Becoming Part of the Forest

I’m flying by the seat of my pants here, blindly starting down this road that, for once, does not feel like a rabbit hole, but just a road. A dirt road. Seldom traveled by motorized vehicles so I’m safe walking in the middle and looking around at the country side.

In the world I have lived in the past two decades one observation I have had is that we can have a lot of knowledge about a thing but not necessarily the experience of it. And when we get the experience of it, it changes everything we always thought we knew. It shifts the understanding and perspective to a deeper and more intimate level. Thus, changing, entirely what and how we share it with others.

A young woman in one of my grief groups came to group with the story of running into an into an old friend on the street whose father had recently died. The woman in the group was there because her father too had died a long time ago.

So, she runs into this friend who approaches her right away with words of apology, asking forgiveness saying she was so so sorry for the way she had behaved when her friends dad had died; thinking she shouldn’t be so sad or for so long. Now that her own father had died, she got the enormity of this friends loss. They reconnected through their shared experience of “daddy loss”. And even though they are two unique humans with their own unique relationships to their fathers, they had a more common ground from which to honor one another’s experience of grief, and their friendship grew stronger as a result.

Until we experience something, we really cannot know. We can study and listen and read, talk with others and observe and all of that can make us think we do know. And we do not.

In the world of grief, we all know what it feels like to lose something or someone. So we may get comfortable thinking that because we have lost things, we understand what it means to grieve. And we do. But it never gives us license to think we know what someone else might be experiencing in their grief. It’s one of the things I heard countless times from those mourning loss, how utterly infuriating it was to have anyone say to them, “Oh. I know exactly what you’re going through!” or “I know how you feel!” and then go on to tell their own story of loss.

We do not know, ever, what someone else is feeling when someone they love has died or something they loved has gone away. We can lean heavily on our own set of memories from when we have suffered loss and we can remember what was helpful and what was not as we moved through those first disruptive hours, days, weeks and months after a significant loss. We can learn to listen, truly listen, when we find ourselves alongside someone in grief and we can learn to let them teach us what they need.

Grief comes in so many forms, wearing so many hats and always playing by different and unstated sets of no rules. Navigating our own grief can be slippery and disorienting. It’s too easy, as one who has walked in the realm of grief and loss for so many years, to think that I’m ok when I encounter my own grief, when in truth, I am not. It always humbles me greatly when I get reminded. And I have learned how to honor it, how to care for myself and tend a wounded heart.

To become an expert at anything usually requires repeated experiences of it. Coupled with the guidance and mentorship of others who have walked the path ahead of you. And even then, when you’ve taken all the courses, and listened to all the other so-called experts, life has a way of reminding us not to get too cocky. At least my life does.

So, I just continue to show up. And walk to the edge of the shadow that is grief and uncertainty and fear and anger and to do it with as much decorum and Grace as I can find. And I am always ready to lay down my warriors shield and walk naked onto the battlefield because I know I am not alone. I know there are many others alongside, even if I can’t always see them.

Doing this work, living this life, is a constant series of surprises and awakenings. And for some people, that means by the end of it, they’ll be an expert.

I think, for now, I am just a beginner. Still having experiences of things that are new. Things I thought I knew about.

While I listen to my angels laughing.