Joy and Grief
Dear Ones,
Where do I begin…
Life is just plain hard sometimes. There are so many challenges to face that are confusing, sad, painful, and overwhelming. I feel like I am seeing it with new eyes and not just seeing it but experiencing it myself. It’s a bear! To access it we must dig down deep into the crevices of our being where the anguish is held couched in the seam of our heart space, tight and bound up, refusing to give up its pain. We can go inward to feel and ask for it to show us itself and sometimes it does in a manner that seems doable. Or sometimes it just erupts and surprises us, and we feel hijacked as if some intruder has come up from the recesses of our being expressing itself as a foreigner of raw pain.
As this emotion rises to the surface for us to feel, digest, and process, we may feel a torrent of painful feelings rise through our bodies and course through our veins like a tidal wave. Our chest tightens in the grip of the volcano; about to erupt and crest as our mouth opens and an outpouring of fevered raw guttural sounds of grief emerge. This wail from deep in our bodies serves a purpose. We need a release to move through these painful feelings.
Grief can be expressed in many ways, tears streaming down our cheeks, deep bone-shaking sobs, sadness that sits silently in our bodies and doesn’t move, anger that is the raw energy of power and outrage that we must go through this. And sometimes we tuck it away deep in our hearts for another day. We detach.
We went to visit my stepfather this past weekend whose health is deteriorating rapidly. Only a fraction of the man we knew was present in the reclining chair in the long-term care facility. His breathing was labored, in and out of sleep, confused, and disoriented. It was sad to see as he was once a vibrant man with a zillion projects up his sleeve and just as many stories to tell, exercised daily with his rowing machine, took long walks to connect with all the neighbors, and was quite the polka (and ballroom) dancer with our mother. His long career as a civil engineer included being the head honcho building the Madison, Wisconsin Airport.
My mother's relationship with my stepdad was born of pain, as they met at a Widowers' group in the late ’70s, having each lost their spouse. Their lives grew together, which softened the pain, and they found joy in each other and in life again. Then this too changed as they rode the many waves and ups and downs in life.
I recently watched a documentary on Joy with the Dali Lama and Desmund Tutu, both men whose lives carried huge loss and pain. Yet, these two beautiful men found each other in their work of service. and found joy in their friendship. This kind of joy is also a feeling from deep inside of us that erupts in giddiness, laughter, teasing playfulness, twinkling eyes and love. It radiates through one’s being and is contagious as it meets the other. Its energy permeates through the body, infusing it with warmth, love, and appreciation. It can be subtle, expressed in a bubbling up of laughter that is shakes the body as it trys to contain itself or wildly expressive emanating itself exponentially in playfullness.
On our trip to Wisconsin, we too were met with joy, an emotion that shares a place in our hearts alongside our pain. We saw two of our nieces we had not seen in years and our great 3-year-old niece, a nephew who just bought his first house, my mother who is softening in her 91 years, and two of my sisters with whom I am feeling more connected as my own heart pain from loss has found an expression through the shamanic path. Through the pain of our shared loss, we connect over food, laughter, tears, and each other. We also found beauty in the sun as it cast its exquisite light over the hills and valleys of the wintering land, melting the snow, and creating mud that promised the coming of Spring as new buds of daffodils and crocuses sprouted from the earth.
We are dark and light. We move through emotions that are raw and vulnerable to create new life over and over again. May you know you are held in the embrace of the earth and by us.