‘Gates of Grief’ Francis Weller and Me

‘Gates of Grief’ Francis Weller and Me

Francis Weller’s Gates of Grief

In his book ‘The Wild Edge of Sorrow’, Francis Weller explores 5 Gates of Grief. I return to these regularly as starting points to feel into my current inner landscape. I find the territory of grief endlessly fascinating, and am inspired by Francis Weller’s approach. He offers the Gates of Grief as a way to recognise and understand different kinds of loss.

“Grief and love are sisters, woven together from the beginning. Their kinship reminds us that there is no love that does not contain loss and no loss that is not a reminder of the love we carry for what we once held close.”
Francis Weller

Gates of Grief

1 All that we love we will lose (Francis Weller)
2 The places that did not receive love (Francis Weller)
3 The sorrows of the world (Francis Weller)
4 What we expected but did not receive (Francis Weller)
5 Ancestral grief (Francis Weller)
Optional extra Gates of Grief which I find helpful to explore:
6 Trauma (Francis Weller’s optional gate)
7 The harm I have caused to myself and others (Sophy Banks & Azul Thomé)
8 Anticipatory grief – fear of what is to come (Sarah Pletts)

 

Gates to grief as starting points

I refer to Francis Weller’s 5 Gates of Grief, plus an optional one. In addition to these, I use one from my teacher Sophy Banks. I also include one that we use in our own workshops. Francis Weller’s Gates of Grief offers a map, one way to identify and acknowledge the challenges and opportunities that change may bring. They are intended as starting points, as ways in to feelings. There are many possible sources of grief and myriad emotional responses to each of them. Using these gateways as a framework, I share some of my own journey with grief. I wanted to reveal a spectrum of ordinary grief from my everyday existence.

What does grief feel like?

Every grief is different. Every life will include suffering and loss. We will each respond to these challenges in our own way. How we feel and experience each loss or change will be different. Grief is not a competition. Every loss is significant. In this article I try to answer the question ‘what does grief feel like?’ from my own experience. Most people will experience changes that are described by the Gates of Grief in their lives.

1 All that we love we will lose (Francis Weller)

The first Gate of Grief reminds us that change is universal.

I was twenty-three, had just started working, and my father died suddenly. I was totally unprepared. Reaching for chocolate and alcohol, they sedated me through the initial shock. I was too embarrassed to make a fuss, to go and see his body. My mother didn’t cry, so I didn’t feel that I had permission to. At his funeral I finally let tears come, noisily. A well-meaning friend of the family shushed me up, just when my feelings had begun to flow at last. I remember the surreal quality of trying to continue living normally in spite of this grief. It felt as though there was a pane of glass between me and everyone else. Sharp pains often literally stabbed my chest. I kept thinking I was having a heart attack. Observing these new sensations, I felt bewildered. My whole torso ached as though it was bruised.

The whole experience turned my life upside down. I started to re-assess everything I thought I knew. Deaths before my fathers’, had happened before I was born, or were hidden from my view. In a dramatic life review, this brush with mortality inspired changes in my diet, lifestyle, work, home and belief system.

A Life Long Fascination

At age 9 I found a dead shrew, which I discussed with my mother. “Why did it have to die?” I asked, and she wrote a poem. My father sometimes buried caskets of ashes in the churchyard, “Where do you put the bodies?” I asked, assuming they contained just the heads. Clearly, death was something that I considered, even as a child.

Looking at death, becoming more familiar with the process has become something that is an ongoing enquiry for me. Intimacy with dying inspires me to live more whole-heartedly. Ever since the death of my father, I have tried to find opportunities to spend time witnessing the process of dying, and learning how to grieve well. In the three decades since he died, I have spent time with family and friends who have died, including my mother. For me, being in the proximity of a good death feels a great honour.

With every loss, I still feel the familiar squeeze of my heart, but it can also be an opening into profound communion and love. With each subsequent death since that first big one, I have been aware that there can be a cumulative effect. Relationships have ended in heartbreak. (I ranted and raged, I ripped up carpets, broke furniture, cried myself to sleep, and moped). I have been through sudden losses of health, (which left me in a permanent state of listless depression) and the chronic decline of ageing (with cruel loss of memory, libido and my glasses). Some of the deaths I have been able to feel most acutely have been beloved pets. Each loss has opened my heart.

2 The places that did not receive love (Francis Weller)

With the second Gate we identify places that may have been neglected or rejected.

My everyday childhood wounding felt like a chronic “benign neglect” (as Chris Riddell calls it). Although I was loved, I longed to be touched, to be held more. As the child of someone with a mental health condition, I often felt a sense of ‘proximal separation’. This is a situation where you may be near to someone, but they are not attuned to your needs.

“A child can also feel emotional distress when their parent is physically present but emotionally unavailable. Even adults know that kind of pain when someone important to us is bodily present but psychologically absent. This is the state the seminal researcher and psychologist Allan Schore has called ‘proximal separation’.”
Gabor Maté ‘In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts’

I grew up hungry for my parents’ attention. This left me feeling angry, confused, hyper-vigilant and needy. As an adult I have unravelled many layers of this onion of grief through therapy, and by learning to parent my neglected inner child.

My upbringing also gave me a confused picture of sexuality. I finally came to know and understand my sexual desires in my forties, when I came out as bisexual. This brought an incredible sense of relief and expansiveness, but it also left me feeling immensely sad for the part of me which had been hidden, clothed in shame, unrecognised and uncelebrated for many years. I howled and wailed when I was able to own this, in the company of those who could hold me while I grieved.

3 The sorrows of the world (Francis Weller)

The third Gate is where we feel for global causes of suffering.

The sorrows of the world often feel so huge that they are hard to contemplate at all. I try to connect with the injustices I see on the news, and worse, the ones which have dropped out of the news but continue to cause harm. But it’s hard to identify with the abstract. When I’m in the park, I try to notice warning signs of unwelcome changes. Keeping my eyes open, I observe dwindling insects, and flooded paths.

Local as well as global signs of injustice can be spotted. I try to meet the eyes of street dwellers, exchange greetings. A burning sensation accompanies my anger at the poverty that co-exists with the wealth of this city. Feeling solidarity, I know too many people who struggle with perilous work, insecure finances, disabilities, health issues, depression and anxiety. I try to grow my compassion. Recognising abuse when I see it, to sense my own blind spots is important. Keeping engaged, to keep feeling the world’s sorrows is for me a way to develop compassion.

4 What we expected but did not receive (Francis Weller)

With the fourth Gate, we face our disappointments and loss of dreams.

I didn’t receive the welcome I expected when I was born. I spent three days in an incubator before I met my parents. This is a small but crucial part of my pre-verbal blueprint.

I have often been curious about my interest in the landscape of loss. I suspect that in some ways grief feels really familiar, as though it is the water that I swim in. Before I was born, my older sibling-to-be was stillborn. After me another sibling came stillborn. I grew up with a sense of unintended aloneness.

Once I had grown up and found a solid relationship to explore, I caught a disease, which led to ME (CFS). My thirties, which I had assumed would be filled with rewarding work, fulfilling creative projects and having children, were spent being ill. In retrospect this was an incredible journey, during which I travelled deep into all the parts of me, which needed healing. Mourning the loss of all the things, which I hadn’t done, hadn’t been, and the biological children which I hadn’t had. This was necessary as I gradually worked on returning to health. I did a ritual to end the ambiguity of possible future motherhood, an early private grief ritual. It helped me to let go, and choose a different future for myself.

5 Ancestral grief (Francis Weller)

The fifth Gate helps us to recognise the pain that we carry for those who came before us.

I was a quirky and curious child. My instincts propelled me, with a good nose for the truth. Asking impertinent questions led me to open all the closets to see if there were skeletons inside. As I grew older, I became more conscious of the things that weren’t spoken in my family. I have grown more familiar with my ancestors’ stories, doing research to find out more. With illumination, it feels as though their undigested pain, grief and suffering causes less of an unconscious undertow in my life now. I chat to them, light candles and make offerings, knowing that they did their best, sometimes against the odds.

Family Constellations has been a helpful way to recognise patterns that I carried for others. Now I feel supported by some of my ancestors.

6 Trauma (Francis Weller’s optional gate)

The sixth Gate is where extremes of shock and brutality might lie.

I recognise that I have so far been extremely lucky. There have been traumatic moments, but not huge wounds. I have weathered small operations and accidents. I became seriously ill abroad, had emergency surgery, but recovered feeling predominantly relieved, rather than traumatised. When shocks happen, I can fall into a state of collapse. I am learning to recognise and recover when this happens. I try to count my blessings.

7 The harm I have caused to myself and others (Sophy Banks & Azul Thomé)

This extra Gate allows us to identify what makes us feel regret or guilt.

I regret things I’ve said and done to others out of stupidity, ignorance and selfishness. How I have trodden heavily on the earth, when I intended to step lightly. Speaking too often with judgement, and more frequently thinking that I was right or better than… Will the friends and lovers I have betrayed forgive me? My courage failed, when I might have said more, done more or stood up to injustice.

There were too many acts of self-betrayal. I said ‘yes’, but my body needed me to say ‘no’. I try to be kind to myself now, even when I make mistakes. I’m learning to let go of things more easily. I’m still getting things wrong often, but I try to say sorry, to learn and to befriend my shame and guilt.

8 Anticipatory grief (I may include this or ‘Other’)

In these times of change, this final Gate represents the fear of what is to come.

I have been close enough to death myself not to fear it too much. It was a useful rehearsal. It is the death of those I love, who love me, that I fear more. I don’t know what will come, but I try to keep an awareness of the change that is inevitable so that I can face it bravely. Sometimes I feel swamped by fear of the unknown. When that happens, I try to feel connected to the ground and the stars, and to connect through love with others.

Learning to mourn well

I am an ‘apprentice to grief’. We all arrive with different strengths and weaknesses. Our losses and the way we respond to them will be different. The more I love, the more there is to let go of, to grieve. There have been times when I couldn’t find my tears, and others when I poured everything out in great laments. Trauma has cleared from my body in shakes, sweats, tingles and silent shivers. Sometimes tears of sadness have come unexpectedly, and often I enjoy a good weep over a sad film. I have been gradually learning to mourn well.

Grief tending has been a way for me to channel my sorrow. It has helped me to excavate what lies below the surface, to weigh my sorrow, and give it enough space and attention. We often use these Gates of Grief as doorways to stir feelings in Grief Tending sessions. If they resonate with you, use the Gates of Grief to see what they bring to the surface for you.  For further reading, see ‘The Wild Edge of Sorrow’ by Francis Weller.

Links

Francis Weller, Sophy Banks, Rose Jiggens Family Constellations, Dr. Gabor Maté

2 Comments
  • Stephen Walder
    Posted at 12:00h, 24 April Reply

    I love the addition of Anticipatory Grief here Sarah. When my partner died, I struggled to name the grief I felt prior to and right up to her passing, the knowing that hope has been lost, and the inevitable has to happen. A grief counselor at the time referred to this as pre-grief. Just him naming that allowed me to move forward. It’s the grief that few are able to recognize, that which goes unheard, that which is least understood. The beginning of the unraveling. A fantastic entry point to grief for those brave enough to express their emotions at this point.

    Beginning grieving in the infancy of a situation carries the fullest reward (this is only an assumption).

    Thank you for recognizing and adding this, for me, this stage is invaluable.

  • Ed Gash
    Posted at 01:48h, 13 August Reply

    Where is the Gates Map

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