I’ve been thinking a lot lately about grief; well, that’s not quite honest—I’ve also been feeling a lot of grief. I wouldn’t have even called it grief until just recently; I might’ve called it numbness, anger, inexplicable sorrow. Ya know, just down, without even knowing why.
In The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief, Francis Weller says that one of the “gates” of grief is around “what our deep-time ancestors experienced as their birthright, namely, the container of the village. We are born expecting a rich and sensuous relationship with the earth and communal rituals of celebration, grief, and healing that keep us in connection with the sacred.”
We do not even have language for this loss of what we expected as human beings, deep within our DNA, but did not receive. Our grief and longing for this lost village, Weller says, appears as a general sense of numbness, depression, and disease—without even understanding its source.
A year into this pandemic, I have this sense that the communal grief we are all feeling has opened up a portal into the deeper, more hidden grief that lives in so many of us. For me, it is a pain around this intergenerational loss of the communal village that provides us with a sense of belonging, safety, and wholeness.
Whenever I talk with mothers, and particularly in my Meaning of Motherhood course, it almost always comes up in conversation: It takes a village, and we don’t have a village. Typically, when we reach this moment in the conversation, I feel this sense of powerlessness, anger, and a congested lump in my throat…and then I don’t know what to do.
Turns out, what I need to do is grieve. Deeply. I need to descend into the sacred ground of grief.
For as much as it is a part of human existence, our current social structure lacks pathways for grief, suppressing it into the shadows. But, as Weller says, banished grief blocks us from our human vitality, healing, and connection, our wild aliveness.
“We can recover a faith in grief,” Weller goes on, “that recognizes that grief is not here to take us hostage, but instead to reshape us in some fundamental way, to help us become our mature selves, capable of living in the creative tension between grief and gratitude. In so doing, our hearts are ripened and made available for the great work of loving our lives and this astonishing world.”
So, I am learning to forge a new relationship with grief. To welcome it out of the shadow and into my life. To deeply, loudly, tearfully, publicly mourn the missing communal village, the circle of hands held around a fire, singing to the stars. To accept that this grief is not something to “get over” or “get through” but to walk hand in hand with for the rest of my life. To meet grief with gratitude, and sorrow with song.
What are you grieving? How can we express and move through our grief together?
Danielle LaSusa Ph.D. is a Philosophical Coach, helping new moms grapple with what it means to make a person. She is the creator of The Meaning of Motherhood course, and co-creator and co-host of Think Hard podcast, which brings fun, accessible, philosophical thinking to the real world. To join her mailing list, subscribe here.
© Copyright Danielle LaSusa PhD, LCC, 2021. All rights reserved.
