We won`t ever `get over` significant loss

I found this quote online a few months ago when I was writing a post on grief.  Since it comes from one of the people who lived on the frontline with those who were dying or had loved ones who were, I trust Elizabeth Kubler Ross.

I was so fortunate to come upon some posts on complex grief a few days ago and I have reblogged several of them.  Another one I read said that in our modern society the full impact and purpose of grief is not fully understood, so when we are grieving we are most likely not to be helped to express it.  We are often shut down by those who think they are well meaning.  We can be avoided or looked at askance.

When I was at one of my lowest points following the end of my marriage 11 years into sobriety and had with that ending had significant earlier losses I never found permission or skills to grieve retriggered, I ended up after a second smash up on the first anniversary of my husband`s decision to leave me overseas in an ashram.   The family I was lodging with asked me to leave as I was too sad and their daughter had lost a friend and they didnt want me around as a reminder of her death, so I boarded a train to Glastonbury and went to an ashram where at least I could cry and was hugged some of the time.  I then moved into another boarding place and one of two lovely guys I met there gave me a talk on grief that he had just heard to listen to.  I dont remember who it was by (this happened 12 years ago).  But what he said was that in certain cultures if there was an outsider in the culture who may be drinking too much or falling down in the street they would take that person in and give them help and shelter as they realised complex grief lay at the heart of it all.

That just blew my mind.  At that point my attempts to open up about my trauma and loss to an older brother had been shunned and ignored.  I was visiting the Magdalene chapel in Glastonburty to light candles and cry as well as the Chalice Wells gardens where I saw images of the two Marys tending lovingly to Christs body they had taken down from the cross while washing him and grieving.  I know now these images were all a projection of my own pain.

I often wonder if I would have ended up with breast cancer if I had been helped to grieve as I needed to by family, or accepted the support to go into a treatment centre I did not know of then, only later, to get help.  Instead it has taken me over 10 more years and another doomed relationship to be able to lift the lid on my own complex grief which I now know has deep ancestral roots.

Luckily I have astrological symbolism to make sense of it all.  I have written about Persephone before,  most recently in a poem.  The young maiden captured by narcissism who then goes on a terrible journey to the underworld where she glimpses a dark place.  In myths and legends of the Babylonian sisters Eriskegal and Innana I also found symbolism for what happens when grief is denied and someone eventually makes the courageous choice to descend to the depths and face that pain.  Its all got to do with strong Pluto in a chart and strong influences of that Plutonian god of death, loss and transformation making visitations to many of us from a young age.

I now have a bit of a mission to be honest as a grief advocate.  For I do believe that it is only when we acknowledge our grief that we can find a deeper level of soul that sees beyond the superficial.  In time everything we love will be taken from us, we should not allow that to eclipse our joy of life but sadly the knowledge often does for we are only humans designed for self protection and to defend in any way we can against pain.  The problem happens when such defences turned on others block them inside grief or shut them down.

Those who suffer grief need all our support help and love as they undergo this painful transition that so often comes unbidden.  If we cannot reach out a hand to those who are drowning in grief, what kind of culture are we really?

Sadly this image is not appearing in a large enough form to display on my page.  It is a quote from Russell Brand which says this : How we treat the vulnerable is how we define ourselves as a species.

“Some things cannot be fixed; they can only be carried.

Grief like yours, love like yours, can only be carried.“

Megan Devine