When I was a child my father would go to Pakistan for anything up to 9 months. He usually left very early in the morning and I was bereft.
I think I was very fortunate to have learnt so early how to heal my grief.
My strategy was to cry: To weep and wail, letting waves of grief flow over me and through me until there was none left.
I carried on until it was time for school when I tucked away my grief and lived through the first day without him.
When I came back from school, my grief having been carefully under control all day, it was hard to find it again, but somehow I knew that until I had finished crying there was going to be a part of me trapped in pain.
So, I would go and seek out signs of his recent presence, his pyjamas still on the bed, his coat hanging up behind the door, deliberately calling up his absence to reawaken my grief, burying my head in the pillow and crying until I could cry no more. Then I would play my saddest songs on the recorder.
This went on for about three days and then? ------- And then it was over, life came back into focus, I could enjoy the activities of the day and feel whatever feelings the day brought.
There are aspects of this story which seem very sad to me now: I have no idea how my mother felt about my father going and I don’t know if she was even aware of my three day weeping marathon. As far as I can remember I cried in solitude.
But the skill I learnt then has stood me in good stead dealing with the griefs that inevitably come in life. And also dealing with the minor hurts and injuries of every day.
Looking back, I have great admiration for the little girl who had learnt this strategy to get over the pain of separation.
Sometimes when a client comes to my practice for the first time they are surprised to find themselves in tears as they tell their story. They are often a bit embarrassed too, after all, we have only just met and tears are not a usual part of the social scene in our culture. But tears are a part of healing, part of releasing the held stories we carry so they can be gently incorporated into our whole being.
After a lifetime of being encouraged not to cry, we have to relearn the art of expressing grief- weeping, sobbing, wailing, howling, screaming, roaring, whimpering, moaning, groaning, sighing- all the glorious noisy expression of pain.
In many cultures there has been a tradition of wailing after a death.
In the celtic cultures this was known as “keening”: Professional keeners would express the grief in sound and song, leading the mourners to enter a liminal state between life and death, a “controlled madness” of grief.
There was no attempt to hush the bereaved, the whole community would join in, comforting and wailing too. It is easier to make the sounds of grief in noisy company.
It takes courage to enter this other place. Like the descent into the underworld depicted in mythologies, we have to embrace the dark, the fear and the pain and wait for the right time to return.
However, it is common now in western culture for a bereaved person to be congratulated for not expressing their feelings and for keeping everything “under control”. Widows in modern fiction and popular culture are given a year to recover and “move on”.
I remember my aunt, after the death of my uncle, crossing the street to avoid friends who might commiserate with her. She would say they were trying to “catch her out” by showing her pain.
Women wearing makeup will worry first about their mascara.
Shame and embarrassment cut deep.
Even babies are judged: Is he a “good” Baby? Meaning does he cry a lot.
Almost all of us have been taught not to cry: “ Pull yourself together.” “ You’re too big to cry.” “Big boys/ girls don’t cry.” “Be brave”. Children are told “It didn’t really hurt.” and even sometimes tickled to “distract” them from the pain.
And so our deepest feelings, our connection to the part of us that suffers, is shut away and silenced. To the detriment of our wellbeing and to the loss of joy.
It’s not easy to maintain contact with our grief and to have the courage to acknowledge it and express it as it arises. The tragedy is that when we shut ourselves away from painful emotions we numb ourselves to the joy and delight that is also a part of life.
It is not just emotional pain that responds well to being expressed fully and possibly loudly. How often have you held your breath to repress your reactions to being physically hurt? Sometimes the pain is so deep that just being very still and quiet and taking time to feel what has happened is the best response; on other occasions roaring and crying helps. It takes courage, but it reduces the time it takes to heal from even a minor injury if we allow the body to know what has happened and muster the reserves to mend it.
There may be sounds: Groans, cries, sighs, whatever helps to focus the whole being on what has been hurt.
This gives the body time to assess the damage, calm down from the shock and start the process of mending.
The apparent well meaning: “ Are you alright?” (A question expecting the answer yes,) can interrupt this process, causing us to come out of that calm centre of healing too soon so that we can engage with the helper.
If someone is badly injured, the process of getting them to a place of safety may add to the time before the healing can start, and sometimes cause it get put on hold which makes it harder to heal.
Pain, both physical and emotional, that is not recognised and given time to express itself is stored away and becomes a burden that we carry with us to the detriment of our health and our ability to appreciate the present moment.
A cry a day, like the apple, will keep the doctor away.
Photo by Omer Salom on Unsplash
And Karen Miller
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