Life after Grief? Your choice….. no really, your choice!
I’m literally metaphorically foaming at the mouth, I’ve been trying to find the space to write for weeks but my time has been consumed with Oily Witch business. My all too frequent car journeys have been spent endlessly composing, with no manifestation…. My personal definition of frustration! I do appreciate this is a normal part of working for yourself, the standard battle of needing money versus creative flow, and rarely do the twain meet! I spend an inordinate amount of time fantasising about being Beatrix Potter or Agatha Christie, but never Dame Barbara C — pink is not my colour!
We’re at Equinox, the time for noticing what went wherever and letting any negativity go, thanking life for our lessons and personal growth. Well, trying to anyhow, it’s not that easy is it…. Now officially in the count down towards winter, Halloween, Christmas, and for some depression, ideally not, but some are out of sync for many justifiable reasons. #beentheredonethatgotthet-shirt
Yesterday, I spent good time with one of my favourite witches, Death Queen. We pondered, as we like to do, the best ways to tell people going through grief that there is new way to get back and keep that lost being with you…. grief doesn’t just restrict itself to human loss. But, it’s such a radical a volte face that for those who’ve built their identity around their loss, or those wallowing in survivors’ guilt, it can be too much to hear. This sweet message of new hope getting met and mired in misplaced anger, the anger of the victim in defence, which is fear based.
We discussed how grief triggers emotions of abandonment, that definitely had resonated with me, how could my father die and leave me? And more so, how fucking dare he! How was I supposed to go on living in a world without him in it? How were my children going to grow up without his influence, and him being more of a hazy memory than a force de major? So much anger!
So, I get it…. I get the darkness, the loneliness, the deep anger and shades of survivor’s guilt. I think the latter really kicks in when you lose a partner or child, not an elderly parent.
Fear based anger is more freaky, bloody powerful and destructive. It keeps people stuck, and stuck energy starts too corrupt from the inside out. The stagnation makes you ill, sore throat, sore back, sore knees, aching joints, digestive issues, it finds your physical weakness and preys upon it. We’re not supposed to hold onto electrical charge and not let it go, we need our electrical impulses to flow freely within us to keep up in harmony with the world surrounding us.
But some people want to keep hold, they want the physical pain because it outweighs the pain from feeling abandoned. It allows them to hide behind something, an excuse for not continuing to walk on, they unfortunately believe they do not, nor will not, find such happiness again. And such is the error of the human mind, we’re excellent at putting a generous rosy tint on our memories, making unmatchable perfection. What they fail to realise is that we’re all joined, we’re all one, so if they are suffering they are inadvertently making all those around them suffer.
Then there is the deceased individual themselves, not free to move onto the next point, anchored in this time by their loved one’s fear and upset. Worrying about them, loving them enough to want the best for them, true love does not bind does it, it’s unfettered. But similarly, and too frequently, not even truly acknowledged as still being present, despite all the signs they try to give. So, they suffer in limbo, not gone, not known, unable to help but forced to watch on.
As the sun departs and the nights get longer, the less numb grievers will be dreading impending winter, the raw ones won’t care because nothing matters any more. Halloween isn’t given its due relevance, our custom is no longer to celebrate our dearly departed, and recognise their continued presence with a family feast of their favourite dishes. It’s become a distorted parody of what it should be, and given that this was one Pagan festival the Church couldn’t superimpose itself upon, that’s a significant mockery in my book!
As for Christmas, when you are grieving, those overly bright lights and accompanying gaudiness coupled with materialistic greed, is a massive turn off. All that manufactured joy and happiness, feels overly fake, so it can fuck off right. A time to be endured, rather than enjoyed. And, there is no getting away from it anywhere in the modern world, so it magnifies the loneliness and sense of abandonment.
But as she and I know, through our own very deep and traumatic journeys through grief, there is another outcome and it’s far more completing and fulfilling that you can ever imagine when you’re alone in that darkness. She showed me that, and my grief reduced right back to Ok you’re still with me, in fact you’re even better than you were before and a hell of a lot more use! I feel full with contented love and not withered by my loss, for it isn’t a loss, it was a massive transformative gain. Death is actually a gift, just like all those other clouds with silver linings, except bigger than anything you’ve ever been gifted before.
I know that’s hard to feel or even conceive and that is why Death Queen exists, her purpose is to support those left behind to reconcile with their lost loves. She does this through a community she’s created called Raise, and by sharing her experience with her lost brother, whose very much an active partner in all this. Check it out, if anything I’ve said resonates, https://raise.mn.co. I’d say point anyone you know trapped by their own grief to it, but moving on from painful grief can only be a personal choice.
Originally published at http://celticwitchmama.com on September 20, 2019.
