Global Grief
Where there is turbulence in the web of life, it is felt throughout every tendril. Have you noticed the reverberations lately? The undercurrents swirling around your foundational beliefs? The big life questions vibrating in the background? The tightening grip in your chest? This is your nervous system responding to the pain in the world as a compassionate being.
After all, there is much to grieve: War on Ukraine. The ripples of loss and trauma from Residential Schools. Fires and floods of evidence about the harms we continue to inflict on the environment that is also our home. The isolation and disruption as we head into year three of pandemic life.
These collective experiences can be harder to process and articulate personally because we often use comparison as a frame of reference. We become aware of our privilege and then tell ourselves we “shouldn’t” feel our feelings because there are victims that have been more harmed. As though sorrow is finite and is only allowed when we “deserve it”. This results in disenfranchised grief. Grief that’s stifled underground. Language is powerful, so it’s important to excavate other words too. Global grief. Ecological grief. Pandemic grief. More recently, we also have political grief. Whatever you call it, it’s real and it’s impacting us.
Clarissa Pinkola Estes likens these sorrows to being awake: “Tears are part of the mending of rips in the psyche where energy has leaked and leaked away. The matter is serious, but the worst does not occur – our light is not stolen – for tears make us conscious. There is no chance to go back to sleep when one is weeping. (Women Who Run With The Wolves, P. 437).
Joanna Macy calls this despair work and in her book Coming Back to Life, outlines a process to help orient us. It starts with acknowledging our pain for the world and affirming our response to the crisis as wholesome. It involves allowing ourselves to experience the suffering, and to express it to others. Then to recognize that we aren’t alone in our pain but that it is shared with many others, and is born out of our caring connectedness.
Today I learned from a dear mentor at the Palliative Care Society of the Bow Valley that it can also be helpful to specifically identify what is personally being lost in the collective encounter. Perhaps a sense of safety, or stability. Maybe a trust in our common humanity or basic goodness feels compromised. Sometimes it’s the diminishment of our hope during these darker seasons. It’s important to name the loss while we are naming the feelings.
If you can’t find the words, you can always try the creative world. What colours feel congruent? What textures resonate right down in your nerve endings? What sounds or playlists allow all of this heaviness to rest in new ways? What movements would best express your internal landscape? Let it flow. These actions will likely not fix the bigger picture, but they can help your nervous system come back into a regulated state, so you can continue bearing witness and acting wisely. And while we may feel the urge to turn away, numb out, or to turn off, the qualities that make us human, such as our compassion and empathy, are the qualities that bind us together for both grief and joy. We cannot experience the one without the other.
The Guest House by Rumi
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
