Pressure to Heal
This month my practice is graced with parents experiencing stunning devastation. Each lives with an unfathomable, unthinkable experience: a beloved son or daughter has died. Just writing this statement takes my breath away.
For now, these moms and dads are destabilized, standing on ground constantly shaking. Thoughts, present and future, and tightly wrapped in sorrow, are coupled with an experience of “missing” that has no words.
How does one bear witness to this world of another? Are we willing to be with our friends and family whose sense of life is entirely altered, whose hearts have been shattered? Are we able to be in the presence of wounds that call for a sacred attention?
Here is a kind of injury we do not want to see. As time marches on, we hope for improvement, that our loved ones who have suffered this loss have “better days.” We look for a shift, and we are relieved at the thought of, she is doing well. After a while, we don’t really know what to say, so we might barely touch the subject the next time we see each other - or we might skip it altogether. Or maybe we find ourselves avoiding that person - certainly not deliberately per se, but for our own inadvertent loss of how to be in the presence of someone who bears the unbearable.
These responses are simply… normal…. and yet, there may be another response.
Might it be possible to befriend grief, for as long and as intensely as needed? What if we carved out space for another person’s grief, granting them the presence of their sorrow rather than wishing it away? What might that look like for the non-bereaved?
I have learned in my sacred position of “grief counselor” that grief is not rational. Grief is non-linear. Grief has a voice. Grief will not be quiet, grief will not be ignored. Grief’s forms morph and change, always present, always clamoring for attention.
J. Cacciatore, author of Bearing the Unbearable reminds us: “Grief asks to be seen”.
“Everything hurts.
Just sit beside me. Say nothing.
Don’t offer a cure, or a pill, or a word or a potion.
Witness my suffering and don’t turn away from me.”
This holiday season, alongside so many well-wishes, many carry the mighty burden of loss. When we refuse to “turn away” from that grief and instead, we open our hearts to the bereaved, giving full, quiet attention, in that one moment we reflect upon another a profound, deep and compassionate expression of our humanity.
In her Dover, Ma private practice, Mariah specializes in grief work and adjusting to loss. She is also a long-time respected expert in the field of weight and health management.