Grief is one of those experiences in life that we try to avoid. It is ironic then, that it is this very experience that holds for us the greatest possibility for growth.
The wonderful Catholic priest, mystic and writer Henri Nouwen said this:
"In a society which is much more inclined to help you hide your pain rather than grow through it, it is necessary to make a very conscious effort to mourn."
-Henri Nouwen (emphasis by me)
This is a profound statement. The idea that we can grow from our pain (grief) by making a conscious effort to mourn flies in the face of our cultural worldview that we should avoid it at all costs.
Let me make two points before going on:
1) In no way am I suggesting that working to avoid loss is in any way wrong or misguided.
2) Just as no one avoids death, no one truly avoids loss during their lifetime.
So when loss comes, as it will, avoiding the grief of loss really means choosing not to experience it. This is a deep problem because choosing not to experience it doesn't make it go away, it just makes it go deeper.
The healthier way of being with grief is to allow it to flow. This is what Nouwen means by "making a conscious effort to mourn." Mourning is allowing the currents of grief to move through us and be expressed by us. "Consciousness" is required because the understandable reflex is to avoid it, that is, to "stuff it." With consciousness we can make a different choice.
“Because loss is an inevitable part of life, grief for human beings is an important and largely neglected aspect of psycho-spiritual development, as well as a profound healing process … Grief is an opportunity not for ‘resolution,’ as in the popular parlance, but for transformation: a wholly new awareness of reality, self, beloved and world.”
— Miriam Greenspan, Healing Through The Dark Emotions
Greenspan touches on what Nouwen meant by "growing through it." In the conscious decision to mourn, we open ourselves to an altogether new experience of life itself. Somehow, somewhere in our hearts that have not just been broken by loss, they have broken open through mourning. Standing in that place of the broken-open heart gives us a view of life that could not be without the conscious effort to mourn.
The Well Of Grief
By David Whyte
Those who will not slip beneath
the still surface on the well of grief
turning downward through its black water
to the place we cannot breathe
will never know the source from which we drink,
the secret water, cold and clear,
nor find in the darkness glimmering
the small round coins
thrown by those who wished for something else.
The imagery of the wishing well is powerful. There are those who stand around the well of grief wishing that things were different. They throw coins - tokens of their wish for "something else," yet they remain in their experience, standing on the edge. Then, there are those who choose to go into the well of grief. They commit themselves to the "black waters" below rather than a mere token of a wish. They "slip beneath" and "turn downward" entering the "place they cannot breathe." And yet somehow in the place that appears to be the end, we find the "source from which we drink" a "secret water, cold and clear." And here, in this place, we find gold glimmering in that darkness; those coins, no longer mere tokens of a wish, but the embodiment of a transforming experience.
David Kessler, one of the visionary's of the Hospice and death and dying movement, in his book, The Rights of the Dying, said this:
“Few human experiences are as powerful and universal, and even fewer impact our lives so significantly as those related to death and mourning.”
— David Kessler, The Rights Of The Dying
May we all learn to make a conscious effort to mourn our losses, big and small, growing through them.
