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The Wisdom of Grief
THE WISDOM OF GRIEF walks us through the phases of any grieving process, while offering specific antidotes to the various aspects of grief, in the form of contemplations and guided meditations, helping us to access the innumerable opportunities lying in wait at each point. It is a comprehensive, solution based spiritual program to guide us, whatever our religious affiliation, toward the gifts in the life altering but not so unusual experiences of deep grief. THE WISDOM OF GRIEF is a map, guiding us gently toward a place beyond fear, where an immense treasure lies, waiting to be unearthed.
The book is here as a tool to assist you to feel understood, to delineate the universal sticking points of grief, to provide you with new perspectives through which to view loss, and to introduce practices for navigating grief mindfully. It can be read as a self care guide, with practices for bearing the unbearable aspects of loss and transmuting them into peace.
Free Resources
Tools of Grief
I offer tools for traveling through the landscape of Grief to a better, more expanded place. When we have the right tools, we can move from heartbreak to consolation and beyond. We find the wisdom to know the difference between the things we can and cannot change about this wound. We can walk through the door of sadness to rest in possibility, enchantment, and wellbeing.
Imagine a radiant place where love and connection are the rule- a place where we hold what is left of our loved ones in our hearts, bringing their memory forward with us as we embrace the awe and wonder that life still offers us even in the midst of, and after, deep sorrow.
Grief happens to all of us. Its purpose is restorative and even expansive. We don’t thrive from loss but we rise by our response to it.
Let me help you gather the supplies to rise to this new place.
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Three Tools of Grief - ONE: FAITH/TRUST- As a part of the immune system, grief is inherently restorative; as such we can trust it. Where we get stuck in grief is always where we stop moving with/trusting the experience and begin fighting it or questioning the sense of it. FAITH is an open mind and heart. It is the ability to move forward without knowing, to keep walking even in the dark. To trust that this is a passage we are moving through and not a permanent state. Ultimately, grief requires faith in ourselves- to not give up, but cooperate with what life has handed us- by working with it rather than fighting against it. As humans, we are wired to find the hidden potential in this universal developmental passage TWO: SELF COMPASSION- Grief is about meeting ourselves where we are at. We have been given an unwanted job that lasts a lifetime that we didn’t ask for and actively don’t want. We are navigating a foreign landscape. We need to accompany ourselves with kindness; adjust expectations accordingly; have compassion for our limits and respect them; Self protect; incorporate grief breaks; and treat ourselves like the hero that we are required to be in grief. We deserve our deepest love and support as we heal from this deep wound. THREE: PERSPECTIVE- Be willing to see events from all angles- don’t get fixated in one view. Grief is a story in our lives but we don’t want it to become the story of our life. It represents an intense chapter, and it is also as we review past chapters through this new lens, as we tell the story of what’s happened to us, and as we write the next chapter, we need the third tool of grief. Perspective includes examining and re-engaging with whats beautiful that is still left to us. It includes gratitude for what we still have. It includes giving ourselves permission to engage in what may be yet to come.
Five Minute Meditations -INTRODUCTION “Welcome to 5 minute meditations, a series of practices designed to center, connect, and re–focus your attention to a deeper part of you. This part of you is beyond your thoughts, your mental intelligence, or the story of your life, and yet, paradoxically, knowing & experiencing it regularly will have the result of improving the clarity of your thoughts, the efficiency of your mind, and the story of your life in miraculous ways. The simple realization that we are more than our thoughts or emotions can be quite liberating. The practice that puts you in touch with this reality is life altering. It’s simple. We do it by getting in touch with the silent field of stillness that exists inside of you and is at the same time greater than you. This is who you really are, and each time you connect with it, it brings more peace & clarity into your life and therefore into the world. This part of of each of us exists beneath all of the weather of life. It exists beneath life’s ups & downs and beyond our thoughts and the needless suffering created by them. It is always available, in every moment, and these meditations will help you to access it within yourself, so that it becomes less about you moving through life and more about the life that is moving through you. It’s about deeply connect with the friendliness that is in the present moment, waiting like a gift for each of us. And in that way, the exercises are meant to be used in everyday life- not just on a meditation cushion. My hope is that they will have in-the-moment application for you in your life in the same way they have for me & so many others. Peace.” Leslie HOW TO MEDITATE In terms of positioning, best is a seated position in a chair with palms facing up resting on the legs. The spine is straight and not resting back on anything. The idea is to be relaxed but focused, not trying too hard to DO anything but rather allowing yourself to BE, be aware of a deeper part of yourself, already present and often unnoticed. It may be easiest at first to focus with your eyes closed, but you might try open eyes with an inward gaze as well. There are no hard and fast rules here, it’s more about being comfortable but alert. How do we do the rest of it? Even if we haven’t sat in a formal practice, we have all meditated. Anything that puts us in a state of conscious awareness of the present moment beyond the mind or the mind’s idea about it is meditation. We have many experiences of meditative state in our lives- powerful moments of awe and wonder; experiences of thoughtless awareness. Here we recreate this state through focusing our attention on pointers that exist beyond the mind: the greater intelligence in the inner body, the breath, space, silence, nature, allowing and stillness. These things exist beyond the mind but are still a part of us. When we find ourselves lost in a thought or emotion during meditation, rather than trying to stop the thought or emotion, we simply turn our attention away from it and back toward the larger moment. We let our experience of the moment be more interesting than our thoughts about it. A final prompt we use to bring ourselves back to the present moment is the bells. When I ring the bell, let it bring your attention away from your thoughts about what you are doing and back to the doing itself. Know that once you become familiar with these different doorways through which you can enter the present moment (the inner body, breath, nature, silence space, allowing, stillness), you can call them to your attention whenever needed for instant awareness. Whenever you find yourself giving 100% of your attention to your thoughts. you can immediately connect with a deeper part of yourself, boundless and eternal. INNER BODY Bring your awareness to your right hand. Feel the energy field of the right hand. What sensations do you feel (tingling, prana, energy, your pulse, blood pumping through the body)? Just notice the sensations. Now bring your awareness to your feet- the toes, sole of the foot, and heel. Notice how they feel. Become aware of the greater intelligence at work in the body. The body’s intelligence exists beyond our understanding and it keeps going despite our lack of attention toward it. We can notice the body and the body’s reaction to that noticing. It may wake up or certain parts may feel dull. Don’t judge the sensations. Just feel them. Allow any thoughts to be there, but continue to return your awareness to each part of the body. Continue your focal awareness at each point of the body- ankles, calves, knees, thighs, hips, stomach, heart, shoulders, arms, hands, neck, head. Notice differences in each area. This is not about making the whole body feel great. It is about simply feeling what sensations are present in the body right now. Next time it will be different. Now focus your awareness on the entire energy field of the body at the same time. Beginning with the feet, “run” your awareness up and down the body in a wave. Notice how it feels. As you open your eyes, keep some awareness on the inner body. BREATH “The mind can go in many different directions in a split second. The breath has only one path- inhalation & exhalation.” – IyengarTune into the larger intelligence at work in the breath. Breath happens all day long, all of our lives, without our being aware of it. Without it we would not have life. It is one of the very first things we do as we enter the world, and it is one of the last things we will do as we exit. Become aware of the breath. Tune into the feeling of it entering your body at each different point- your nose, your throat, your lungs. Stay with one inbreath and one outbreath- keep all of your awareness on it. Now try it again. Use the breath as your focal point, or mantra. Constantly bring yourself back to your inbreath, then your outbreath. Notice the space between your inbreath & outbreath. Notice the space in which your breath happens, so that it becomes less about you breathing and more about life breathing through you. WATCH THE THINKER “Thinking plays only a subordinate part in the brief, decisive phase of the creative act itself.” Albert Einstein We cannot enter a meditative state through the mindstream, but by only letting it go and simply allowing our thoughts to be there. Allow whatever thoughts that come up to be there. Watch them as they happen. Notice the speed at which they happen, the intensity of some of them. Don’t judge them- don’t become attached to them or lost in them. Allow them to be there. Keep some attention on the space around the thoughts, in which they happen. Who is doing the watching? A higher dimension of consciousness. This is who you really are-the mind is only a small portion of you. As you go through the day, watch yourself. Be the awareness in which your actions and thoughts happen. / CLOUD MEDITATION Picture a vast blue sky. Imagine that you are the sky. Now imagine that your thoughts are clouds. Each cloud represents a feeling or a thought. Watch the clouds, the speed at which they move, their density. At times the sky might be totally clear. Other times it may be full of clouds, all strung together with no space in between like one long cloud. Some clouds may be fluffy and white, some may be dense and dark and full of rain. Just watch the clouds as they roll by. Now allow yourself to focus on the blue sky underneath the clouds, bright with the light of the sun. You are the blue sky, and remain constant throughout all of the movement of the various thoughts and emotions. You are the greater awareness in which the thoughts happen. SPACE “Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion” – Democritus Be aware of the space in which all forms exist. Beneath everything there is only space. Infinite space. The body alone is comprised of @ 98% space and 2% matter. The universe is the same. Become aware of this space- the space inside your body, the space between your breaths, the space between your thoughts, the space in which you sit, the space between all movement, noise, and forms. This is the majority of the universe. Bring this background into the foreground of your awareness. STILLNESS Become aware of the stillness underneath all movement. Movement is ripples on the surface of life itself. Imagine a deep ocean. You are the ocean. Your thoughts are like waves on the surface of the ocean. Sometimes they are big; at its worst, life may feel like a hurricane or a tsunami- the waves may even feel like they are drowning us. Sometimes the ocean is calm and reflects everything around it like a mirror- it holds everything in itself momentarily. Underneath the waves a vast deep well of still water always exists. This is who you really are, and you can access it at any time. The ocean’s surface is a minute percentage of its real depth- the largest wave at the top may be 100 feet, but the depth and stillness of the ocean goes down for thousands of feet- it drops off the continental shelf and goes down for miles- no one really knows how deep it goes- it has not been measured. Keep your attention on the still part of the ocean, on the stillpoint at the very center of your being- silent, spacious, unmoving, Let your attention emanate from this point. This is always accessible to you. Anytime you feel caught up in waves of emotions, thoughts, or physical discomfort, you can dive into the limitless stillness below. ALLOWING MEDITATION Concentrate on this very moment and the world that lies within it- the sounds, sensed movement, sensations. Don’t name them, just sense them. Be the observing presence of this moment as it unfolds. Relax into not knowing without jumping into thoughts about what is coming next. Allow your thoughts to be there, but don’t judge them- don’t become attached to them or lost in them. There is nothing you can add to this moment by interpreting it. Create space around the thoughts. Any time you feel any kind of constricted energy, or trying, relax into it- allow it to be there, but create space around it. Relax into the space in which this moment happens. If you like, bring awareness to an area of discomfort in the body. Allow it to be there. Become intensely conscious of how it feels. Allow some space around the feeling. Relax into it. What physical sensations do you actually feel? Allowing creates a bubble of gentleness around whatever it is we feel. It softens our experience of the moment. How much can you allow things to be exactly as they are, without focusing on how you would like them to be? How much can you yield to rather than oppose the flow of life? SILENCE “In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness.” -Mahatma GandhiListen for the silence in which all sound happens. Every sound is born out of silence, dies, and retreats back into the silence from which it came. Become aware of the silence in which sounds happen. Notice silence- the silence between breaths, between sounds, into which a sound retreats. Like the calm quiet of a newly fallen snow, allow silence to blanket the noise of the moment. Expand you awareness of this already present feature of the moment. Practice silence for a period of time each day- 1/2 hour, or each week (for example, Sunday morning from 8-10am will be spent in silence). It will make you aware of how many wasted words we all use;how much unnecessary noise we make. NATURE It is easier to enter the present moment while in a natural place, because a natural place carries the vibration of all that is- it is not a product of our minds but exists outside of it. Contemplate a tree- it has no worries; the branches do not fight with one another; the leaves on a tree are not concerned about their imminent death but fully embody their present reality. Notice the natural surrender inherent in other life. A cat does not have a worry about a future moment. It deals with each moment as it arises. Make it a point to access nature for 5 minutes a day. Experience nature with quiet, non-naming awareness. Just looking at an object in nature can bring you immediately beyond the mind into thoughtless awareness.
Five Tips to Move You Through Intense Grief INTRODUCTION 1. Grief has its own intelligence. Be willing to surrender to and have faith in the greater healing process happening to you and trust that you WILL come out the other side and feel joy again. 2. Get behind yourself :). Meet yourself where you are at with compassion. Know that whatever you feel is valid. You are not crazy, you are just sad. You have a heart wound. 3. Allow your pain to connect you with other people, not isolate you from them. That means letting people in to what you are feeling and going through. 4. You don’t have a choice about what has happened, but you DO have a choice in how you come out of it. Begin to create a vision for the larger context of this event in your life. 5. Set a positive intention for how you would like to come out of this loss, and actually feel what it would be like to reach that place. Hold onto that vision for yourself. This has powerful conscious and unconscious effects in your life. It also grounds you by telling your grieving self where to head in ungrounded moments.
Making Friends with Grief...I have had my share of experience with grief. My mother’s suicide, the seven year journey of my husband’s terminal cancer, and a lifetime as a therapist working with the bereaved all might be indicators that I am somehow well-seasoned on the topic. But the truth is, when I lost my husband, I was pretty terrible at grieving. First off, I was impatient with myself: I felt I should know better than to fall into this overwhelming anxiety about the future, this depression where I could not get out of bed. After all, he had been sick for so long. When he had first been diagnosed years earlier we were told that he had 3-6 months to live. How could I not have been better prepared for this? I was humbled by being so much less adept than I had hoped I might be. Around the 6 month marker of his death, I felt as if everyone else was moving on and I was only just beginning to process what had happened. This coincided with the holidays so I began to feel like everyone around me who was happy was the most insensitive person on the planet, when in fact they were just living in the real world and I was marooned on the island of grief. Though it was not rational, a part of me had still believed that my well of knowledge was some kind of exit card for actually having to go through the pain of mourning. As it turned out, neither my insight nor my previous experience precluded me from having to feel my own acute despair. Grief may be a universal experience, but it is unique every time we encounter it. Remembering my grief about my mother may have made me feel connected, but it did not mirror my journey of mourning my husband. My own sense of isolation, so common in grief, was exacerbated by my determination to be better at this. When people asked how I was, I answered with how I felt in my best moments (at peace, glad he was out of his pain, and grateful for our time together) instead of sharing how I was so much of the time (uncertain, vulnerable, and exposed). This made everyone assume I was coming through with flying colors while half the time I was just trying to shift my own perspective in order to get myself through. What had happened to the tenacious faith I had experienced all through his cancer, that had buoyed me up through the first few months of mourning? It was like I had been on a honeymoon with grief and now we had returned home and had our first big fight. And I was realizing that since grief and I were now married, we were going to be stuck with one another, for better or worse, for a very long time. Initially, I had been full of faith in the process itself, knowing that each tear brought cleansing and relief, that each moment of uncertainty would pass and be followed by a moment of decisiveness and readiness which would get me through the next tough step to take. Perhaps it was just that the nightmare of watching someone suffer so inexorably and inexhaustably was over, but whatever it was, when he first died, things had seemed a little bit magical. I was surrounded by warmth, caring, and love everywhere I turned. I found 100 heart rocks in 100 days: it seemed that my husband had sent them to me. I kayaked, laid on sun baked rocks on the Maine summer beach for hours, and had a lovely one-on-one yoga session where I was given a new mantra to help me let go of the trauma of caring for a dying man. When my son went away to school in the fall and I was left living completely by myself for the first time, well, ever, I joined a tennis club, reached out to friends, cleaned out my storage space, and went for walks on the beach with my cat. I ate healthily, focused on getting enough sleep, and started each day with a meditation on the sunrise. In short, I was the perfect mourner. Then suddenly, things began to feel like they were crumbling. In response to the dwindling numbers in my bank account, I spent more and more time in bed ruminating about the fact that I should not be there but rather out finding a way to support myself and my son, not to mention, pay for his college. And the more I thought about this, the more firmly I became attached to my bed. Last year at the same time I remembered how it was the last occasion my husband felt okay- could even get out of bed and walk. I recalled his expression as he sat at the beach one sunset looking toward the future with hope and determination. I remembered how we all pictured this miraculous ending to the story, but that in fact things were actually building to an awful crescendo, one that would get so much worse before the end. How was I going to make it through these memories, or the awful flashbacks of the holidays last year? Thanksgiving was this beautiful day as a family. The next day everything disintegrated. We spent a six hour drive home listening to him alternately vomiting and gasping for breath. I tried to manage this while driving and also being present to my 15 year olds’ deep distress. All I could do was breathe through it all, breaking each awful moment down into tiny manageable parts. In the face of all of these recollections, I took to my bed. I ate junk food, watched terrible TV (Who knew just how many royal shows there were? These poor women, having to sell themselves for the greater good of their families’ social and economic advancement). I brooded. I told myself I was handling this rather poorly, and a voice inside me wondered, what if I wasn’t who I thought I was? What if I had only fooled myself into believing I was pretty whole and centered and now here was the life test that was going to show all that to the light? I began to imagine myself years down the road, still in bed, living alone but with many more cats, hair sticking up on one side, on my way to the grocery store in stained clothes (I had gotten to the point where it was normal for me to leave the house in a 3 day outfit and unbrushed hair). I was talking to the wisest person I know (my sister) about it, and she pointed out that in the six months since my husband had died, I had moved, set up a promising rental business with some property we had bought right before he died, joined a book group and a bereavement group, had a book published, continued writing, seen some clients, and been there for my teenage son. Hearing her rational voice, a part of me woke up. I thought, wait, that is right. I have done all those things. It was like in the fog of my despair I had forgotten who I was aside from it. Anxiety, which we are particularly susceptible to when grieving, is like that. It can overwhelm your perspective and erode your sense of well-being. It confuses your sense of time: you may be feeling it for a week and feel like it has been your whole world for months. And if you follow it, it leads you into the most unlikely scenarios. It begins with thoughts like, it’s been 5 months and I should be doing better than this. Then it leads to worse. My sister assures me that this will pass, and that she has no doubt I will get through this. I take great comfort in the fact that she believes this, because she has the best judgment of anyone I know. Still, a tiny voice in my head- the voice of anxiety- says, what if she’s wrong? And there is the voice of self-denigration again, this wholly American head trip about how we should always be doing just a bit better than we already are so we can never relax into the moment. So I try not to listen. Life is hard enough on its own- we don’t need to make it worse for ourselves. I wonder about the nagging voice- if we give it too much leeway, it will grow, containing new, more corrosive messages. Is this what happened to my mother? Eleven years ago, she walked out to the end of a dock on a bright Indian summer morning and ended her life. I am sure I will never stop wondering how this came to pass and what little things along the way could have been done to prevent it. One thing I am certain about: it was the result of a very deluded thought process. And she had never let anyone in on the worst of it, or we might have done even more to help her. How had her messages gotten so distorted? How had she come to believe them so strongly? How do any of us insure ourselves against the destructive thoughts that anxiety, grief, depression, and, to a certain, degree, every day life all contain? Certainly one way is by sharing the thoughts, so someone can help us put them into perspective. We can also give more space around the thoughts through meditation (see the guided meditation at the end of this article). And we can choose not to believe everything we think. It is not the thoughts themselves, but our belief in the thoughts that lead to tragedy. We would be prudent to remember this, especially during difficult times. In the words of someone who may even be wiser than my sister (Pema Chodron), “Many of the most difficult times are the ones we give ourselves. It is never too late or too early to practice lovingkindness” . The day my sister leaves to return to her home state I cannot speak when we are saying goodbye- I am too full of tears, and a kind of panic at the thought of being alone again. I pull over to the side of the road and let the tears fall for awhile, waiting for the oxytocin release that a good cry can bring, and then heave a big sigh and take myself home. When the nagging thoughts come, I try to turn my attention toward something else. I drive myself straight to the beach and sit and watch the sunset. It makes me cry, that my husband is not here to witness this beauty (or that if he is I cannot feel him), and that my heart is so touched by things that I can no longer share with him. The next day, I try and focus on the space in between my sad or negative thoughts, and I feel a bit more peace. And I vow to make friends with my grief. After all, it is going to be with me a long time. And, I concede, it has brought some beautiful, and unexpected things with it, too. SURRENDER CONTEMPLATION: MAKING FRIENDS WITH GRIEF Sit back comfortably and allow yourself to be cradled by the chair holding you. Feel the lifegiving energy at work in your body. Notice the health at work in it. Notice your heart with gratitude. It’s wonderful to have a heart that works so relentlessly and consistently. Breathing in and out from the heart center, begin by accessing a basic kindness toward yourself. Feel any areas of mental blockage or numbness, self-judgment, self-hatred. Then drop beneath that to the place where you find care for yourself, where you want strength and health and safety for yourself. Allow yourself to be cradled by your own basic goodness as if you were an infant being cradled by your loving mother. Bask and nourish yourself in this energy of gentleness, peace, and acceptance. Invite images of love and solicitude to radiate into your whole being. Let this awareness, this tender care expand the heart, and travel out into the room to others in your life to the planet and beyond. Let it expand to encompass your grief. Reach out your soft attention toward the toughness of your grief. Radiate kindness and peace toward your own struggle with it. Imagine holding hands with your grief in friendship. Allow your bereavement to ease itself from your soft awareness. Your awareness, a part of this greater loving field, can support you, can hold everything. Allow this greater intelligence to watch over you, and everything, offering comfort, peace, and solace to you and everything that you encounter. Before you get up, list three things that you are grateful for that arrived with your grief, allowing yourself to feel this gratitude in your inner energy field.
