Good grief I talk to rocks

As you may know I am hosting my first public grieving ceremony on Friday this week. I attended one up in Findhorn in September and I have borrowed heavily from their amazing layout and altar. One of the things they used as part of an evolving altar were rocks from the beach that formed boundaries and held the space. This morning I didn't have much of a plan for my day except the still small voice within suggested I go to the beach and collect rocks. There are nearer beaches than the one I went to but I was drawn to go there. I could see why when I arrived, the beach had millions of beautiful fat round stones perfect for the job. I smiled at them and asked who was up for the job. There seemed to be volunteers, certain ones started to glow for me. I realised that I was asking a lot of them; to leave their community and anonymity and enter the human world of keening ceremonies! I made an offering to the earth as I plucked my willing volunteers, hugging each one before placing them in a bag. I promise I will return them when their job is done; I feel responsible for them as if they are on my team.

I also went to a local sacred well for water for the altar. I asked the water's permission to take her and I was drawn to not take water from the weed ranked stagnant well itself but from the moving stream that overflowed down the mountainside.

I considered the grief of the rocks and the water; their sacrifice. The rocks lose their anonymity and community to come and be active participants in the holding team for the ceremony. The flowing water lost her motion in favour of becoming a still pool for reflection.

Their losses are our gain; their sacrifice our healing. What they lost in volunteering is replaced by another role, another state, another form. I found this immensely inspiring and helpful in my own understanding of grief.

Blessed are we to have these great beings to help us.

Good grief, people are reading what I write!

In preparation for facilitating my first public grieving ceremony I wrote this little piece on Facebook. Almost straight away a friend called me because what I had written had hit her strongly (in the best possible way I hope) and I found that so moving to think... I'm not just firing off words into the ether for them never to find a home, people are reading. Thank you!

"Grief is so closely associated with "negative" emotions and hard times but grief is immensely healing and healthy if it is given space and permission to flow. When grief is unexpressed it stagnates in our bodies as illness, depression and anxiety. It would be a mistake to think that grief is firstly only associated with death and secondly that it is a linear process with a beginning, middle and end... bereavement is the phenomenon of loss in our lives, the sense that something should be there and isn't... The process of grief is what we do to adjust to that loss, it is the reprogramming and relearning of life and love so we can be balanced again having been unbalanced by loss... That loss might be a death, or something that never was, a big change, the loss of a job, a friendship, an ideal, a fantasy... It can be personal, it can be global... The horrors of war, famine, slavery, hate... How do we adjust to the loss of innocence? To justice? The loss of our peace?

Grieving is both an inner and outer process. the inner process is yours, but what has been largely lost to us is communal grieving, keening, the art and act of collectively releasing.

Communcal grieving is a shamanic act, clearing and healing the stagnant energy in the land, the energy field, the collective and the individual. Souls that have not cleared the bardo are transported by the waves of common sorrow to the Light. The pain and wounds that have festered are cleansed. The knots of tension dissolve. The rampant voices still and quieten. A crescendo of noise, like a great storm, blows all the cobwebs away... Then stills to silence, a great pause... Like the moment before the atom bomb then the great pulse of peace washes through us, the walls, the land, the space.

this is what our world needs right now. I can imagine no greater service to the collective healing of our world today. So much of the ills of this world are due to denial and fear of endings, death, loss. This is life. Cycles and seasons come and go. Drop the resistance, weep!

And feel the healing flow into the void left behind by that you can't currently let go.

Postscript...

Also wish to add that grief is inherited, ancestral grief... So you might be the carrier of grief you simply do not understand. Considering my generation and younger have no memory of the world wars and all their attendant terror... We still carry great burdens of poor mental health, addictions, unhealthy patterns, anger and fear that often seem to have no root in this life. You do not need to know the story of the grief to express it, keening requires no words, no logic. It is the expression of whatever emotion has lost its motion. Come! If you feel called, come!"

Good Grief it's Midwinter

Good Grief it's midwinter. The longest night, the turning of the year, the dark before the dawn. The time for hibernating, self care and healing. The fire is lit, the fairy lights are on, the candles are bobbing away. After many many years of dreaming of working in the sunshine during winter months I have finally come to peace with the cycles and seasons of the UK and I love it. Batten down the hatches for the storms; may the sweet night sooth me as I catch up on lost sleep; reading... writing... and planning for the coming year. 2017 will be the year of publishing my book, teaching and speaking more... watch this space!

Good Grief Wild Heart is born!

I sometimes feel I am on a lone one woman crusade to wrestle the concepts of "light" and "dark" from their synonyms of "good" and "bad"... the new age movement in particular is notorious for invoking "love and light"to assist in any difficult situation.

It really had to stop, seriously.

If you are not familiar with Jung's theory of Shadow then it's time to give it a google and educate yourself. If you know it already then you have to admit it makes a lot of sense; especially if you are of the worldview that we are all One (don't get me started on that, I'll probably cover that in depth at a later date)...

The Dark is delicious! The Dark is sacred! If we pray to be elevated from the darkness then we are in deep denial of all that makes us human.

In fact it's worse than that - worse than denying our humanity I hear you ask? Yes it is. Because when we worship the light and deny the darkness then the darkness rises to be heard and met. All that is "dark" as in not right with the world (as opposed to what is glorious and velvety and powerful and transformative about the darkness) - it is fuelled by the worship of the light, not overcome.

It's totally time to relinquish our addiction to the Light and be a bit more "yin and yang"... balanced.

And I am starting this blog as a homage to the sacred darkness that is grief and all that she has to teach us. I hope it will be challenging... and ultimately helpful and healing (as I have found grief to be, personally).

And I swear my passionate allegiance to all that is sacred - both light and dark - and I will pursue with all the enthusiasm at my disposal (lots) to bring conscious grieving back into common practice - personally, in community and in society at large.

There is far to much going ungrieved in this world.

Let us keen together!