 noon Mountain Time/8pm Central European Time Thursday February 3 (8am in New Zealand Feb 4) at the Zoom link. you will receive by email.
To Join the 4 Week Series
email Nicole Hartley Bradford: nicolebradford110@gmail.com with the subject heading: Good Grief Series; state your intent, and confirm registration by sending 280-440$ using e-transfer or PayPal also to nicolebradford110@gmail.com
May Your Grief Do You Good
Love, Nicole
I honour the work done by those before me about grief, some of whom have held space for me and from whom I have learned, and I offer these as resources:
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, author, death and grief pioneer
The Alberta Health Services Grief Support Program
Philip Be’er, Originator of B-Loops
Jeff Brown, author and process creator
ArcaTribe, community experimenters
David Burns, artist
Wendy Clemens, midwife
Aletha Solter, author of The Aware Baby
Clinton Callahan, originator of Possibility Management and author of Directing the Power of Conscious Feelings. This work has transformed me.
