As the energy healer sat across from me and held my tender sprained ankle in her hands, I could feel my heart welling up with soft griefs. I was sorry for my poor foot, but it seemed the vulnerability of being injured also touched the wellspring of hidden sorrows. Unfinished emotions in need of release.
After the whole session, I felt deeply restored. “Look at yourself in the mirror,” she said. My face was soft, open and the eyes looking back at me were fresh and at peace. What a blessing.
As we parted she suggested I read an interview concerning grief that had recently come her way and I knew she, too, had sensed the grief encircling my injury. As I read it a couple of days later, I could feel that same soft grief in my chest.
The writer spoke poignantly and clearly about grief in our modern times –– quick, private, incomplete —- versus grief shared in community the way our soul was meant to process it. He said things about grief I had never heard before. Things that pressed on my sorrow, but at the same time I was grateful to hear, to have acknowledged.
His compassionate understanding of grief invited me to look back over this year that is now in its final quarter. Invited me to acknowledge that it has been a year with much grieving as some years are. The grief of having my beloved dog start biting me to let me know it was time for her to go; the grief of letting her go. The grief of a dear friend who died rather suddenly and even though I was one of her close friends, I was not part of her larger family and was left with no one with whom to grieve the loss. The grief of realizing it was time to let go of my home and livelihood and move on, past the bend in the river into the unknown.
Each of these, and their myriad rivulets of grief, deserve more face time with my heart, but just listing and acknowledging them has been healing. It has also helped with the healing of my ankle, my right ankle, my out-in-the-world stability that had been shaken.
Here is a tender suggestion. Autumn deepens, here in the Northern Hemisphere. As the leaves begin to loosen and fall to Mother Earth, look into your heart and see what lingering sorrows are ready to be released. Which of your unspoken griefs longs to surface and speak? Grieving can yield a surprising harvest and we are in the harvest season.
If that feels too daunting, just experience the healing words of psychotherapist, author, and soul activist Francis Weller through his interview and video. I hope his wisdom echoes as deeply for you as it did for me.
“Grief pushes us into ‘deep rest,’ weighing down our muscles, wringing tears from our eyes and sobs from our guts. It isn’t pretty, but it’s nature’s way.”
-Martha Beck