Grief
How do we talk about grief? Or even…How do we grieve?
Western cultures seem to profoundly struggle with navigating grief with grace and understanding. Perhaps grief frightens us because it’s dark and sorrowful, filled with emotions so intense we fear they might consume us entirely if we allow ourselves to feel them fully. That if we allow ourselves to feel them fully, we will drown, never able to rise again. It feels like confronting and processing grief is not super normalized in this culture, and I also notice this implicit conditioning in my sessions with patients when I see how difficult it is for many of us to even acknowledge and tend to the grief that is trying to get our attention.
But without the ability to grieve, we close off parts of ourselves that need tending to. We suppress, we stuff down, and in turn, poison our emotional and psychological well-being. Without confronting our grief and the things we have lost, we disconnect not only from ourselves but from the deeper meaning of the thing, situation or person that we did lose.
As I study and spend more time with Francis Weller- metaphorically speaking- I learn that grief is omnipresent. Loss is interwoven and perpetual. Loss does not manifest solely in major, life-changing events but also in the quiet, often less obvious moments of our daily lives. Loss is present in the subtle shifts, the fading of familiarity, and the gentle unravelling of what we once knew.
The Hidden Weight of Unacknowledged Grief
When we don’t confront our grief and the things we’ve lost, we disconnect. Not just from ourselves but from the deeper meaning of what or who we lost. Grief isn’t just about death. It shows up in ways we don’t always recognize:
The loss of identity
The fading of a friendship
A future we imagined that will never be
The love we never received
The passing of time, of health, of belief systems
The loss of naivety or a version of someone we once trusted
We often fail to recognize grief for what it is, as it can take on many forms, disguising itself in ways we least expect. And when we fail to recognize that the experince could be grief, we don’t tend to it the way it wants and is needed. We carry on distracting ourselves with our busy lives, and all the while, something underneath is present, lurking, simmering, affecting us and our moods and behaviours in some way or another.
It seems to me and also Weller, that our culture does not embrace grieving or the emotions that accompany grief that easily. Western culture mishandles grief due to its fixation on the "hero" archetype. This Western Hero Archetype is solitary, self-reliant, and invulnerable. He denies grief and vulnerability, prioritizing success, conquest, achievement, personal growth, and the well-known obsession in our culture of always staying busy, always producing and moving forward.
The Hero Archetype only ascends; he never descends.
He is solitary and isolated with his grief if he even allows himself to feel it. He is alienated. The Hero ascends continually, refusing to descend into the shadows where grief, sorrow and despair reside, leaving him isolated and disconnected from the communal experience of grief that other cultures—particularly Indigenous cultures—deeply value. While grief requires silence and solitude, it also demands communal acknowledgment, a critical piece missing from Western grieving rituals.
The descent, the going down into grief, is crushing, it's raw, it aches, it is relenting and suffocating and immensely painful. It feels heavy, bottomless and eternal.
The Necessary Descent
“What hurts you blesses you. Darkness is your candle. Your boundaries are your quest.” Rumi
Because…. there is no up without down. No light without dark.
Our ability to feel joy and gratitude are directly correlated with our willingness to dwell in the dark moments of our lives. To NOT run from them. To confront, embrace, and stay with our suffering, no matter how unbearable it may seem. We truly grasp the weight of gratitude, the depth of joy, and the tender splendour of beauty only when we have knelt beneath the floorboards of grief—when we surrender with REVERENCE, when we have pressed our palms to its cold, unyielding surface, inhaled its dust and let it settle into our bones. Only in that dim and sacred hollow do we learn that light is not light without shadow, that joy is sharpened by sorrow, and that beauty is most luminous when seen through tear-stained eyes.
Dostoevsky writes, “ There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.”
Suffering is an inescapable part of life. The weight of our pain can either destroy us or refine us—it is our response that determines which. Experiencing our grief, sorrow and loss are necessary initiations that deepen our humanity. Rather than being something to escape or suppress, grief must be integrated and honoured if it is to transform us. This quote is one of my favorite quotes, and I believe what he is trying to teach us is not to squander the moments in our lives when we are confronted with suffering. We must be in service to our suffering with undying reverence in order not to waste what meaning and gifts can come from the suffering we experince. I want to be worthy of my suffering and embrace where it is trying to lead me.
sadness, sorrow, despair, darkness, anguish, shock, loneliness, confusion, fear
As I write these words, I can feel in my chest and in my tummy the familiarity of them with regard to the grief I have experienced in my life, as if it were happening all over again. The loss of a friend through betrayal, the death of my friend when we were young, the parts of me that never received the love I needed, the younger parts of me that were just trying her best at the time, and the loss of myself through moments in my life where I lost my way and felt unrecognizable and ashamed.
It's a dark and frightening realm, the emotional underworld- a place Jung believed the soul resides. It feels as though the ground beneath our feet might vanish if we dare descend into the darkness of grief, and this unknown space keeps us distant from it.
But we must tend to our grief.
As Weller profoundly reminds us, “Avoiding grief severs us from the depths of our own hearts.” Indeed, grief and love are inseparable sisters, reminding us that to love deeply is inevitably to encounter profound grief.
The truth? The ground won’t disappear. And we will come back from it. Underworld, rebirth, transformation.
We must tend to our grief. Francis Wellers’ work is a gift.
