Practitioners of grief
I’m not Jewish despite a small percentage appearing in my DNA results so please forgive the reference to sitting shiva. It is meant only to express the unbearable and very present need to mourn, to grieve, and to honour life. I was happily working on a piece about ‘nature as coach’ when death started crashing around me, us. Without words, I had to press pause.
Here we are on the day of the dead, Hallowe’en, All Souls’ Day, all Saints’ Day, and with the olive harvest now underway, winter is fast approaching. The natural order of things, the cycle of life, in nature where death and endings are expected. In nature, and I guess a ‘nature as coach’ moment, most things end or go into dormancy until Spring when life restarts. It’s not necessarily a sad period. I find a lot of comfort during winter here in Sardinia – hunkering down a bit with a good book or two, cosying up by the fire roasting chestnuts, wrapping myself in layers for brisk windy beach walks, eating more root vegetables, fresh harvested greens like spinach and chard, and pulses, nuts, and seeds – some of the key ingredients of a Blue Zone diet actually. Mellow vibes, muted earthy tones, softer light… hygge.
Some weeks ago here, we honoured the life of a dear friend. It was a lovely sunset wake on the beach where friends gathered and shared memories of this beautiful woman who had left us too soon. Uplifting, inspiring, and sometimes funny anecdotes of a woman who had lived a full, rich, life, and touched each of us deeply. A woman who had made us all feel seen and heard. We all grieved her passing and it was healing in some way to grieve together with shared laughter and tears.
I have reflected on grief often over recent years. Maybe something that happens as one ages. My father passed away some years ago and, although perhaps less intense and frequent these days, there is no end really to the heartbreak. There have been other losses, all of which have been hard to accept, but none as heartbreaking as the loss of my father and I’m acutely aware that, now in her mid 80’s and recently diagnosed with dementia, I may soon face what I know will be the devastating loss of my mother. This summer my best friend lost her mother with whom she’d had an extremely complex relationship and I’ve been accompanying her with her grieving. It’s been hard for her but she’s arriving at a place of love. I’ve come to understand that grief is love unexpressed. And, we don’t move on from grief but move forward with it – holding our love for that person in our hearts. In some way we grow with it, around it. A reflection echoed by Nora McInerny in her recent TED Talk.
I recently came across a guy named Stephen Jenkinson. Oddly the same name as a lovely old boss who became a mentor and sponsor for my career. This Jenkinson calls himself a practitioner of grief. He does a lot of palliative care work, is a grief counsellor, writes and talks about grief. I found his perspective, his words, quite powerful.
Grief is not a feeling. Grief is a skill and the twin of grief as a skill of life is the skill of being able to praise or love life which means wherever you find one authentically done the other is close at hand. Grief and the praise of life, side by side.
Stephen Jenkinson, Griefwalker – Trailer
hmm a skill? The ability to grieve and the ability to love. Maybe it’s both? Maybe one feels grief but the ability to grieve is something that may be harder for some?
If you’re interested in hearing more from Jenkinson there’s a fascinating interview with him on confronting one’s own death by LondonReal: TransformYourself titled Interview with Stephen Jenkinson – Thoughts on Dying well in a Death Phobic Culture.
It opens with this:
Your death doesn’t mean you any harm. It’s the most faithful companion you’ll ever have. The inability to die is one of the things that calls our humanity into deep disrepair. We’re death phobic in the extreme. Your dying is your life and your refusal to know that is not life-affirming. It’s life betraying. The great consequence of refusing to die well is the corruption of the capacity that others can grow by virtue of attending to your dying. What would their understanding be of dying then? You’ll have another generation with a grudge and a grievance against the natural order of things. In a culture that does not believe in endings how do they solve heartbreak? Answer is: less heart. And that’s why the sedation and the antidepressants. Where is it written that the best dying is the one you don’t notice? Why should dying not break your heart? When you become a practitioner of grief it stays. Now, you don’t get invited to many parties, I can tell you from personal experience, if you become a practitioner of grief but your understanding of love is renovated for all time. My ability to be alive became habit for me. I looked around and I became almost involuntarily grateful. Death is an ending. But you can know that you will die so you can chart your course accordingly and that’s how it begins.
In many cultures, there are traditions and practices that accompany the loss of loved ones. Mourning events like Irish wakes, wailing walls, and sitting shiva. Again, something about sharing heartbreak and grieving with others seems to be key to the process.
There is personal grief for the loss of a loved one and then there is another kind of grief. Grief for the deaths we are witnessing on our screens daily at the moment. In fact, it’s something that struck me watching the protests in the UK. Grief in particular for the loss of so many innocent children in the events currently happening in Gaza. Grief for humanity. Love for the sanctity of life. In fact one protester interviewed said, ‘I’m so full of grief. I want to grieve with others.’
The number of children killed in the last three weeks in Gaza is more than the annual total from conflicts around the world since 2019, according to Save the Children. Some 2,985 children were killed globally in violent conflicts in 2022, according to annual reports compiled by the U.N.’s Secretary-General on Children and Armed Conflict.
These stats appeared in an article about the concept of ‘thakla’ and the airstrikes. How is it possible? Both the annual totals and the current airstrikes! This is not the natural order of things.
It’s 2023! What is happening? When will it end? Why isn’t more being done to stop it? How have we not learned from the past?
These children are not just numbers. It is not ok. Have we become so desensitised to violence? Have we lost our humanity. We need more articles like this one which gives names and faces to those lost so that we can honour them. Confront the shocking, brutal, senseless, heartless loss of innocent lives and grieve. More challenging voices like this one which speak to hearts and minds about how we want our society, the world we live in, to be.
This death crashing around us is inhuman. I am grieving as a mother, as a human being.
There are many words above but I remain without words.
In grief. In love.
Take care of you!
F ox
NB Thanks for reading! This piece was written for my Substack on 02/11/23 ‘Notes from Sardinia: Musings of a coach‘! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
I also have a free Self-care Guide available which draws on Blue Zone principles and chakras. You can download it here.