Episode 6 from my podcast Journey from Grief to Healing shares an important truth I learned by attending a grieving group. Those who attended the grieving group with me became my teachers. I learned that we all grieve differently. For each of us who grieve, the suffering hurts like hell. M encourages me to start making new friends.
Click on the following link to listen to Episode 6.
https://raycalabrese.podbean.com/e/i-learned-not-to-judge-we-all-grieve-differently/
Today’s Thinking Out Loud reflection is on Lewis Carroll’s work, Alice in Wonderland. Alice in Wonderland is available for free download from Project Gutenberg here.
The White Rabbit put on his spectacles. “Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?” he asked.
“Begin at the beginning,” the King said gravely, “and go on till you come to the end; then stop.”
Note: Transitioning to a new job, new location, or dramatic changes in life circumstances are all fraught with stress, anxiety, and often a paralysis. I have a friend whose spouse died. I understood how she felt since I had the same experience. My friend was trapped by an emotional paralysis. Her grief was so great, she had difficulty in doing even the smallest of tasks,. Fortunately, she sought help and was able to ‘Begin at the beginning and continue. . . .” That’s what we all have to do in the transition moments, begin at the beginning and go on until we come to the end.
I went by the Druid stone
That stands in the garden white and lone,
And I stopped and looked at the shifting shadows
That at some moments there are thrown
From the tree hard by with a rhythmic swing,
And they shaped in my imagining
To the shade that a well-known head and shoulders
Threw there when she was gardening.
I thought her behind my back,
Yea, her I long had learned to lack,
And I said: “I am sure you are standing behind me,
Though how do you get into this old track?”
And there was no sound but the fall of a leaf
As a sad response; and to keep down grief
I would not turn my head to discover
That there was nothing in my belief.
Yet I wanted to look and see
That nobody stood at the back of me;
But I thought once more: “Nay, I’ll not unvision
A shape which, somehow, there may be.”
So I went on softly from the glade,
And left her behind me throwing her shade,
As she were indeed an apparition—
My head unturned lest my dream should fade.
In a dark hour, tasting the Earth. /
As I lay on my couch in the muffled night, and the rain lashed at my window, / And my forsaken heart would give me no rest, no pause and no peace, / Though I turned my face far from the wailing of my bereavement… / Then I said: I will eat of this sorrow to its last shred, / I will take it unto me utterly, / I will see if I be not strong enough to contain it… / What do I fear? Discomfort? / How can it hurt me, this bitterness?
The miracle, then! / Turning toward it, and giving up to it, / I found it deeper than my own self… / O dark great mother-globe so close beneath me… / It was she with her inexhaustible grief, / Ages of blood-drenched jungles, and the smoking of craters, and the roar of tempests, / And moan of the forsaken seas, / It was she with the hills beginning / to walk in the shapes of the dark-hearted animals, / It was she risen, dashing away tears and praying to dumb skies, in the pomp-crumbling tragedy of man… / It was she, / container of all griefs, and the buried dust of broken hearts, / Cry of the christs and the lovers and the child-stripped mothers, / And ambition gone down to defeat, and the battle overborne, / And the dreams that have no waking…
My heart became her ancient heart: / On the food of the strong I fed, on dark strange life itself: / Wisdom-giving and sombre with the unremitting love of ages…
There was dank soil in my mouth, / And bitter sea on my lips, / In a dark hour, tasting the Earth.
In this short video I answer a reader’s question about loneliness and grieving. I offer the reader encouragement and a way to shed the burden of loneliness and move on with his life.
Most everyone I know who loses someone they deeply love asks why. In this brief video I share my thoughts with other, like me, who asked why.
