Grief...collective, personal, and planet-wide

lesliech1979
6 days ago
4 min read

We humans are terrible at grief. For beings who cause so much destruction, we suck at mourning loss. We have whole industries based on avoiding aging. We create stories about immortality. So many people believe in an afterlife where everything is magically perfect (and boring if you watched The Good Place). The destruction of life is sometimes glorified, those killed are martyrs for some vague greater good. Our politicians choose gun money and lobbyists over protecting innocent lives. We somehow rationalize the destruction of a planet in the name of progress, capitalism, and technology to escape accountability for our impact on our home...and the home of millions of other species. The name of the game in death (and life, but that's another blog) is avoid avoid avoid.

We are in a time of great loss. We have lost much of, if not all of, democracy in the US. We have lost the (illusion of?) the idea that lives are worth something more than profit. We are losing our planetary home. We will continue to lose rights, resources, and lives as this capitalist machine fueled by patriarchal christian nationalism steamrolls everything in its path.

Personally, I have been feeling the weight of grief in waves over the past 6 months, about 3 weeks pre-election in the US. In the first week, it threatened to drown me, alternating between the heavy sadness of grief and the humming chaos of a panic attack. My nervous system and my mind were learning what so many already knew, whether they have felt the grief or not. After a couple of weeks of leaning into some radical self care, my feelings were more manageable, but remain. Now they show up in more familiar ways, like an old friend who is here to tell you something important and heavy.

Through this time I learned that the balance of holding collective grief, personal grief, and grief of my clients is a holy, feeling act. One that is at time overwhelming, requires a ritual of the most radical self-care, and is meant to be felt.

We have to feel the grief. It doesn't make it go away, there are no magic words for making it disappear, but fighting the feeling only makes it worse.

In her latest letter, activist, poet, and dreamer Nellie Rose Coffy writes about how grief is a garden:

Grief poured through me, fast and hot, for everything empire has stolen—from our lineages, from our Earth, from the great, vast web of life that deserves so much better than this.

And through my tears, my ancestors spoke: Your grief is a garden.

Plant seeds of truth and justice and liberation in the wounded place.

Water it with your tears and give it the light of your star—your magic, your power, your little slice of divinity.

There is so much to grieve.

Grief for the state of the world.
Grief for the land, for the forests, for the rivers, for the lakes, for the ocean.
Grief for the bloodshed and violence unfolding across the globe.
Grief for the extreme inequities that shape this society.
Grief for every being who has suffered under the long arm of empire for the last 4,000 years.

And yet — our grief does not condemn us to hopelessness.

We can grieve and still believe in a better future.

We can grieve and still fight for liberation.

We can grieve and still plant something new, something whole, something alive.

We can water the earth with our tears, letting loss soften into nourishment. We can plant something tender, something rooted, something wild and unbreakable. We can lay down our grief like compost, trusting that even the heaviest sorrow can create the fertile soil for future blooms.

We can stand among the ruins of empire and still grow a garden—a garden of truth, of justice, of life returning, of rebirth.

She also shares a grief "mad lib" as "gentle practice to turn grief into a garden:"

Fill in the blanks with whatever rises within you. Let these words meet you where you are.

I feel grief for _________________________.

But I know that my grief is not empty. I know that my grief is fertile.

So today, I plant a seed of _____________.

I will water it with ______________________.

I will tend to it with _________________.

And I will trust that, one day, it will bloom into ____________________.

This is how we transform grief.

This is how we build the world to come.

But I know that my grief is not empty. I know that my grief is fertile.

I hope that you will use this exercise as Coffy intended it, to transmute your grief, feeling it and not turning away from the experience. It will not drown you. And if you are afraid that it will, reach out to someone in your community to be a lifeguard.

To learn more about Nellie Rose Coffy and her work, you can join her here: the breath between worlds