Staying self contained

Hearing of my friend’s loss reminds me that carrying the degree of past loss and trauma I need to take care of myself. Self care is not only about resting and making sure we are kind to ourselves and eat well, it is also about acknowledging the depth of what we carry not dependent on the expectations of others about how we ”should be around those deep experiences of grief, trauma or loss.

In fact this friend of mine came under criticism a few years back when someone else’s mother died and she did not stay around to attend the wake, the friend talking about her behind her back was upset and critical of her.. At the time I thought that showed a distinct lack of empathy since Sue lost her mother a year after I lost my father (over 20 years before this) and the loss was a huge one because her mother had had so much derailed in her own life due to being a woman born during the late 1930s. That loss went very deep for my friend.

It has been my experience that we cannot look to anyone for understanding who has not some idea of what it may mean to endure certain things, most often we will be judged and when it comes down to it often children can lack compassion for a parent if being born in another generation they have no idea of what that parent suffered or the prohibitions that existed around them at that time.

In fact watching the first season of Nashville this week which deal with an alcoholic mother and her daughter has been very instructive.. The daughter obviously goes through a lot of neglect due to her mother’s illness but when her mother repeatedly tries to get sober a lot of the daughter’s anger blocks her forgiveness even as the mother tries her very best to make amends and acknowledge the depths of how emotionally absent she was as well as other trauma she caused her daughter.

I am so glad now that my own grief is not so much of a stranger to me. In fact in last nights episode of Nashville one of the characters Ashley plays a lovely ballad about welcoming in his feelings of grief over a loss that he played a huge part in causing.. in the song he welcomes his tears as an emotional truth he needs to be with and integrate over time.. How often in our culture though, is such a response denied us? How often are we told to move on, to let it go, that it did not hurt so bad, that we are being self pitying or self indulgent by feeling and entertaining feelings of grief? I saw a lot of that in the AA fellowship at times to be honest.

Yes, there is a time to put our pain and grief aside so that we can reach for new life and opportunities outside of it.. A time to not let feelings of anger grief and powerlessness over the uncontrollable block us coming alive, but there is also a time to practice self care, self nurture and inner validation in the midst of it.. Nice as it is to have someone reach out their hand in empathy and understanding to us at such times, it might also take us time to be able to reach for that, it might take us time to work through our own processes of grieving and the most important person’s love, forgiveness and understanding that we need is our own.

In this regard finding quiet avenues of self containment as well as self expression helps us : reading poems or stories or watching movies or series in which characters grapple with similar issues we may find a powerful identification and even learn more about how grief is or is not processed. And as we welcome in the pain of the difficult loss, disappointment or endings we experienced we may find that in some ways we grow through the experience, our wounds or losses or injuries or hurts may become for us what the Romantic poet Keats calls a vale of soul making.. as we take the steps to come to peace over time and a heal of a lot of inner processing with the very things we were so powerless over.