grief

Breaking open

January 27, 2020 By gwynn

To live this life. To live it with wholeness and gratitude and trust. In the pain and the glory. In the mess and the grace. In the sacred and the desperation. This is the stuff of which real superheros are born. ~Jeanette LeBlanc

We are here to love hard and true. Here to give ourselves over to the rush and bliss of it all. Here to offer our patchwork hearts over and over again. Here to feel and fall and hurt and bleed. Here to say yes and to choose wholeness and to break anyway and to do it all again. ~Jeanette LeBlanc

Here you are.
Still standing. Fierce with the reality of love and loss. Wearing the truth of our hearts on your tattered sleeves. And yes, this one very nearly took you out. And yes, there were days when the darkness was heavy and the climb out of that rabbit hole required you to mine your depths for strength you didn’t even know you had.

But here you are.
Broken open by hope. Cracked wide by loss. Full of longing and grief and the burn of that phoenix fire. Warrior painted with ashes. Embers from the blaze still clinging to your newborn skin, leaving you forever marked with scars of rebirth.

And just look at you. Heart broken but still beating. Arms empty but still open. Face raised to the sky and giving thanks for the light, even when it hurts your eyes.

My god, you are beautiful. ~ Jeanette LeBlanc

In preparing, I ran upon an old ACT UP handbook. It reminded me of the ways the “masters tools” are used break movements. Using power over to suppress us.
To shame us
To make us invisible
To mute our voices and our message
To kill our trust
These tools of the master are used to break one’s spirit, to disempower, to confuse, to divide, to immobilize. These tactics are another assault on our humanity.
They will not work.
We must love our people more than they hate us.
Movement work is about healing, building engaging and transforming. ~Desiree Lynn Adaway

Love. Relating. Having hope, even in and after devastating heartbreak.

I’ve been writing a lot over on IG the last few months. It has been in part processing some grief around a specific relationship. It has been in part confirming my truth in how we need to relate to each other, in all our relationships. It has been in part me showing up as me, for me, and for you.

When my marriage was crumbling, and even shortly after it ended, I didn’t believe I would ever love again. I didn’t believe I could ever open myself to that kind of heartbreak again. I didn’t even know if I was capable of loving again, not in the ways that I had loved my ex-husband.

I kept my walls up. My armor was on secure and tight. I started “dating” eventually, because frankly, I wanted sex.

I wasn’t ready for and honestly, I didn’t want to have, a Relationship (with a Capital R). I didn’t want to “catch feelings.” I didn’t want to be vulnerable. I didn’t want to risk having my heart shattered again.

I didn’t meet anyone who changed my mind on this for a while, several months.

And then I did.

It is ironic to look back at the very beginning of this relationship. We texted for a week and I wasn’t overly interested, though in text we seemed like a good match. I almost canceled our first date. But then I wanted to get out and we had plans, so I went.

And I met him.

There are so many details I’m going to leave out. And I knew, I knew, that he would break my heart. I knew, from that first night, he would break me open in ways I didn’t want to be broken open, in ways I wasn’t ready to be broken open.

But are we ever really ready to be broken open? I don’t think so.

I knew he and I were probably not going to last forever. I had lost all faith in happily ever after and ’til death do us part. I didn’t want a white picket fence anymore (ironically, he actually has a white picket fence at his house). I didn’t want to be tied down with expectations and promises, mine or anyone else’s. So I knew, at some point we would come to an end, and when that day came, my heart would shatter.

I wrote this the other day on IG ::

Sometimes we meet people who have profound impacts on our lives and our Self. Just by being them they create space for us to unearth some lost pieces of who we are. They show us what it is to be loved and adored. They teach us what freedom is. We may want these people to be in our lives forever but that may not be how it works out. They may only be with us for a short while & yet their impact is massive & our hearts shatter when they leave.

Hearts are meant to shatter I believe. And then to be put back together. We are meant to love & lose that love. Nothing is forever.

And sometimes relationships come back & start again. There are those in my life who I can literally go a decade without talking to & when we see each other it is as if no time has passed.

There are people who light us up regardless of time or distance.

We can’t “keep” these people though. People are not for keeping. People are for loving, for caring for, for experiencing life with. In whatever time allows us to have with them.

“All we have to see, is I don’t belong to you and you don’t belong to me.” ~George Michael

I am in a time of grief. It is true. I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. I left the door open for the future, and who knows. And also, in these moments I need to accept the ending of what was.

This hurts like hell. My chest literally aches. I cry at the drop of a hat.

I’m not miserable though. I wouldn’t change any of this, because knowing him allowed me the space to get so much of myself back, including my knowing that I am meant to love, and to love deep and hard, without apologies or fear. I am more me for having known him, even if it was for the briefest moment of time.

I will eventually move through this grief. It is true. While time alone doesn’t heal all (or any) wounds, it does help to dull the pain, and in addition I am processing the hell out of this year and our time together and what it has all meant to and for me.

Here’s a thing though, our love, our wide open hearts, our vulnerability, our authenticity, aren’t only meant for romantic love. They are meant for friends. For (chosen) family. For colleagues. For comrades. For our grocery clerk. For total strangers.

We need to bring love, our whole broken open selves, into all our spaces. Most especially into those spaces that are about bringing systemic change, about tearing down the status quo, about ending oppression and authoritarianism and marginalization.

The world needs our wide open hearts. The world needs us to be willing to risk having our hearts shattered, over and over. By lovers, friends, family, and strangers. With every shattering, the world needs us to choose to put our hearts back together and then to enter the world with them wide open once again.

This doesn’t mean walking through the world without boundaries (we all desperately need those). It doesn’t mean being a martyr or allowing people to cause us great harm in the name of Love. It doesn’t mean we are passive.

We can be warriors with open hearts. I would argue the only way to be a warrior is with an open heart. With the strength and bravery and willingness to move through the fear and let people in and to hold space for others to let us in too.

In order to be in the world with our hearts open, and able to hold space for others with open hearts, we have to do our own work. Our own internal work. Of healing old wounds. Of processing old traumas. Of becoming self aware, self reflective. Of creating the pause before we react to situations out of anger or frustration or hurt. Of getting to the roots of the ways we have internalized oppressive and authoritarian behaviors and attitudes. Of getting to the roots of our own blackholes of abandonment, neglect, not feeling worthy or deserving or wanted.

We need to do this work so we are not only able to allow ourselves to be broken open, but also so we can be in the spaces with others who are breaking open themselves. We need to do this so we don’t continue to carry the master’s tools. We need to do this so we can break harmful inter-generational patterns and cycles. We need to do this so we can create a world where love, not fear, is abundant and the motivation for all our actions.

We need to do this work for the sake of our most intimate relationships, for the sake of our least intimate relationships, for the sake of our Self, our humanity, our real purpose in life.

Which is to love. Each other. Our Self. Our world.

/../

This essay was originally published in my weekly(ish) newsletter on November 18, 2019. It has been revised and edited for publication here. To receive my most recent essays, you can subscribe here.

Breaking open

November 21, 2019 By gwynn

In preparing, I ran upon an old ACT UP handbook. It reminded me of the ways the “masters tools” are used break movements. Using power over to suppress us.

To shame us
To make us invisible
To mute our voices and our message
To kill our trust

These tools of the master are used to break one’s spirit, to disempower, to confuse, to divide, to immobilize. These tactics are another assault on our humanity.

They will not work.
We must love our people more than they hate us.
Movement work is about healing, building engaging and transforming. ~Desiree Lynn Adaway

Love. Relating. Having hope, even in and after devastating heartbreak.

I’ve been writing a lot over on IG the last couple weeks. It has been in part processing some grief around a specific relationship. It has been in part confirming my truth in how we need to relate to each other, in all our relationships.

The other day I watched this IGTV by Jeanette LeBlanc. I sobbed. And sobbed. And sobbed some more.

I kept my walls up. My armor was on secure and tight. Once I decided I wanted to have sex with another person, I had partnered sex, but there was no intimacy. I wouldn’t allow it. There was no sleeping over. There was no sharing of my life and there was no listening to them talk about their’s.

I wasn’t ready for and frankly, I didn’t want to have, a Relationship (with a Capital R). I didn’t want to “catch feelings.” I didn’t want to be vulnerable. I didn’t want to risk having my heart shattered again.

And I didn’t meet anyone who changed my mind.

Until I did.

And I met him.

As soon as I laid my eyes on him I knew, I knew, that he would break my heart. I knew, from that first night, he would break me open in ways I didn’t want to be broken open, in ways I wasn’t ready to be broken open.

But are we ever really ready to be broken open? I don’t think so.

I knew he and I were probably not going to last forever. I had (and still have) lost all faith in happily ever after and ’til death do us part. I didn’t want a white picket fence anymore (ironically, he actually has a white picket fence at his house). I didn’t want to be tied down with expectations and promises, mine or anyone else’s. So I knew, at some point we would come to an end, because all things come to an end at some point, and when that day came, my heart would shatter.

I am in a time of grief. It is true. I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. I left the door open for the future, and who knows what will happen in a week, a month, a year, a decade. And also, in these moments now I need to accept the ending of what was.

This hurts like hell. My chest literally aches. I cry at the drop of a hat.

I’m not miserable though. I wouldn’t change any of this, because knowing him allowed me the space to get so much of myself back, including my knowing that I am meant to love, and to love deep and hard, without apologies or fear. I am more me for having known him, even if it was for the briefest moment of time.

I will eventually move through this grief. It is true. While time alone doesn’t heal all (or any) wounds, it does help to dull the pain, and in addition I am processing the hell out of this year and our time together and what it has all meant to and for me.

We need to bring love, our whole broken open selves, into all our spaces. Most especially into those spaces that are about bringing systemic change, about tearing down the status quo, about ending oppression and authoritarianism and marginalization.

The world needs our wide open hearts. The world needs us to be willing to risk having our hearts shattered, over and over. By lovers, friends, family, and strangers. With every shattering, the world needs us to choose to put our hearts back together and then to enter the world with them wide open once again.

This doesn’t mean walking through the world without boundaries (we all desperately need those). It doesn’t mean being a martyr or allowing people to cause us harm in the name of Love. It doesn’t mean we are passive.

We can be warriors with open hearts. I would argue the only way to be a warrior is with an open heart. With the strength and bravery and willingness to move through the fear and let people in and to hold space for others to let us in too.

In order to be in the world with our hearts open, and able to hold space for others with open hearts, we have to do our own work. Our own internal work. Of healing old wounds. Of processing old traumas. Of becoming self aware, self reflective. Of creating the pause before we react to situations out of anger or frustration or hurt. Of getting to the roots of the ways we have internalized oppressive and authoritarian behaviors and attitudes. Of getting to the roots of our own black holes of abandonment, neglect, not feeling worthy or deserving or wanted.

We need to do this work so we are not only able to allow ourselves to be broken open, but also so we can be in the spaces with others who are breaking open themselves. We need to do this so we don’t continue to carry and utilize the master’s tools. We need to do this so we can break harmful inter-generational patterns and cycles. We need to do this so we can create a world where love, not fear, is abundant and the motivation for all our actions.

We need to do this work for the sake of our most intimate relationships, for the sake of our least intimate relationships, for the sake of our Self, our humanity, our real purpose in life.

Which is to love. Each other. Our Self. Our world.

/../

This essay was originally written for my weekly(ish) newsletter on November 17, 2019. It has been edited and revised for publication here. To receive my most recent essays along with stream of conscious writing prompts, self-regulation exercises, and more, you can subscribe right here.

The importance of grief work in our trauma processing

November 18, 2019 By gwynn

Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you. ~John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

I’ve been thinking a lot about grief. How grief can be present at the same time as excitement and anticipation. How in our culture we don’t have ways of grieving that are helpful. How we try to put a time limit on our grief. How we, in my profession, often don’t include grief work in our trauma work with clients.

Here’s some things. There are no time limits on our grief. Ever. And grief work is a vital part of our trauma work.

A vital part. An essential part. A necessary part. A required part.

Those of us living with trauma in our bodies have had horrible things happen to us, done to us. For those of us who experienced trauma in our childhood, those events literally shaped our brains and the ways we are able to see and be in the world. These childhood experiences also impacted our physical health, specifically our nervous systems and autoimmune systems. Those events have life long impacts.

It is hard for me to imagine who I would be if all the trauma I experienced as a child hadn’t occurred. If I have been raised in a household where the ACEs score was under 4. If I had never been touched inappropriately. I would be a totally different person, of that I am sure.

It is heartbreaking to know all the damage that was done, and to know that we have survived (and some of us are learning to thrive) DESPITE all those experiences.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could simply be thriving? If we didn’t have to learn how to do that.

Yes. Yes it would.

What happened to us as children is not our fault. Those events took so much away from us. Some of which will never be recovered, and some of which may be. Because of those childhood events, we have, as part of the trauma, experienced great loss. Loss of innocence. Loss of trust. Loss of resilience. Loss of “normal” neuropathways. Loss of an ability to relate and connect to others in a healthy way. Loss of feeling comfortable in our own skin. Loss of a sense of safeness. Sometimes even loss of hope.

We have experienced a lot of loss.

When we experience loss, grieving is a natural process. Yet we don’t talk about the losses we experienced because of the trauma events in our lives. We don’t acknowledge all those losses, let alone grieve them. And this I believe is a disservice to ourselves, and our greater culture.

How do we grieve these things we (perhaps) never had? How do we grieve these losses that feel totally theoretical?

We slow down. We acknowledge the losses. The things we never had. The things we wanted so desperately. The things that will never be.

We acknowledge the struggles. The difficulties being in intimate relationships. The challenges being present in our bodies. The extra work we’ve had to do to try to break (generations old) cycles and patterns.

We allow the tears. The anger. The deep sadness.

We allow ourselves to acknowledge and feel the unfairness and injustice of it all.

We grieve. In community. In ritual. In our own hearts and bodies.

I believe when grief is not a part of our trauma work, that we are missing a huge piece of the work. Grieving what we have lost, what never was, and perhaps what never will be, is vital to our ability to move the trauma out of our bodies and systems and to learn to shift from simply surviving into a place of actually thriving.

We need to acknowledge these losses and create space for our own grief process along with our trauma work. This is part of building our own self-compassion. This is truly part of our life long healing work.

/../

This essay was originally published in my weekly(ish) newsletter on June 4, 2018. It has been edited for publication here. To receive my most recent essays, you can subscribe here.

The stages & tasks of grief

September 11, 2019 By gwynn

Every broken heart has screamed at one time or another: Why can’t you see who I truly am? ~Shannon L. Alder

When you experience loss, people say you’ll move through the 5 stages of grief … Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance … What they don’t tell you is that you’ll cycle through them all every day. ~Ranata Suzuki

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.

At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me. ~C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

Most of us have heard of the Kubler-Ross stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance). It is a standard way of looking at grief and how we as humans process it. Sometimes folks think it is a linear progression, that once we finish one stage we’re done with it and move onto the next. And grief doesn’t actually work that way. We may feel each of the stages at different times or we may feel them all at once or we may have both experiences at different times.

During my clinical internship we utilized Worden’s Tasks of Grief, which are a bit less known, and I feel more powerful and representative of how we actually process grief, whereas I see the stages of grief as the emotions we cycle through when grieving.

The tasks of grief are:
Task 1 :: To accept the reality of the loss
Task 2 :: To work through the pain of grief
Task 3 :: To adjust to an environment in which the deceased are missing
Task 4 :: To find an enduring connection to the deceased while embarking on a new life

As I’ve said before, we don’t only grieve the deceased though. We grieve relationships that have come to an end. We grieve our children growing up and leaving home (which we also simultaneously celebrate their achievement). We grieve paths not taken and choices not made.

We have the opportunity to grieve what was taken from us when we were young, either through abuse or neglect.

And we can utilize the information of the stages and tasks of grief to do this work.

When I look at my own abuse, I think about the little girl who existed before it and then who essentially died because of what was done to her. That may sound dramatic to some. And it is true that the abuse any of experienced changed the course of our lives, irrevocably. The young, innocent, trusting person who existed prior to the chronic abuse and or neglect ceased to exist and grew into the people we are today.

We will never know what our lives would have been without the abuse and neglect we experienced. We will never know who those innocent children would have grown up to be.

When we are able to begin to consider all that was lost, we can then start to feel the emotions that come with that loss. The denial (which can also show up as it wasn’t that bad). The anger (or rage of what was done to us). The bargaining. The depression. The acceptance (which isn’t about it being okay, but about understanding these things happened and they deeply impact us).

We will cycle through all these emotions, often having more than one at the same time. This is part of grieving what was lost, yes. It is also part of processing the trauma itself. Of allowing ourselves to come into our bodies and actually feel the sadness of what was done.

And while feeling the emotions and sensations is vital, we also need to find ways to process them, to allow them to flow and move out of our bodies, minds, beings. We need to feel yes, and also to not get stuck in the feelings.

Emotions want to flow. They want to move. They want to come and go.

And since many of us have lived our lives at least partially dissociated and suppressing our feelings (emotions and the physiological sensations that go with them) we need to learn how to process them.

Worden’s tasks give us a way to do that. They give us a framework. One where we can acknowledge and accept the losses we experienced because of our trauma. Once we have acknowledged them we can then work through those emotions and sensations, feeling them, allowing them, and knowing they are valid and real. To accept the impacts of the abuse and how it has influenced our choices and lives and to create the space to ask all the what if questions we want. And to find ways to connect to those younger parts of us, to let them know they are safe now, and that you will keep them safe.

It is intense work. It is non-linear. Each individual comes at this work in the ways that are right for them. Often we move back and forth between tasks or are working through more than one task at a time. There is no one right way to process our trauma or our grief associated with it. We each come to this work in our time and work through it at our own pace.

And it is important work, I believe. Vital. So that we don’t perpetuate harm. So we don’t continue cycles and patterns that hurt us and can hurt others. So we can begin to live our lives on our own terms, becoming more and more self-aware and learning to shift and change the ways we respond to others and ourselves.

/../

This essay was originally written for my weekly(ish) newsletter on September 8, 2019. It has been revised and edited for publication here. To receive my most recent essays (and more) you can subscribe here.

We will be utilizing both the stages and tasks of grief in the seven week writing program Embodied Writing :: Unspoken Grief. To learn more and register you can go here. We begin on September 16, 2019.

Seasonal Grief

September 5, 2019 By gwynn

So it’s true, when all is said and done, grief is the price we pay for love. ~E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly

Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary. The people we trust with that important talk can help us know that we are not alone. ~Fred Rogers

You will lose someone you can’t live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp. ~Anne Lamott

Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them. ~ Leo Tolstoy

I’ve mentioned before how much I dislike the month of August. Historically it is month filled with death anniversaries (of long-time important pets, people, and a couple long term relationships). I feel extra anxious throughout the month as my body re-experiences the losses of years past and my mind going through another round of processing. August has a heaviness to it for me. It feels oppressive and generally speaking all my “stuff” is really up, front and center, leaving me exhausted at the least and feeling like my life is spinning out of control at the worst.

This past month was no exception to any of this. And to say I am thrilled to be in September is the understatement of the century.

It is also true that this August has also been filled with new found appreciation of this season. Of the heat. The sun. Of those little in-between spaces where I can breathe. Those joyful moments of watching my kids enjoy the sun and water and sand and driftwood; as well as those happy moments of retreating to the shade, eating popsicles or painting on our deck, and cuddling on the couch watching shows together.

This August, the first August in my memory, was filled with both ands.

Truth is all my Augusts were likely filled with lots of both ands. Lots of dark and lots of light. And because of where I was in my life I couldn’t see it all. This is what it is. And it is true several Augusts I was deep in the raw and traumatic grief of recent losses, and so seeing any light in those dark times simply wasn’t possible.

Both experiences, past and most recently last August(s), are true. Both are valid.

It is also true that now we are in September I feel like I breathe better. Like a weight has been lifted. Like all my stuff that has been stirred and swirled up for the past 31 days is settling down and I can get back to being the person I want to be in the world instead in a constant struggle with my own automatic trauma responses and focusing on little else than slowing them down so I don’t damage fragile relationships or even the more stable ones.

I believe we all have times of the year that do this to us, that are filled with anniversaries and or stir up all our “stuff”, our deep woundings, our painful losses. For many this time of year is the holiday season. For some it is summer. For others we have a specific month that just feels like Hell Month. Some experience multiple times during the year that are like this.

In all this stirring, there is grief. Old grief. New layers of old grief. New grief.

Grief is a part of life. Learning to feel, to process, to be in, and to allow it flow… this is our work.

Acknowledging how that grief shows up for us – in our bodies, in my minds, in our moods, in our emotions, the ways we interact with others. Learning to slow down and recognize what is happening, how grief is affecting us and our lives, that is not a simple or easy process. And it can be done.

This is the work of our own unraveling and rebuilding. The work of falling apart and putting ourselves back together. The work of dismantling and creating something new. The work of deep love, and the heartache that we open ourselves up to because of it.

We all have much to grieve. Death, any type of death, is a transition. This is true as much for the person or thing that has died as it is for those of us still left standing. We each experience death within our own lives, within our Self, differently, and still we all experience it. Change, even good change, means the end of something. Every beginning is preceded by an ending.

And.

There is a beauty in grief. It means we loved. We loved deeply.

As we begin our grief work of what could have been, that What If grief I’ve written about before, we find the deep love we have for our Self, our past selves, our current Self, and the Self we are becoming. There can be no grief without love. And that is what makes grief work beautiful, all the love that is a necessary part of the work is revealed.

/../

This essay was originally written for my weekly(ish) newsletter on September 1, 2019. It has been edited for publication here. To receive my most recent essays (and more) you can subscribe to my newsletter here.

In Embodied Writing :: Unspoken Grief, we will spent some time unearthing and embracing all the love we have for our younger Selves, our present self, and our future Selves. If you would like to learn more you can go here. Partial scholarships (of 50%) are available for those who are called to this work but cannot afford it.

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