as published in the INELDA newsletter
As soon as I entered the apartment, this private place, something broke. The towel rack fell. The shower curtain could not hold the waters that washed me down, and the floods began. The washing machine started seeping, the air conditioner started leaking, the remote control battery dying, so the leakage could not be stopped. There were no containers deep or wide enough in the kitchen to catch any of it. The door frame came unhinged, and the glass pane almost fell and shattered, efflorescence from the ceiling sprinkling all surfaces in the living area. As I stood barefoot in the deep end of this marble-tiled pool, it came to me: This space is reflecting back to me exactly how I feel. I resigned myself to the condition of the moment, throwing in the towel and giving in to my only logic, which was to mop.
I mopped washing-machine sweat here, a pool of air conditioner tears accumulated there. In the thick, humid air of grief, in the space of history contained in a 500-year-old building, I was present with the evident abandonment and neglect felt there both inside and out. And so, I mopped, and mopped, and mopped, throwing towel after towel to contain the waterworks. Bending, twisting, stretching, crouching, the figure-eight strokes, the wringing defined a rhythm and a pulse. The friction between my hands, the pole, the mop, the towels, the floor entrained us. My actions were having an impact, outside in. Bucketfuls of building sweat and tears reflected back to me. And, like that, I tended to our grief for days. Until something—discovered traces of black mold—interceded and incited me, supported me, encouraged me; I found the motivation to reach out for help, for the building, and for myself.
Since becoming aware of it many years ago, I have insisted that grief is the human condition. In its very personalized, generous, and reciprocal ways, grief guides us in learning how to grieve and how to heal through our grieving. The natural, unique process of our grieving offers the strictest—sometimes urgent—most individualized self-care prescription.
Through experience and observation, in my personal life and in holding space for individual and communal grief, I have come to realize that grief is a whole-person experience that manifests itself physically, mentally, emotionally, relationally, and spiritually. And each grief journey is one of a kind.
Every trajectory of our grieving is specific, not just to each individual, but also in each individual. How we may experience our grief process will vary greatly depending on what has impulsed our grieving. And the way in which our grief manifests will vary, such that each experience reveals and teaches us something about how to tend to ourselves through our grieving. No book, no podcast, no counselor, no course will be able to predict this, tell us in detail about it, or guide us on what is expected. Grief itself is the surest, most reliable adviser on what we need in any particular moment in support of our well-being, directing our self-care.
Grief is not a condition to be healed, but rather the path toward healing and transformation. It shows us how to grieve, but how do we tune in to what needs grief is inviting us to attend to and meet?
Sometimes we are not even aware that we are grieving. The loss may have been so subtle, or the accumulation of subtle losses may have reached its threshold, and in our conscious awareness, something just feels off. How can we tell that we are grieving? What are the inner symptoms and the outer signs? What is the first inkling in ourselves or our environment that indicates that grief is present? How can we tune in to what grief requires?
I couldn’t find motivation to do anything. I could not sleep, yet I could not get out of bed. I was not hungry, rejecting thirst and any other biological need. I felt numb: the sadness and discouragement was so deep I could not feel it. I felt voiceless regardless of how much I may have said, thought, or written. My mind was restless with everything and nothing simultaneously. Memories, dreams, judgments, shame, blankness, void. There were many things I could think to do, but no impulse to care about any of them. The isolation felt like a huge boulder under which I rested from resting and hid from my own hiding. Until, quite suddenly, I caught the distant sound of the waves. I tuned in to hear the ocean, and as I focused my attention, the ocean was all I could hear. Somehow, its crashing waves resonated, and something in me was awakened by them. In a somnambulant way, I was able to drag my body out of bed, get it dressed, and push to walk out to meet the ocean.
The beaches were mostly privatized, so it was tricky to find a way to the shore. Once there, I found this was the spittoon for an ocean choking on plastic; it was the safe, unwitnessed space where all the crap could be spat out and exposed. The virgin beach was a depressing sight, and I felt right at home. To glance at its vastness, at the imperceptibly long length of the garbage-laced shore, felt overwhelming. Beyond the red and white and blue of plastic, the shine of aluminum, the dull of foams and shoes and tires and buckets, I could not see sand or rocks. Yet the sound of the waves encouraged me to focus my attention, to see. My eyes scanned the landscape, until I was able to identify a particular bit of shore where garbage seemed condensed.
My first clear impulse in what felt like an eternity of grief was to pick up this garbage, in this area, but I didn’t have a bag or container. Quickly I supposed among this garbage would be a bag, and voilà, a bag appeared.
I felt my sight becoming sharper, my mind more focused, my ears tuned in to the pulse of the waves, my muscles discharging as I crouched and flexed, my body warming as the sun and the breeze recharged it. The bag filled up quickly enough, and I found another, and another, until four bags and a paint bucket were filled with plastic residues, mostly drink bottles and caps, some toys and shoes, and some aluminum cans. That particular bit of shore was now clear of crap, and somehow, I felt better—a particular bit clear of crap. The next day, and the next, and the next, and the next, while there was nothing that felt familiar in myself, I, in a somnambulant way, got out of bed, got dressed, and walked to meet the ocean. A particular bit of shore called, and the bags and containers appeared so I could pick up garbage, feeling every day just a little bit more clear of crap, a little bit more alive, a little bit more unhindered, a little bit more this person I was becoming in my process of grief.
Each possible unique manifestation of our grieving—be it physical, mental, emotional, relational, spiritual—brings with it a need that is asking to be met. Because we are not always aware that we are experiencing grief, sometimes our inner experience is externalized, and we encounter it in our surroundings. No matter what, our grief is attempting to call our attention and get us to do what we need to tend to it, to bring us into greater balance, to ensure our well-being and the integration of the loss into who we are becoming.
Grief invites us to ask, “Where am I in my grief process, how is my grief manifesting, what is it asking of me?” And I invite you to respond, as soon as you feel the question, and follow your grief.