Grief/Loss/Feelings Tag

21 Dec

Posted at 21:15h in Sarah's Journal by

It is ‘Persephone’ time. The shortest day seems drowned in sudden prolonged downpours. Beyond the front door everything feels grey and dank. Like Persephone in the underworld I cannot resist the burst of sweetness on biting into pomegranate seeds. We sit on the sofa, three of us, to celebrate the solstice with the delicious sweet tang of pomegranate blended with creamy coconut yoghurt. The neglected garden is covered in darkened magnolia leaves mulching quietly. This is the season for composting, for going inside to digest the events and experiences of the year that has passed. Like the pomegranate, the year divides with symmetry, and this is the axis where we turn towards the light while still deep in the dark of winter. I reflect on the steps taken this year past to welcome in my own grief for all that I have lost, for nature’s struggle, for the disappointment of paths not taken by our leaders. I reflect on the journey so far to hold space for others to experience more of their felt selves. I celebrate the opportunities to practice loving those close to me. I value the simple pleasures that bubble up when I am connected. I continue to learn how to love life more.

13 Dec

Posted at 19:23h in Sarah's Journal by

“This is the death of truth”, Rose said this morning. We walk slowly with long faces as though there has been a bereavement in the family. I recognise the feeling that everything has changed, and strangely, normal life continues regardless. We walk by the canal with a sense of collective doom. I sense the righteous anger of the no-doubt-young author of “FCK BORIS!” on the tow path. I feel the sting of the tears that spill from this silver painted eye. Smiles, usually readily available seem hard to offer to passers by. Grief hangs like fog over us as we pace this eclectic city. I dream of escaping to somewhere else. I imagine heading to Scotland with a yurt to keep chickens. I imagine London as an island loosing its tether and taking the Thames with it out into the channel to re-position itself. I imagine I am running sweaty in black T-shirt and khaki trousers working to outwit the engineers of ‘the matrix’. I imagine sand in my eyes as I expertly swish my light sabre to vanquish storm troopers. Instead I eat chocolate. “Telling the truth is a choice,” says the exasperated mother to 7 year-old Hamza, (in trouble at school). “You can choose to tell the truth”. I listen to this mother on the bus pleading with her son to “stop making wrong choices”. How can he possibly know what wrong choices are in this time where truth and lies are so blurred by those in power, where right and wrong is experienced so subjectively?

11 Dec

Posted at 23:04h in Sarah's Journal by

We set up the room before the group arrive. We work as a team to move the piles of papers, washing and shoes that have clustered in corners. Tony hoovers the stairs, sweeps the floor. I bake something healthy but sweet. Then Tony blitzes the kitchen, removing all evidence of my recent vigorous food preparations. Tony arranges chairs, makes piles of cushions and blankets. I build a small altar to support us in our work to find connection and depth. As I place crystals, eagle feather, bowl, candle and stem of whatever calls from the garden – crab apple, bay or rosemary. I speak my intention, ask for guidance. Then Tony and I meditate to connect and ground. One by one the group arrives with hats, boots and bike helmets, carrying backpacks with badges and patches on. They come full of the bustle of their day and the hassle of the journey. They may bring anticipation, anxiety, but also willingness and courage. Having created the conditions, the journey into mystery begins to unfold. A group of strangers spend the evening together each with whatever they are carrying inside, and being uniquely human together. It is always an extraordinary honour to witness and be a part of.

10 Dec

Posted at 23:02h in Sarah's Journal by

What is the story here? This is a visual landscape of decay, of impending change. There is a need for housing in the city that ordinary people can afford. There is pressure on local councils to provide more affordable housing from a depleted housing stock. Local government housing budgets are squeezed. Property developers and housing associations take over estates and mop up the profits. Developers are keen to maximize profits. There is limited space in the city. Gentrification is pricing out local people. We live in a time where austerity cuts the public services that buffer some of the worst injustices in our society. I live in a society where the rich are rewarded and the poor lose more. I know that the economic divide impacts health, education, access to services, quality of life and life expectancy. We live in times where corporate greed fuels politics. We have lost trust in politicians. Young lives are collateral in a system that does not value their creativity and gifts. Wall space is claimed for personal expression, and for competitive tagging. We live in times where power is wielded at the expense of people and planet. I have a vote.

20 Nov

Posted at 21:52h in Sarah's Journal by

Here I sit, right now in time. I feel the reassuring support of this seat and my breath spiralling in and out. I also notice how much the present is coloured by responses to my lived experience. In grief rituals that connect body with feelings and mind there is the possibility of surfacing some of the old emotional deposits  stored in our cells in order to clear them. One reason is to be more available to live fully in the present. In my psyche and in the context of grief rituals the future looms large. The present era with all its injustices, inequalities, floods and raging wildfires will give rise to what comes next. Being here now is a worthy starting point, but I am wary that without a more intentional framework, without a commitment to being of service, to fulfilling my highest potential to be fully me, it might be another kind of disconnect.

18 Nov

Posted at 17:13h in Sarah's Journal by

As we leave Union Chapel, the shadow of the gate plays on the wall. We have been to ‘Breathing Space’, a night of meditation with Boe and Bilal. Given space to honour our pain for the world, we discuss ‘the great unravelling’ as Joanna Macy names it – the shadow consequences of ‘business as usual’ caused by the industrial growth economy. The acknowledgement and naming of the shadow, the unseen, brings power through seeing the whole. Everything has a shadow. “That which you do not love regresses and turns hostile to you”, states Jung, whose wisdom illuminated ‘the shadow’. I sit today with my own dark side – the imposter, the incompetent as well as the righteous. Pickle (aged hound), now fairly deaf and near blind moved toward my shadow, which was skulking on the stairs; he then jumped to find my body behind him. I observe the play of light and dark, see the beauty in the shadow curlicues on the wall. The next evening in the series is ‘Active Hope’.
www.unionchapel.org.uk/event/11-12-19-spirituality-in-powerful-times/

09 Oct

Posted at 22:47h in Sarah's Journal by

A pod of grievers meet at low tide at the edge of the Thames in earshot of St Paul’s. We make a circle from mud-larked bones and oyster shells. We are here to mark the death of the humpback whale marooned by hunger or disorientation in the estuary. A whale vertibrae the size of a child’s skull is passed round the circle. It is porous, white and lighter than I imagined. One by one we sing to the spirit of this whale, sing it home on a river of tears and gratitude. Hump backed whales mourn each other with song. I don’t find the words to express my sense of loss. I am dismayed by this example of the dislocation from right-relationship between place, food and the hierarchy of species in the natural world. This is a profound breach of natural order, an out of place death. How big a sign will it take before we recognise the extent of our selfishness?

04 Oct

Posted at 17:40h in Sarah's Journal by

I have been wondering when it begins – the shutting down of grief in community? On trains recently I have been aware of parents shushing babies and toddlers. Is it because we have become intolerant of other people’s children crying? Parents feel embarrassment and shame at their child’s public bawling. Have we become judges of parental failings and tired babies (either real or projected)? Are we just so uncomfortable with our own sorrows that we want to banish others’ into private spaces? We are programmed to respond to these cries, but when does soothing and calming become silencing? Can we hold baby’s screaming and wailing more compassionately as a collective?

25 Sep

Posted at 22:06h in Sarah's Journal by

A selection of apparently unrelated items nestle in the crematorium waiting room. They have each been chosen to give the illusion of comfort and safety in an environment that most will encounter during a period of very uncomfortable loss of emotional safety. The artifice of these flowers, the institutional furniture, intended to make me feel at home, highlights instead the way the business of dying has been hived off away from the clutter of home and family life.

20 Sep

Posted at 19:51h in Book Reviews by

“If there is ever to be any real peace on earth, all people need to relearn and re-establish the now diminished and hidden arts of Grief and Praise, for one without the other is not possible.” Martin Prechtel’s uncompromising and passionate message rubs off the page. His words seduce with rowdy charm. He urges us to shake off our avoidance of grief, to embrace life through praise, to recognise the consequences of the “unmetabolized war grief of past generations”. Ideas grown in hot dry New Mexico land amongst sage, marjoram and lavender, taking root in a very English garden.