Grief as an Initiation- Part 1 of 2

Surrendering to the Innate Intelligence of Mourning

This is an audio recording of me reading this post for those who prefer to listen.

The Ocean of Grief

One Sunday morning I was awoken early by a phone call informing me that my partner-at-the-time, Tyler, had just died. Over the following few hours an ocean of grief seeped into my home and swallowed me up. My flailing around in the murky waters of mourning has been the most horrendous pain I’ve ever experienced and, in hindsight, the most potent medicine I’ve ever been offered.

We live in a grief-phobic culture. We don’t know how to swim in those waters. Grief has become something we think of as a personal problem, something to hide from others, something we just need to suffer alone and get through it. We are told to get back to normal, and do it quickly please, so everyone else doesn’t need to suffer through our despair.

When a significant person in your life just vanishes off the face of the earth where the hell is “normal”? It no longer exists. I didn’t know where to even aim for, and my shattered mind had no hope of forming a straight line to get to someplace specific anyway. I could barely make it to the bathroom most days. I was adrift in wave after wave of reality cracking grief, being pounded on the rocks of “normal”.

That was, until I met a wise elder, who had a different understanding of grief.

Under his skillful guidance I began to wonder if grief might be a natural, essential part of life. That maybe the experience of loss, and the instinctual reaction we have to it, is part of some deeper intelligence of the soul waiting to unfold in each of us.

I began to understand grief as an initiatory journey rather than a horrible thing to be put behind me.

Islands in the Ocean

Community

The first step was allowing myself to fully feel the grief. After the initial numbness wore off I could feel it swelling inside me and imagined it would suck me down into an abyss from which I would never return. It felt overwhelming. I struggled to “keep my head above water” which meant to try to bite back the sobs jammed in my throat.

The first island in the ocean I found was people willing to sit with me while I wailed. People who didn’t need to sooth me so they felt better, people who could simply offer me the grace of their presence and a hand on my back while grief had its way with me. Its such a simple thing to ask for, and often hard to find, a human who is able to just let you be a mess, without judgement.

Finding that support was a turning point for me and I feel eternally grateful to have found such a circle of people as early in my grief journey as I did. Having a hand to hold while I plummeted into the abyss of sorrow, rage, regret, guilt and all the other feelings I couldn’t even name, gave me the courage to go there fully.

Their support gave me the knowing that I could handle it, that feeling my grief wouldn’t kill me or make me loose my mind - not permanently anyway. Through their gentle patience I learned that I could let myself feel all of what was naturally arising in me, that it would pass through like a grey wave and on the other side I’d be okay. I might have a sore throat, red eyes and snot on my face, but I’d be alive and still present to my life.

In fact I noticed I felt more alive and more acutely present than I had ever felt.

An Expanded Capacity for Feeling

I don’t think I noticed it right away but at some point, after yet another session doubled up on the floor sobbing, I became aware of feeling lighter, cleaned out in some way. I would often sit out on the porch after these big releases and watch the trees, clouds, birds and insects.

At some point I became aware that I felt unusually present and calm, fully focused on watching a leaf wave in the wind or listening to birds call back and forth to each other. Then inevitably something would remind me of Tyler and I’d start weeping again. And so it went for a while.

Each time I emerged from experiencing the fullness of my grief and letting it flood me I’d come to this place of calm, focused, presence. That was my second island in the ocean of grief, offering me temporary respite. In some moments I’d feel what I can only describe as wonder as I gazed at a micro detail of the natural world. A sense of total fascination in whatever was moving combined with deepening gratitude for the fact that I was alive and able to witness it.

Whenever my mind would land on that idea - that I am alive - I’d roll right back into “but he isn’t” and start crying or feeling angry at the injustice of his sudden, traumatic, death. With time, I was able to grow my capacity to stay with the gratitude for my own life while simultaneously acknowledging that Tyler no longer had his life.

I learned, slowly, to hold the paradox of that situation.

Through allowing myself to stretch in both directions - gratitude and grief - I came to understand that grief is born of love. If we never loved, we would never grieve. And that the reverse is true. If we don’t grieve how can we fully love? Without knowing grief, surrendering to it’s pain, I realized I was always holding something back from loving because I was afraid of loosing it.

This is part one of a two part post. Here is part 2

---

Kat Houghton PhD is a recovering psychologist and wilderness rites of passage guide based in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina. A native of the British Isles she carries the tradition of oral storytelling across the ocean. She teaches and holds space online and in-person.