Please, Take Off Your Cape and Turn On Your Ears

Many years ago I read “The Year of Magical Thinking” by Joan Didion. In it, she writes about her grief process in the year following the sudden loss of her husband, John. I remember being struck by her ability to capture such raw, intense emotion with unusually dry expression and tone. I also recall feeling deeply moved by her depiction of the ever elusive and unpredictable amoeba that is grief. Readers resonated with her broken heart and other painful and unexpected realities that come with losing a loved one. I don’t think about the book regularly, but I’ve had it on my mind recently because many of my clients are working through grief and loss related themes in their own lives. With each of their stories, I’m reminded of Ms. Didion’s words: “a single person is missing for you, and the whole world is empty”. No matter the circumstances of a loss or how the bereaved person’s grief manifests, I am viscerally aware of that feeling of emptiness inside each client; it’s palpable whether they’re speaking directly to it, denying it, or struggling to string together the words to identify it. Ironically, the crushing sadness of death’s irreversibility can be deadening to the spirits of those left behind.I’ve always been taught that the soul seeks health and while I believe that that’s true, I don’t always know how it’s going to get there - especially in the context of grieving a loss. Resuscitating bereft spirits, though, is part of my job description. Unfortunately, there isn’t a guidebook on how to best hold a spirit’s brokenness and still remind it of its strength or how to convince someone that every ounce of goodness isn’t gone when it feels like nothing good could ever come again. My experience in working with grief is that the aftermath of death - physical or emotional - can feel impossible to help. What I’ve learned, though, is that there’s a difference between helping and fixing…and in our desperation to help, we often end up trying to fix. It’s hard to accept that there is only so much we can do and, with that realization, it’s easy to confuse the natural limits of our humanness with failing to be able to do more.Despite my knowing that there are no magic wands, grief takes time, and people can heal, I can easily lose sight of the most important and curative truth of all: “The human soul doesn’t want to be advised or fixed or saved. It simply wants to be witnessed - to be seen, heard and companioned exactly as it is” (Parker J. Palmer). Showing up, being still, and listening…those are our super human powers. You don’t need anything other than yourself to access them, but we could all stand to hone them. Practice every day as you would anything else that adds meaning and value to your life. Chances are you’ll never be sorry you took the time to learn how to show up, but there’s no doubt in my mind you will be sorry if you don’t.