This is about grief too, because grief is multi-layered and nuanced. What I write here could just as easily be applied to a death as to the subject here.

On August 11th - this year - 2026 - a Derecho storm came through Northwest Indiana and particularly hard hit was Gary, my hometown. I sat in my basement with my purse and keys and my guitar, iPad and cat and watched as this straight line Hurricane on land caused the stately old maple in my back yard to sway as though she might break. She looked like a palm tree swaying in a breeze.

Fact: 99 mph was the speed that storm came through at. By some miracle my tree lost only two smaller branches and withstood the winds. Two days later I went out and hugged her and cried and thanked her for standing strong and true. Guess I’m officially a tree-hugger now.

As of this moment, there are still people without electricity, safe water and resources to reclaim any semblance of normalcy. Socioeconomically depressed, this city alone will find it hard to recover. Even the World Central Kitchen has come in to help feed people (and certainly ALL of the surrounding communities were affected and are still in recovery mode).

Crews from others states have come into help with the cleanup and restoration of power. The men who got me personally hooked up this past Sunday are from Central Missouri. Just driving around and seeing the photos that others have shared is heart wrenching. If I told you that you can’t imagine unless you’ve been in a disaster zone, I don’t know how many of you would fully comprehend it.

I’ve often said of grief that ‘You can’t know until you KNOW.’. A good friend, dear friend, who is a sociologist, has worked with me to present continuing education for the therapists he supervises to become more effective when working with grief. In March his father died. One day, in conversation he basically said that all the information we’ve shared and all the conversations we’ve had about grief still did not prepare him for the reality of how grief presents when YOU are the one in the midst of a profound loss. Yes, the info helps. No, it does not prepare you for how YOU will experience a profound loss. The landscape of grief is uncharted….for you. We’re all standing in the same territory, but no one can truly point the way for you and there are no signposts….only intimations of what path you might take and how to keep yourself moving with a new reality.

I don’t care how much education you have or how many books and articles you’ve read or how many people you’ve talked to or worked with. Only when you’ve been there can you ‘Get it’.

So, for this disaster, you can’t know unless you know.

Today has been the first day in two weeks that I have had the capacity to meet the reality in a state of reasonable calm. And what became apparent quickly was that I am feeling trauma. My home was not badly affected, nor my street. Two streets over though, those 99 mph winds were not as kind. I count myself lucky - even though there is likely to be an expensive repair of the generator I have that died after 10 days of working far beyond its intended use. Still, today is so heavy. Tears so close to the surface. I am familiar with the sensations, the feelings and even the thoughts. They are grief.

Grief not only for what we can see and hear in photos and conversations about people. Grief for animals that were unable to find shelter that have been injured or killed. Grief for the trees, twisted and broken and literally ripped from the soil, the mycelium disrupted, no doubt sending cries for help through the land. Ripped from connection. Grief for the sorrow upon this land and in the hearts of the people. Grief for Spokane and Reno - Hawaii and….and…and….so much fire and water and wind that is shaking us to the core.

Maybe.

In order for a new vision, the old vision must die or fade away or, sometimes, be cleansed by forces beyond our control. Climate change? The planet doing a clean sweep? I don’t know. All I DO know is that grief is part of this experience. And, I know too that it is when we are together in community, we can bear witness for each other and ease at least a little of the pressure that builds up behind our breast bone and tightens our throats. If we get to express all that goes with it in the safety of others who are also grieving, and those who live empathy-forward, we stand a better chance of finding a clearer vision of what to do in the aftermath.

In June, when a tornado came through I wrote a song titled ‘Before The Storm’. Little did I know how prescient it would be. (btw, Indiana typically has 22 tornados statewide per year. This year there have been 82!)

At that point I stopped it because I was laughing so hard and I didn’t want to miss the rest. It’s brilliant and I’ll link it here at the end of this.

Anger is a perfectly normal response to grief. It’s a normal response to a LOT in life, but in grief we often culturally think people who are bereaved are just sad and cry a lot.

That happens too…and sometimes anger and tears go well together….like wine and cheese or, maybe, bacon and chocolate. In fact, maybe the unexpected combos are more accurate… ( I LOVE bacon and chocolate!! )

Often you find yourself, as the bereaved, apologizing for being sad - for crying - for losing focus while you struggle to function in a world that expects you to be be tippy-top in a couple of weeks, or months at latest. Underneath though, you might just be seething.

You might just want to scream - and/or throat punch.

This is totally - absolutely - 100% normal and reasonable!

Not long ago I told someone that even if you’re doing it in your head, you can give a middle finger - or two - to those situations that make you want to explode and yes, people, who think they ‘know’ how you feel. Fact is…you can’t know until you’re the one trying to hold it all together in the wake of profound loss.

To that point:

The ‘rude’ gesture has a loooooong history, going back to the Greeks and Romans and probably before that. In America in 1886 a baseball pitcher was photographed giving the finger to an opponent. Pretty funny when you think about how ubiquitous it has become. Thank you, in part, George Carlin!

BUT…..here’s the interesting part for me. A friend was here a few months back and doing a massage/treatment trade with one of her friends who happens to be an Acupuncturist. The woman had been in China and shared a photo of a temple guardian using a particular mudra. It is a little more complex than our usual version, but, there it was, plain as day to me that the deeper meaning of the gesture is richer, more nuanced and sacred. I did a little research and found that it is a commanding mudra meant to ward off evil.

“a subduing or warding mudra:

• Repelling demons and malevolent spirits

• Asserting divine authority over evil forces

• Protecting the sacred space of the temple”

How fucking perfect! Pardon, or don’t, my French. I mean, isn’t this exactly what we want to do when we get angry when others are trying to put their expectations of how our grief is supposed to look, on us??? We want and need to protect our sacred space of grief. We want and need to ward off or subdue what does not serve us while we’re still trying to figure out how to do the things of every day when nothing - nothing - is ever gonna be the same.

Add to that the fucks we just no longer have. “Oh look, my field of fucks is bare. I have none left to give.” There’s a deep sigh of relief that comes when we let ourselves stop worrying how someone else might perceive our anger and frustration. It might earn you a label of ‘difficult’. It did me. But in the end, it is like a pressure valve. You don’t just take the lid off the pressure cooker without first venting it. Venting takes time. So if using the sacred mudra (the modern version unless you want to work on the one above) helps you let off some of the built up pressure of expectations, yours and everyone else’s, then use it freely. Even if, as I had earlier suggested, in your mind. Remember: It is a mudra with a looooong history!!!!

Related, and on a more personal note, on May 1st, which is/was, David’s birthday, a theater friend died. She was a Little Person and had quite a penchant for collecting Gnome statues. She was well known for her colorful language and her big heart. She loudly said that she hated children, but that wasn’t true. She mentored many and cared for them as one would family. Last weekend at her Celebration of Life the family that hosted the event had all her gnomes lined up against the fence in the yard and we were all told to take one of her gnomes home.

I went and perused the line up. It was comical because there was every imaginable gnome, from the idyllic garden gnome to a zombie gnome. I picked up one that appealed and continued to walk down the line to the smallest guy there. Immediately I knew that HE was the one meant for me.

I mean, how could I possibly resist a gnome giving a sacred warding mudra with the empathic use of BOTH hands!!! Thanks Mary!

As promised:

SIGNIFICANT LOSS - Orientation Day Link

I’m grateful for that.

I’ve been vocal since my husband died about grief and consider myself a Grief Literacy Advocate.

For me, this started out as a way to protect myself against the well meaning and yet often ill informed ways in which we typically meet, or rather, don’t meet, grief in our culture. That took years for me to identify in that way. People could not seem to understand my often angry responses to typical grief support, including their own suggestions and comments. I swore profusely. I used the one finger salute more than I ever had. I probably went overboard on that….but, more on that later.

As a Peer to Peer Grief Literacy Advocate I have often suggested to other Grieflings that when someone says something that does not comfort you, no matter how well intended, that you have every right to say that out loud to them. If you don’t, then how on earth can you expect our attitudes around grief to change?!? AND - I know - early on that can feel like the last thing you have capacity for. Grace for that. Still, we candidly need to say what is true for us that may not match up with the Cultural Expectations and corresponding comments people are likely to make.

I’ve said, in other articles here, that while it may feel off putting to the person hearing you speak up clearly, that is not your problem - that is theirs. If they can be well intended - so can you. Our responsibility in grief is NOT to take care of the people who are trying to comfort us.

Read that last sentence again.

It is NOT our responsibility to care for them. So if someone says, “Heaven wanted another angel.” and that sets your skin crawling???? Say so. If someone says, “Oh I think he knew his time was coming to an end.” and that makes you want to throat punch them??? Tell them. Become the advocate you would for someone you love.

Which brings me around to the subject here.

We talk, in grief support circles, about the importance of continuing to show up for people who are grieving. Not just at the beginning, but in ongoing ways. BECAUSE, often people are so uncomfortable around grief that they will not engage with the griever in fear that they will make them feel worse by bringing up the person who died. For most, if not all of us, that is so far from the truth.

SO…

My question now is: “How do you show up for yourself?”

At seven years out I find that grief has become a companion, a profound teacher, a gifter of presence and love.

How?

When she, I’ve personified Grief here, shows up, I have choices. So do you.

When tears are there, if they want and need to fall, let them.

When you’re standing in the grocery (I had NO idea how triggering the grocery could be!) and you feel that hollowness that snakes up your spine and threatens to take over your entire being? Tell her you hear her and then, if you need, go sit in your car and let her shake out what needs to come out.

When you’re listening to music and a song comes on that brings back memories - you’re driving and you pass something that reminds you of moments shared - when you feel the empty space in your heart yearning for your beloved(s) - whatever shows up……allow it to be there. Embrace it! Greet it with the same kind of love that you were able to share with your person(s). Obviously their body is gone. Their voice only echoes in your ears in your mind or on recordings. Of course you are sad. Your life got altered in significant ways! Ways that are shattering!

My teacher David Kessler says that there comes a time when we can feel our loss with more love than pain. I don’t know that that is exactly what I mean here. However, I do know that there comes a time when the pain, which is a constant in some part of our being, comes with a gentler touch. We don’t ever “get over” grief. We learn to walk with her as a companion. Not shoving her away. Not trying to suppress her voice. Not believing that we have to be depressed or sadder than sad if we meet her in our day to day, moment to moment life. More, “Oh hello Grief! Here is my loved one and I miss them and I want so much to share this moment with them”, and…. Ah! There they are. Alive in your memory. And that can be excruciating at times and deeply comforting at others.

Grief is not something to ‘heal’ from or box up so we can put it on some high shelf in the back of our mind. I’ve said before - and it is true. It is a learning to walk alongside that pain, not carry it, please! We don’t need more burdens. Grief becomes integrated into our lives in ways that ultimately allow us to be more compassionate toward others.

First though, we must learn to be compassionate towards ourselves. We must show up for ourselves.

Creativity helps - and before you say, “But I haven’t got a creative bone in my body!” I want you to consider that being human comes with creativity! It is only when we compare ourselves to others that we doubt our capacity for creative expression.

Write - Draw - Volunteer - Dance - Sing - Sew - Meditate - Breathe - Storytell - Create a fundraiser for a cause in your person’s name - Attend Grief Rituals and Vigils - Read - Listen.

Mostly listen to your heart. Grief is permanently tattooed there now. A thread that runs through all that you do and all that you are.

What kind of comfort and love would you give to those you love and care for?

Do that.

Sometimes…that means sobbing into a shirt that belonged to them. Sometimes it means allowing yourself to let go of that same shirt. Sometimes it means doing something that they would have loved to do with you and letting those feelings of loss and love shiver and shimmer through your body. Sometimes it means having a conversation with them when no one else is around. Yes, out loud!

Mostly, it means feeling what you feel without judging the right or wrong of that. There is no one formula that works for everyone, yet we all need to feel what we feel. If you’re tired. You’re tired. If you laugh and feel guilty for feeling joy??? Let yourself off the hook. That’s not betrayal of them - although I REALLY get it. There are indeed little losses over time that can feel that way.

There was a guy, can’t recall his name now, who said that for the longest time, after his daughter died, she was his first thought every day. One day she was the second. On that day he felt tremendous guilt. He felt he was forgetting her. Then he realized that that could never happen. Relieved, he said, “I don’t know if she’ll become the third or fourth thought yet. That hasn’t happened.”

In recognizing that, he was showing up for what shows up. Give yourself that same grace.

Grief becomes the internal work we do to allow it to be part of who we are. Others cannot see broken ribs. They cannot see the tattoo on our heart. But we can gradually find ourselves beating to the rhythms of how grief continues to teach us how to love.

What a sacred way of being in our lives.

What beauty comes from shining a light on what is typically thought of as dark!

Oh!!! and this is no competition for who is doing grief right or wrong - we show up for ourselves - not for some concept about how grief is supposed to look.

Show up for YOU! That way you are also showing up for your person now gone from your sight but not from your heart and mind.

Sharing a song here that I wrote last month that speaks to my own recognition of who my beloved was for me:

Patti is a Certified Peer to Peer Grief Educator, Grief Tender and Grief Literacy Advocate trained by David Kessler and Francis Weller, PhD. Her thoughts on grief are meant as support and if they resonate - great - if not - that’s great too. Check her website: jazzdakini.com/forgrievingoutloud for a resource list of grief support books and links.

Within three months there have been three deaths that have affected me, in one way or another.

A dear friend’s father. I sang for the celebration of life and have supported as I can by listening and sharing insights and resources. He and I have talked about grief and even presented continuing ed workshops for therapists.

A theater friend who was widowed five years ago.

AND a dear old friend whose life entwined in rooted ways with David’s and mine.

His celebration was Sunday and really - it was more like a garden party where old friends gathered. Lyle Lovett has a song about seeing everyone you haven’t seen since the last time somebody died. It was sort of true. Some of them…the last time I saw them was at his 80th birthday party. Some, considerably longer.

I was reflecting this morning on how each of those affected me.

Let me start here. My friend’s father was a conservative with a capital C. Though we had met on a few occasions, we were friends on FB only by virtue of my friendship with his son, so the eventual unfriending that happened was because of the divisiveness of comments he shared on my posts occasionally. At the Celebration I had the opportunity to listen to people who loved him and knew him as friend or family. I heard the ways in which he cared and contributed to community and came away with appreciation for him, despite the rancor that had colored our virtual ‘friendship’. It is good to see something other than our own perception.

My theater friend was someone with whom I had collaborated with only once in a show, but had reconnected after her husband, another theater tribe friend, died five years ago. We did not spend a lot of time together….yet I knew her to be a fierce and funny and delightfully profane spirit. I’m glad for her that in whatever way now, she has returned to the ONE and to her Beloved. I know her death sits heavier with those who were closer and with her sister, who now, with her husband and children, is the last of her family. I am sad. And, I am not heartbroken.

Then there is my dear friend. I had last seen him in January at my 75th birthday party. One month to the day after his. We had said we should meet for dinner soon, but that did not happen. One Tuesday, the last day of March, I was at a rehearsal in Chicago. I got a text from a mutual friend saying she was devastated to hear about what happened. I was shocked, because I knew nothing of what had happened. One of his daughters had called her to say that he had been found dead at home that morning.

I’ve been taking in the feels from all of this. Sitting with them, asking them to gently give me perspective.

Think about the deaths that have occurred in your sphere within the past six months to a year.

Just for a moment. Consider which ones have entered your awareness and then faded quickly into the background of your life. Sad, yet, the sadness is for the reality of death and how it impacts the family and friends of the one who has died. Also, likely, some of the truth of how ‘death is sitting just to your left, just over your left shoulder’ as Don Juan Matus of Carlos Castaneda’s book “Journey to Ixtlan” says. Somewhere in the back of our minds, perhaps the most hidden corner…we know it could be us, has been us, will be us who is suffering a loss. But, we go on with our lives.

Think about the ones where the person is closer to you, in your circles. There’s a different kind of ache in this one because the way that person was part of your social network. You feel their absence and yet, again, sad, but distant enough from your day to day to not have it touch your consciousness in an ongoing way that is disruptive.

Then, there are those who have been part of your life for so long - so many memories attached to the ways in which they loved you, frustrated you at times, influenced your life, stood by you in tough moments, fed you, listened to you, went on adventures with you, marked the moments large and small in your life - AND - you did the same for them. Sometimes you drifted in and out of each other’s day to day, yet the bond was a strong and undeniable one.

When they are gone, there is a hole in your reality. There is a pain that feels like you’ve lost something critical to your life. What you counted on. What you felt held and nurtured by. What you nurtured. Gone. You reach for them in your mind and are reminded of their absence. Emptiness where there was solid ground. That heart-broken ache sits in you and throbs.

CONSIDER:

Our understanding of the way grief touches us is, in large part, due to our cultural approach to grief. We have these rituals that are acted out in often robotic ways of standing in a line to give our condolences at a funeral home. Or perhaps at a service or memorial or celebration of life. Meant to give closure….we tend to say….for friends and family.

It is not as though there is not something of value here. It does give people an opportunity to approach the bereaved in one place, though in many times past that was in the home of the family and not in the sanitized and encapsulated space of a funeral home.

It is, for me at least, where we go wrong. We think that once that funeral, celebration or memorial is over, we’ve done what can be done and we expect the bereaved to ‘move on’.

We disappear from their lives. Not intentionally, not really. We still invite them out, perhaps. Or we call or text ‘How are you? Let me know if you need anything.’ Then, we move on in our own life and assume that they will, can and should do the same.

They moving on, but not in the way you imagine.

They have to start again. They have to learn how to move in a world that has been cracked open and rearranged. They have to learn how to put one foot down and then another, trusting the ground will hold them while they are too numb from the pain to feel it.

I cannot imagine that anyone who reads this has not known loss and grief. Maybe large, maybe small. Maybe more distant…maybe close as your parent, your child, your partner, you sibling, your dear friend.

In those losses are the myriad ways in which the one now gone impacted your life.

“Now. Who do I need to invite to the party?” You make a mental list and then you come to Tom. But Tom died, and hole is suddenly there in your reality. Suddenly there is an ache where that hole is. A longing for the wholeness you once knew when they were alive.

Can you see? It is the way in which we cared for them and how they cared for us. It is the way in which our life was shaped by their presence. It is the way we can recognize that love is not boundaried by time and space. It is the way that we know that grief is sacred because love is sacred and you cannot know one without the other.

I’ve been on both sides of this.

Before David died I had been present for the deaths of both my parents. Lost countless friends and family and moved through it all as though it was no big thing. That was how I was raised. I was so ignorant. I uncomfortably gave my condolences and forgot about it as quickly as I could.

I did not want to bring up the loss. I had the all too common thought that bringing up the person who died would make the bereaved sadder somehow.

And then, I was suddenly on the other end.

Now I have a perspective on how we culturally avoid and meet grief.

It feels past time to question our response to grief and loss, especially given what we have been through as a species and what we are going through now.

In order to change anything though, we first must let grief touch us. We must not shrink away from her. She shows us where love is. She shows us how love feels. She shows us how to walk with more integrity and awareness of the fragility of our existence - and - the resilience of it. She offers ways to feel into how Sorrow moves closer and farther - an orbit of its own.

She asks us to show up. Not to have answers. Not to try to change a thing. Not to avoid the moments of pain and awkwardness - but to recognize them as Love. Plain and simple.

My dear friend’s loss is an emptiness in me. It pings against the circumference of that hole where he once physically was. AND - it reminds me that he is still very much alive in me at the same time that he is absent.

This is the way.

David died in May. His birthday is May 1st. The Thanoversary is approaching on May 22nd, and whether I like it or not, or rather, whether I like to admit it or not, there is a trauma that touches something old in me when it rolls around.

My partnered life with David, for months shy of thirty years, had defined who I was in the world. Sure, there was Patti. There was David. But there was also Patti&David. The lovely entanglement of the soulmate you agreed to get into the rock tumbler of life with to become polished like a gem.

A partner, well, this is not universally true, but it was for us…a partner is your every day. The decisions you make. The small intimacies of your own private language - that only two speak. The coffee in the morning. The ‘I love you.’ and kiss goodnight. The ‘Hey! Help me open this jar.’ The text when they were on their way home. The butt grab (David was a firm believer in the health benefits of a good bum fondle [thank you Monty Python]). The trip to the grocery and remembering to pick up the treats they love. The long car ride together, holding hands. Singing together in the car on the way home from…whatever. The…..well…the everything.

You’ve got yours too if you are partnered. Small things. And when the small things are gone, well, you get yanked, tossed, pulled, pushed between realities. It is hard.

It is like living in two worlds. The one that was with them. The one without them. Neither is fully satisfying. Not bad. Not good. Sometimes both at the same time.

I might be crying over a remembered moment of tenderness while simultaneously laughing at what the memory is. Or laughing because I was crying. Laughing at myself in a loving and tender way, not judgemental. Or, crying because I was laughing at the joke of it all. David was, afterall, highly skilled in humor.

For instance:

Recently I was looking through an old journal, wanting to do a little decluttering of my life. I found something he had said to me when I was still working and had been having a rough time with a coworker. One morning, as I was getting ready to head out the door David said “Don’t take your goat to work.” very matter of factly. Quizzical I asked, “I have a goat??!!” “Apparently.” he replied, “You take it to work and Julie tries to get it.”

That was the kind of humor that kept me upright and balanced in my life. Without that small thing as part of my life, I must rely on memories and journal entries to help keep me from drifting away or burying myself in some story about how life is ‘supposed’ to be.

But now…for just shy of seven years, in full elderhood, I’m looking at how I defined myself and judged others by whether I or they were partnered. Like somehow my success and worth in the world was dependent on having someone who chose to be with me. By the way, statistics suggest that over 40% of Americans are unpartnered. (another Dave-ism: “You do realize that 58.67 percent of all statistics are made up on the spot!?”)

So why should it bother me? Because of my indoctrination of the 1950s/60s lifestyle expectations? Because being partnered, the challenges aside, was easier? (it was) Because…I loved being partnered with David. I love that Soul soooooo much. And yes…there is a continuing bond. My love still flows to him, however he does or does not exist now. Still, some part of me thinks that way, that my worth is dependent on being chosen by someone whom I chose as well. Not that I’m particularly pleased with that old programming. Oy! The unconscious programs running in the background and secretly running our thinking and behaviors???? YIKES!!!!!

Bear with me, I’m working this out, here, because, what the hell?! Why not!?

For a long time I tried dating, trying to fill a void in me and a personal judgement about my worthiness in the world without a partner….laugh, don’t laugh, whatever…it was not, is not logical. David left some big shoes to fill and me trying to date and cram some unsuspecting man into those shoes was unkind and unreasonable. Oh, I tried to tell myself that I was open-minded and not trying to replace the dog that died with a new puppy, expecting the poor creature to be to me what the old dog had been. Truth revealed, showed me how exacting my expectations were, and not in a positive way!

Ah well. Human.

At this point, though I’m not foolish enough to rule it out, it is unlikely that I will be partnered again. The life I had with David was blessedly ordinary and exquisitely extraordinary. In fact, the last seven years of his life were the years that were the most honest and loving that we had together.

He’s gone from this plane of reality. Whatever you think happens when we die, he’s no longer wearing the body or personality that I knew as David. Yes, we did say ‘Till death may part us.” So what? We didn’t divorce. Death parted us in a physical way. I guess widowed, as I finally have been able to say without crying, I’m not married legally. But David is still my husband in my heart. So, why would I not continue to reflect on and live with those quite alive memories and ways in which we are still dancing in the kitchen to no music but our own rhythms and entwined limbs? If Quantum Physics is correct??? We still ARE!!

Why would I not want to hold that as part of my life now? The warm blanket of memory may bring me to tears with missing, while at the same time comforting me with a life of shared love.

Those who would say, “Aren’t you over that yet?” - “You need to let go of the past.” assume that that is an easy and desirable way to be. Grief doesn’t go away. It shifts. It morphs. It is a companion for the life you have ‘now’.

Grief no longer steals my sleep. Nor does it disorient me in space and time. It is though, a sudden remembering of David standing behind me with his arms wrapped around me, as he did that day he died, and feeling the deep love and contentment and the pain of never having that again in this life. Both - And.

Two worlds. That is where I live now.

I’m doing pretty well by most standards. Engaged in life, friends, family, music, creativity, grief-tending, writing, learning…still…how to cook for one, and basically living the day to day of whatever is left of my existence.

And, I still cry. Not as often and at least so far, not all day any longer. I still feel the profound sense of emptiness of being One and not Two. Call it loneliness? Perhaps, at times. The silence, while sometimes comforting, can be brutal. There are things I want to share in that shared language and bond that I cannot. I no longer have the simple joy of sharing a new book, a movie, a song, a breeze or a bite of some amazing morsel with the one person who knew me better than any other and loved all the bits of me. Even the less than shining bits.

I no longer can live with the superficial. Oh, I can fake it a bit. I am an actress after all. But I no longer want to lie to myself or others about….anything. I do want to be aware enough to move with tenderness and curiosity in what remains of my life. I just don’t want to pretend. When days are hard? If someone asks, “How are you?” I want to say, “It has been a hard day.” Not for sympathy or comfort, but for the recognition of what I have experienced. I no longer have the one person I could say that to and at least get a pat on the head and probably a bum fondle, lol.

I’m still learning how to love and live as Patti without David. She’s turning out to be a decent companion to grief and love, because this IS my life now. Most of the time. She still does dumb shit sometimes too!

And still, for the rest of those days of mine, there is my one true love….somehow always beside me….or in me…or around me…

….a warm blanket of memory and a marriage that did not end in my heart of hearts.

The head wants to understand.

The heart knows what is true.

Thanks for being here.

(Here’s a piece that makes me cry every time with the truth:)

Patti is a Peer to Peer Certified Grief Educator and Grief Ritual Tender trained with David Kessler and Francis Weller, PhD

She is also a Songwriter, Actress, Director, Vocal Mentor and Poet. She wears many hats and still looks good in most of them.

More about Patti’s music and grief tending at www.jazzdakini.com

Share

Have I lead with that before?

I use that expression when it feels as though I’ve gotten gut-punched again.

Yesterday I learned that a dear old friend was found dead in his home that morning. Not foul play. Life - which automatically includes death.

It was an ‘in order’ death. You know, the ones we have come to expect will happen in our sense of how our time on this planet is supposed to work. He had celebrated his 80th birthday on Winter Solstice last year. So when the funeral or celebration of life rolls around, you’ll be able to listen to, “Well, he lived a long and fulfilling life!” - “It’s a tragedy, but at least he got to travel and see great grandchildren born.” Etc…

Maybe it softens our grief some? Thinking that because he was old it’s okay that this happened now. Maybe we feel more accepting of the reality of a death for someone who has lived a long life? Maybe, if you happen to be my age, you feel the approaching reality of your own mortality?

So I sat with this new loss, not even 24 hours old, and asked it what it had to tell me. I’m still listening, because Grief does not reveal its secrets all at once.

Grief is a companion for me now. It is not merely sorrow. It is ALL the ‘reals’ of our lives. Little griefs that pinch. Large griefs that gnaw and tear. Access to the full experience of Grief is there as soon as I sit still long enough to have a conversation with her. Of course, sometimes she still screams, but right now she’s stroking my hair and kissing my heart and saying “Yes. There, there. I hear you. I know it hurts. Keep breathing.”

What I’ve been able to hear so far is that this so new grief has a landing place that feels safe. Is that acceptance? No - I don’t like that word in reference to grief. It is familiarity. Along with that, there is more space in my own heart to hold the sacredness of our passing from physical to pure energy. Grief can, if you let it, teach you the sacredness, the holiness of it all.

I haven’t cried yet. But then, I didn’t cry for four days after David died. Then, I could not stop for two years. Maybe there will not be tears for my friend, only the hollow ache that loss tattoos on your being. Maybe I’ll sit in the Dunes and keen for him. The Dunes he loved so well. Then go to shore of Lake Michigan and let this fresh water sea take some of that pain.

Unexpected loss opens the portals again. It’s not as if grief is a ‘one and done’ experience. As though somehow we sort out our grief, ‘heal’ from it (as though it were a disease or malady) and then we’ve got a handle on it from that point on and won’t have to suffer again because we think we know or understand it. For realsie! That’s our cultural perspective. Neat and controllable grief fits into our desire to not have elements that we cannot control in this life. Except…Grief is messy.

As someone who can easily embody control issues, I speak to this with a lifetime of efforts to keep myself and those I love safe. As though somehow I might be able to do so. Maybe you can see the larger picture? How we’re all looking for safety and security. Nothing unmoors us faster than unexpected loss. And I don’t only mean to death. I mean, divorce, job loss, home loss, war, ecological loss, sudden illness or diagnoses and right now, in America, a chaos we, in these current times, have not previously experienced. The loss of dreams and plans, spoken aloud or whispered in the depth of a sleepless night to our heart alone.

We don’t actually have control. I used to joke with David when we would talk about control, that on a good day I can control my sphincters…and that’s about all. Still, we do like to parade around as though we’re getting it all together, have gotten it all together or at least have our ducks in a row.

We walk around in a state of cortisol driven hypervigilance a LOT of the time. Working to keep it together. Ha! Which reminds me of the film “Bowfinger” where Eddie Murphy played a dual role and one of the characters had the name Kit, which was a mantra he used to deal with his paranoia: “Keep It Together”. How many of us do just that in our own way???!!!!

So here ya are, going through your day to day, “La di dah di dah” and the ground is suddenly gone. The unexpected that you have NO way to be prepared for happens. You scramble for explanations as you’re clawing for solid ground and there is none. Fear, pain, hollowness in your heart arise from the void, the abyss, and your now altered reality doesn’t feel safe any longer.

Often, in situations where a loved one has died, the urge to control shows itself in an overprotective way. The worry, the concern that someone else close might also die becomes an almost obsessive impulse to dwell on and that alone can make it almost impossible to regulate and function with balance. All that in an effort to keep the unexpected from happening. Keeping the wolf from the door, so to speak. Over the top efforts to control the uncontrollable.

It’s sneaky sometimes, those attempts, to control. They sometimes show up in the way we talk and act with others and ourselves.

This morning, for example, I was going through a guided pranayama breathing exercise. It is a powerful practice. At one point I heard myself in my mind say, “I surrender.”

HA!!!!

Then, in my mind I was trying to direct where and how this ‘surrender’ should land in me. I heard “Oh! So you say you surrender, but you want to run the show?!?” and I began to laugh. Prior to that thought I had been feeling into the ocean of my grief that gets whipped up as the anniversary of David’s death nears. Like I said, grief is not a one and done. And our desire to control, lest we be vulnerable to forces and circumstances that are terrifying to consider, rises up.

We do not expect the unexpected. And even if we tried to, as the ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus said, "Always expect the unexpected", that sweeps us back into the realm where we believe WE are the ones in control. Although, to be fair, if you can find a place of familiarity with the unexpected as part of this experience of living, then perhaps when the gut punches arrive, you can ‘right’ yourself a bit sooner and be less likely go down with the ship.

Which circles me around to my friend’s death again. My heart aches. Grief is able to be welcomed and honored, as I will honor my friend and ask the ancestors to carry him with love and benevolence to the far shore.

It was unexpected.

And yet….that part of me that has learned that grief is not a thief, but a lover giving tears back to Holy is holding my heart…and there’s a little more space in me for the unexpected. And, a little less effort to control.

….a little.

Share

One prompt about a week ago was on ‘writing our rage’.

That got me thinking.

Having recently sat with a few people with their fresh grief, I was reminded of the way that emotions are stirred into lability.

We tend, in general, in our culture, to ask people “How are you?”, when truth be told we really only want to hear ‘Fine.’ or ‘I’m good. You?’. That’s how much we can tolerate. In general.

Ask a person who is grieving, “How are you?”

Do you really want the answer? “How much time do you have? Are you actually willing to listen and not try to fix me? Do you really expect me to have enough capacity to shine a light on all that I’m feeling? Hell, I don’t know how I am!”

Because, as I once described it, early in my grief, when someone asked me, I said, “It is like a Merry-Go-Round gone mad! I can’t pin any one feeling down long enough to know what is happening!”

How the HELL do you even begin to understand what is happening? Let alone point to any given moment and say “This is what I’m feeling!”

(aside: I tell people: “Ask ‘How is this day?’ or ‘How is right now for you?’ or ‘How is THIS minute?’ - when talking to someone who is early in grief.)

Writing has been one of the best tools I’ve found. Not just for me.

“But I’m not a writer!!!” I hear you say.

You don’t have to be.

Try it right now. Humor me. Take two minutes and write down three things that enrage you. Or three things that make you laugh. Or three things that make you sad. Or….. You get the idea. I’ll wait……

AND

We’re back.

Something happens in your brain. The multi-sensory experience of writing allows us to engage more fully with our experience. It slows us down. Slow and Down is what my teacher Francis Weller recommends about engaging with our grief. We can touch the tenderness of our experience. ALL of our experience!

(typing works - she says, sitting at her computer - just not as deeply engaging sensorily)

Grief is a wild guest. Bursts in unannounced. Eats all your food. Drinks all your wine. Turns over the tables and cries in the corners. It is dirty and wild-eyed and loud. Sometimes it screams and sometimes it whispers.

Writing that, my body relaxes a little. I think, and what do I actually ‘know’, that what is yearning to be heard and seen can loosen the grip on my thoughts and emotions. I go back and read what I’ve written, reminding myself of what is happening in my interior life. The one that only I can access - truly.

Prompts help. Heck, I belong to a songwriter group and we get a one word prompt per month to write a song and include that word and in the two years I’ve been in the group, I’ve written over 20 songs. Not all of them good or fit for public consumption, but the exercise of tapping into my creative expression has eased pains (a recent song about our Country’s current turmoil) and helped me be more gentle with my aging self.

Prompts give us a starting place. A place to get our feet under us when we’re pretty sure that the ground has collapsed and we’re standing on thin air like Wile E Coyote just waiting the ‘beat’ before we fall.

Finding traction in the midst of a storm is hard. That Wild Guest is like a whirlwind in our midst.

Writing our grief, especially with prompts, gives us the footing we need to see the whole picture. Think of idea boards, post-it notes plastered everywhere so you can see it all. All the photos you have, spread out before you, showing you your life in pictures. Only we’re using words in this case.

So I’m inviting you. You’re here, following at least some of my musings.

So let’s do this together. Let’s write.

Let’s share.

I’ll give you three prompts. Pick one - or use all three. Write as much or as little as you feel moved to. Share in the comment section. Let’s see what happens.

PROMPTS

1. When I remember__, I feel…..

2. I wish people understood that….

3. Grief feels like….

The idea is to set a timer and keep writing for ten minutes. If you can’t spare ten, make it five. Don’t stop writing. Keep your hand moving. That helps get the JUDGE out of the way. Start with the prompt and any time you get lost, go back and write the prompt again to restart the flow.

Reread what you’ve written. Read it aloud! Then, for thirty seconds (or more) scan your body/mind for how you are feeling. If strong emotions are moving, rising up, write more. Maybe even scream or cry, but write more.

Refine if you feel so moved.

Finally - share.

The ground will be more solid beneath you.

I look forward to your writings.

Patti is a Peer-to-Peer Certified Grief Educator and Grief Literacy Advocate trained with David Kessler and Francis Weller, PhD.

Share

Leave a comment

Not just a nurse, but an ICU nurse in a VA hospital.

And I know, there are a lot of things being written about him and what happened in Minneapolis last Saturday. And I know no more than what I’ve been able to read and glean since then.

But here is what I do know.

Men who become nurses are caretakers. They break gender stereotypes. They hold something tender and deep in their hearts.

Oh, they’re still human, with plenty of human moments.

And, they are beautiful expressions of love and life itself.

I know this, in part, because of my Beloved, who was a hospice and homecare nurse and whose sacrifices usually went unseen.

On Saturday, January 24th, 2026, Alex Pretti, RN, through only his instincts for compassion and caretaking, through no intention other than to care for another in need of assistance, made the ultimate sacrifice. I feel certain it was not his plan to do so.

When Renee Good was murdered. When Keith Porter was shot and killed. My heart has ached. My heart aches when I see the evidence of brutality and cruelty perpetrated by those whose moral compass points them toward dark and ugly actions, allegedly to keep ‘Americans’ safe from horrible people who ‘don’t belong here’.

On Saturday, when that news rolled into my consciousness, something crumbled in me.

Maybe it was because he was a nurse. And that reminded me of my David.

Or maybe because I watched the executioners scramble away like roaches in the light. Or because there was one of them, whether in this incident or another recent one, was caught on camera saying “Just like ‘Call of Duty’. Cool!” Or because they sent a five year old to Texas to a detention center where people are being abused and killed and raped. Basically federally sanctioned torture.

Maybe because ‘enough’ is MORE than enough.

Righteous outrage - Fierce Hearts - Acts of Bravery and Love!!!!

The people of Minneapolis are showing us all exactly what matters.

And I don’t want to ignore the reality that there is tremendous grief in all of this. And point out that the righteous anger and fear that allows us to act rather than withdraw are elements of grief that are not often recognized.

Older griefs rise, often, in the environment of fresh loss.

There is a LOT of grief in the midst of all the other emotions that have been ignited in this assault on humanity.

The people of Minneapolis are showing us grief in action, in community.

The collective hearts and minds of the residents are mourning together. They are building connections and strengthening bonds through their willingness to say “NO MORE!!”, even as they move through the shock and anger. It is something more compassionate and caring that is moving like a fierce angel through the chaos.

We do well to learn from such people. I see the solidarity coming from other cities, from around the globe.

“…Get up, Stand up. Stand up for your Right…” sang Bob Marley

Hearts broken open by loss and cruelty

and oppression. Voices lifted in song. Old losses and new rising together to be witnessed and not cast away and not silenced.

So often in grief we feel as though we are alone.

I think it is evident now that we are not.

*(title borrowed from Ahlay Blakely’s song)

So soon?!?!?

Yeah.

It’s true.

In 2001 Mad TV had Bob Newhart on as a guest. If you don’t know who he was, ok, maybe look him up. He played a psychiatrist who charged one dollar per minute for the first five minutes and absolutely nothing after that. The character was confident that the session would not go past five minutes.

His method?

Two words:

“Stop it!”

Just that.

Since I became a widow, I’ve often talked to myself. I’ve told myself to put on my ‘big girl panties’ and do what needs to be done. I literally told myself that in that first six months when my water heater decided to die on the same day that our power went out one cold, icy winter day. “Patti. Put on your big girl panties and call the plumber!”

I’ve talked myself out of funks at times. I’ve reminded myself that I am safe, loved, okay, etc. Many, many times at this point.

And, I’ve said, “STOP IT!!!!” aloud. Emphatically!!!

Correcting myself. Chastising myself. Chiding myself. Judging myself!!!

Now the part of me that is still a small child inside ends up feeling bad, wrong, unworthy of love and unworthy of, well, you name it. (and don’t think you can get off THAT hook by saying you don’t have your younger self still in you…trust me on this….you do)

So, while in the moment of some situation or crisis that requires my attention in order to be ok, safe, secure, a stern voice of reason can be a savior??? In the long run I end up sinking into my shame and wondering why I couldn’t be more….more….better….enlightened…adult????

It is a bit like ‘Let it go!’ that gets thrown around like anything we don’t want to look at deeper. “How are you? Still dealing with that?!?!? Sweet Jeebus, let that go!!”

“Stop it!!!”

But then.

One day I had an exchange with one of my sons in a phone convo. When he hung up I knew he was upset with me. I tried texting him back. His response felt like he was cutting me off from his life. (I hear that’s currently a very popular position to take with parents)

The stories I told myself were like an endless doom scroll. I could not sleep. I felt guilty even though I could not figure out exactly ‘what’ went south. It obsessed my thoughts with possibilities of outcomes. I’d never see my grandchildren again. I was a terrible person. I’d have to, yes, I thought this, change my will!

Good Lord!

Probably ten days into this nightmare my mind was creating I said it aloud.

“Stop it!!!!!!!! STOP IT!!!” I shouted into the air, startling the cat, who looked wide eyed at me as though I might be a threat to her safety.

I was loud enough to hear myself in that little place inside of us that sometimes needs that voice of reason to get us off the hamster wheel.

But something else happened this time.

Something kinder took over. Something more loving than the admonition to NOT do this or that. Something larger than the little self that wants so badly to be okay, safe and of consequence in this life. And…in control of it all. ‘smirk’

Call it the Witness. The Self with a capital ‘S’. Maybe, for some of you, the voice of God.

As soon as I could hear, internally, that my self with a small ‘s’ was shocked into quiet, before the rain of shame began, I talked soothingly with myself.

“Sweetheart! Look how creative you are. Look how many stories and story lines you’ve invented. Love, if you wanted to sell those to television or movie writers looking for storylines??? Ooooo you would be killin’ it! I want you to hear me. Ok? Listen. Those stories are inventions. You are trying to control your world by trying to be prepared for any scenario. You cannot know. You will have to meet what happens WHEN it happens. Moment to moment. Sweetheart, you are ok. Whatever happens. Even if it is NOT what you would prefer. OK? You are safe. You are loved.”

And what I noticed??

Inside my skin, my mind, my being….there was a sigh of relief. There was a relaxation that acknowledged my creative nature and a recognition that I did not have to be ruled mentally and emotionally by stories that I created.

We go to a film, read a book, watch a program on tv, listen to a storyteller, music….and we want to be pulled into those. We crave the emotional, mental stimulation and that is part of our practice of how to navigate our lives.

So it’s not wrong to want the stories. To create the stories. What is unhelpful is our using those stories to harm ourselves with. To mentally shame and flog ourselves with.

It is helpful if we have a friend, trusted therapist, partner to be our witness and remind us of our inherent worthiness. But when that option is not readily available, there is no one more willing to be honest and compassionate than our ‘Higher Self’, our Witness with a capital ‘W’.

David would frequently tell his patients, upon hearing them speak ill of themselves, chastise themselves for some perceived wrong behavior, “Don’t talk like that about my friend. Don’t be mean to this person I am caring for.”

He was, in those moments, reminding others of their worth. He was saying “Be kind. You too are worthy of the love you give to others.”

We can’t be kind to others if we cannot be kind ourselves. THAT is what true self-care is. Not taking a bubble bath with candles or getting a pedicure. Self care is opening our hearts to ourselves so we can be openly loving and kind with others.

Sometimes it requires a “STOP IT!!!” moment. The slap of the Zen Master that wakens you to all that you’ve been a part of all along, only you had your eyes closed. Something that shakes you enough to knock you out of the trance.

Then. When you’re standing there with your head trying to wrap around what just happened….you allow that ‘SELF’ to soothe the one that was IN the trance. Not with syrupy words of ‘There there….poor dear.’ Rather with words of recognition for all the creative, inventive, wild and free spirit that lives in you at all times.

Be good to you.

And, in case you need to hear it from someone who’s been there: “STOP IT!!!”

Watch Bob Newhart Show You How It Is Done

(Hey, maybe it is a bit like the Mel Robbins book: “Let Them” - Hmmmmmmmm)

Not that that has not been woven into everything I have written here about grief. It has, because I would never have become a Grief Literacy Advocate and Peer to Peer Educator if not for my own experience with profound grief.

Usually though, I attempt to bring in the Universal. The way in which my experiences are both unique to me and can parallel the experiences of many.

Perhaps, in the end, this will speak to others in large or small ways and be of service. Don’t know. I only know what is moving for me right now and it feels important to explore this with words, since I’ve been sitting with it for a little while now.

When David died, six and a half years ago, I was alone for the very first time in my life. I had gone from child to a married, very young adult, to a divorced mother with two children, one with special needs, to remarried with a soon empty nest. At one point David’s son, at 17, moved in with us for about four or five years. I lost count. He even moved back in when his first wife was stationed overseas, with his 3 and almost five year olds for about 16 months.

Thus, in all my life, up to 68 years of age, I had never lived in a home or apartment alone. There was always someone with whom my life was dancing through the days.

I do know that I am not the only person un-partnered by death who experienced fear as an overarching, overwhelming emotion. I locked windows and doors, even in the Summer. Even in the day. As though someone or something was going to come and invade my home, spirit me away, do me harm. It was a bit of temporary insanity.

Add to that, loneliness was crushing. Weekends, Sundays in particular, were brutal. I was crushed with a sense of aloneness that felt like abandonment. Everyone else, I was convinced, was having warm, intimate, connected, deep safety and love. Nestled into fullness while I was alone, unloved (definitely NOT true, but so my mind was spinning) and unsafe. Never to know the touch of human kindness and mirroring of someone who cared for ‘me’ - Patti - ever again.

Yes, I can be dramatic. It is in my nature.

As though the slow slog through the murky waters of grief were not enough, before one year had even passed, Covid hit.

Now I was not only alone and lonely, but isolated as well. Thank the grace of the divine that Zoom was there. My weekly meetings with my two bandmates kept me afloat, along with a friend and neighbor, with whom I was able to bubble. We would get together once a week or ten days for dinner.

I was deep in immersion training in learning to live alone and yes, it is not lost on me that with one other human being to actually be in touch with I was not fully alone, however, I could not see family in person and after a while the virtual became both a life line and a hollow and empty way to engage with the world.

I’d love to be able to say that I was, or am capable of gleaning amazing lessons from all of that experience and creating a somehow new and improved version of me. And isn’t that a silly notion? That we are required by life to be on an unending wheel of self-improvement as though that is the goal of life?

The fact is that I am no more capable or inadequate than anyone else. When cornered, I still plead ‘Human!’ as an excuse, especially possible because our christian religious leaders have told us from childhood that we are born impossibly broken and flawed. But, I digress.

To continue:

I chose early on to attempt dating. Desperate to fill the void that I knew on an intellectual level was impossible. There would, will, never be another David on this plane of reality. All that I missed - and still miss - about the David I could touch and hear and share moments with are no more.

The way we have tended to think of and speak of grief seems to require the word Acceptance in order to be considered healthy and whole in our lives again.

I did and still do hold a ‘fuck you’ attitude about the generally superficially tepid and ineffectual use of a concept that is far more complex than what is typically understood.

I favor the word Familiarity. I have become familiar with the thoughts and feelings and experiences that have become my day to day now. Acceptance, for me, implied and implies a finality. ‘Well, you’ve come to acceptance and now you can get on with your life. You won’t have to feel the discomfort of loss any longer because you have accepted it.”

I know - I know

Perhaps an oversimplified POV. Regardless, I doubt that I am the only one who says ‘No’ to being told how I’m supposed to navigate my life now.

There is plenty of research and evidence that speaks to the necessity of creating new neural pathways in the brain as a result of significant loss.

I am wandering again here aren’t I?

Dating has proved to me that I was seeking something outside of myself for comfort. The safety and security and sense of worthiness that my thirty years with David provided had me desperate to have my value proven in being in relationship, intimate and connected, with another human being who would choose me over others.

Oy! (so much to explore there!)

Gradually, as I have learned that while there may be no one with whom I can curl into sleep with and share my most intimate thoughts and fears and joys, I do have friends, family and community in many circles. I’ve fostered those relationships.

I also have slowly learned that I am actually pretty good company. My ups and downs come, as they do for us all. I do my darndest to meet them with equanimity. I don’t expect Patti to be ‘up’ all the time. Nor do I want to lose her to a funk. I don’t mind missing David from time to time. Like I said, there was a sense of security and worth there that I cherished. There was a person who, though at times maddening (I’m sure I was for him as well), was a good heart, kind, generous, creative, warm, loving, unique, skilled, funny and wise. Why would I not miss that engagement?

Recently I had a ‘date’ that I got excited about. It felt like an opportunity to connect with someone on a deeper level. I can only do superficial for so long before I’m looking for a way out. Unfortunately, he was less than honest about his circumstances and I found myself questioning once again the ‘Why?’ of my continuing to want to be in a relationship with one person again.

What hole do I think I have that needs filling with someone outside of myself?

I asked a friend, who happens to be a therapist, to talk with me as he would a client.

He knows me well and was actually a student of David’s in Qi Gong and a long time friend to us both.

The questioning of myself, while reasonable, he suggested is one of those ‘Egoic Autoimmune Responses’. Meaning that when we judge ourselves wrong or inadequate or stupid or any number of names we readily call ourselves when we find ourselves on the metaphorical floor again, we are responding to our ego’s attempts to control the world, our world, the world of our invention.

Ok - that made sense.

He also suggested that having the desire for connection, for intimacy (and I’m not referring to sexuality, although that is certainly missed as well) and for the real security of two as opposed to one is NOT a bad thing. In other words, I can indeed be my own best friend AND seek meaningful relationships with others. Even ONE other.

It helped to be reminded.

Along this experience of the last six plus years I have learned a few other things that have helped me become a better friend to myself:

I’m reliable.

I take care of my body - though not always perfectly.

I realize that my grief, as I read in a novel recently, is all about me. My grief is totally selfish and that is ok. Doesn’t mean I don’t recognize other’s grief over David’s death. But, as I’ve written before, they are grieving their David and I am grieving mine. That we are all grieving essentially the same person can give some communal witnessing and comfort. Or not…

I care about others. Imperfectly. Yet, I do care.

I am creative. That requires of me the willingness to sit quietly with Life and allow the impulse of creativity and innovation to move through me rather than attempting to force something to emerge.

Love is Universal. Oft misinterpreted or trivialized or minimized, but a universal force nonetheless.

Opening my heart requires being firmly grounded.

Opening my heart to others is NOT possible without opening my heart to myself and recognizing my own worth. AND that worth is NOT dependent on social constructs.

Grieving, however selfish, is a reminder of something larger, of LOVE really.

Yes.

I still miss so many things that felt real and possible when David was alive.

And,

I’m more and more comfortable in my own skin as I learn to lean into the Life that I am living now.

Being my own best friend means also being a friend to others. At the very least being humane. It means understanding the reciprocity of relationship, not only with people, but with this planet. It means continuing to stay curious and open. It means feeling all the feels while not being so wrapped up in the stories that I remain stuck in patterns and choices that no longer serve Life. We are, as contemporary humans, and probably historically as well, attached to our ideas about what works and what doesn’t. Continuing to flip the light switch, expecting the light to come on when the bulb is burnt out is one of our glitchy moments as humans.

Being my own best friend, while a slow learning experience, is coming ‘round to the love that was always available to me. Like us all, I wanted it to be perfect. Perfect according to me. Perfection is a mythology that we don’t truly comprehend because we think that perfection will offer us security and safety. Perfection is full of insecurity on an individual level, because perfection is what is happening, right now. We just don’t always like that perfection because we feel insecure.

Once again I am wandering, but then, I told you that at the beginning of this article.

Being Widowed, by the way a word I had a hard time getting comfortable with, has certainly given me opportunities that would have been tough to experience had David lived. Not that we did not grow as humans together. We did! And whoa!!!…. am I grateful for that!

If you’ve read this far, thank you. If in some way or ways this has been of service to you or resonated in some way, let me know. I want to stay in conversation about how Grief shapes our lives. How we can remain open and curious even in our pain. How we can acknowledge the small joys and growth and the big LOVE that continues even though everything we ‘knew’ has been shattered?

How can we support each other?

Leave a comment

Patti is a Peer to Peer Grief Educator, Grief Ritual Tender and Grief Literacy Advocate. She believes that when we acknowledge and witness each other’s grief without striving to fix or advise, we allow our humanity to shine and support each other with true grace and compassion.

Days and minutes and hours and seconds pass. Months and then, soon enough, years pass.

The further we are from the point of impact (meaning the day and sometimes the time, of death), the more others tend to expect us to not be feeling grief any longer, and holidays can be even harder

since everyone else seems to be sprinkling red and green glitter and ‘Ho - Ho - Ho’ing’.

There is a widow I know. She’s coming up on the second holiday season without her husband, who died suddenly, unexpectedly and although peacefully, far younger than feels ‘right’ in our current world. I watch her struggling with this. I watch her beginning to crystallize around her grief.

Yet, I recall how that second holiday season for me went down. Covid had me isolated from physical contact and especially from family and friends. I could feel myself slipping into clinical depression. Laying on the couch for hours. Complete and utter lack of interest in anything. A nagging desire to just stop breathing. Saying aloud, to the air around me, and the cat…who could care less…”I don’t like this life alone! Why the fuck am I still here!?!”

You may recall that I have said the second year is sometimes harder to walk through. This is usually, though never always, because we spend a good period of time in shock. And an unexpected death, a sudden death, and an out of order death, means the shock can take longer to recede. That wave knocked you over and tumbled you around. The disorientation of it means the nervous system needs more support to restore balance.

Brain fog, time distortion, disrupted sleep, numbing behaviors, poor choice and decision making skills…are but a few of the road blocks we face.

Pounding a point home here: There are NO timelines in grief that are exact, even if there is some leaning towards similarities in experiences of Grieflings.

Another widow I know is facing her first holidays without her husband, whom she had known since they met in college. By external cultural standards, it appears that she is doing well; strong, resilient, actively engaged in community, doing all the ‘things’. And, I know that grief is bubbling under the surface, slowly doing the quiet and unseen work of learning to put one foot down and then another. Inching it’s way through the layers and layers of entanglement that was a forty year plus relationship. I would wonder how next year would be, but then, I would actually much prefer to be with where and how she is now.

As for the widow in the second year; I watch. I bear witness to what is painfully expressed as she faces this upsurge of grief*. Sometimes, for all that I know and have experienced with grief, I want to rescue her.

That reminds me that if it is tough for me, it is even more so for those less literate in Grief. So, I’m gonna offer a couple of ‘Do This’ lists. One for those supporting Grieflings and one for Grieflings themselves as the Holidaze are here.

Supporting Someone?

1. Do not expect cheerfulness. They might show a cheerful face, but the pain is still there, like broken ribs, unseen but every breath excruciating.

2. Do not give them the pitying look. We are mirrors for each other. We each have reflexive empathy that can easily become ‘Oh that poor dear!’ and trust me, Grieflings know. We can feel it. It minimizes the complexity of our experience.

3. Acknowledge the loss and speak the name of the deceased if it feels right. To know that you have to take a sacred pause and feel into the moment. “I’m glad you’re here. Would you be open to sharing a story about David?” or “I remember that one Christmas when David……” And don’t be afraid to share that you miss their person too if they’ve said they are feeling that missing.

4. Follow their lead in language and allow tears without making a big deal of it.

5. If they need to step away or leave, it’s not you, so don’t take it personally.

You’re Grieving?

1. Be gentle with yourself. Treat yourself as your beloved person would, with love and empathy.

2. Move your body. Grief needs movement. Really! Stomp feet. Swing arms. Beat on the drum of your body, rock yourself gently and let whatever sounds and/or words need expression to emerge unfettered.

3. Allow yourself to cry before others who feel safe to do so with.

4. If you need to leave a gathering early, do. No explanation is truly needed but if you feel the need, tell people that you are in need of rest now. We have to titrate our capacity for time and engagement with others.

5. Write a letter to your person and then address another to yourself and let yourself ‘see’ what they might have to say back to you.

6. Be open to creating new traditions. No forcing anything, merely an opening for what might feel comforting.

Just a few suggestions really. There are so many more and in my list of resources you can find others with solid offerings for meeting Holiday Grief.

Please remember to be gentle with yourselves. Supporters and Grielings. We’re never going to get it right all the time. Moving with intentionality helps navigate rough waters. Allow Grieflings to be where they are. Allow supporters to sometimes get it wrong. Our lives are far too short to not move from Love with a capital L.

May Spirit bring you the warmth of authentic connections. May you gather in this season of rest and restoration and the miracles of Love, large and small.

Share

* And upsurge of grief that is sometimes sudden and temporary is referred to as STUG - sudden temporary upsurge of grief and you can find my article on that here: STUG

Patti is a Certified Peer to Peer Grief Educator and Grief Tender trained by David Kessler and Francis Weller, PhD. You can find more about Patti’s work and offerings at FOR GRIEVING OUT LOUD

I learned a LOT! I’m still learning. There is no way to know everything there is to know. Especially since each person’s grief and mourning is unique to them and to the relationship they had with the person - or pet - that is now gone from this realm.

Still, as I’ve said before, there are parallels and shared experiences within the vast territory of grief. If there weren’t, there would be no way to support grieving. We would wander around in our pain interminably, acting out of that pain in more and more isolating ways. Never feeling seen or heard.

Let me clarify something here:

Grief is an internal experience. It is what we experience within the confines of our own skin, inside our minds and bodies, and that’s a huge part of what makes each person’s grief unique. Also, there is Mourning. Mourning is an external expression of Grief. Mourning is what we do at Wakes and Funerals and Memorials and Celebrations of Life. Mourning is a public expression and demonstrates loss in a visible way. In Victorian times Morning Clothes were worn to demonstrate the journey of grief from deep sadness to acceptance. Women were expected to wear black for two years from the time of a husband’s death. Some chose to wear black for the rest of their lives. But if you’ve ever wondered why we are still somehow expected to wear black to funerals, that is the ‘why’.

Both mourning and grieving are verbs. Both indicate an action. One, we see. One, we do not. That’s where it gets sticky sometimes. Cultural expectations generally hold that after a certain passage of time, grief is done.

“You’re still not over that?!”

Nope. There is more space around it, at least for me. Yet, I know a woman who still holds the grief so close that it has become her identity now. That happens too.

No ONE way is right. And while, for me, the idea of coalescing my entire identity around constant yearning and missing and defensiveness (all words of my judgement, I recognize) is not what I choose - it is for others. Just as I cannot reasonably judge someone else’s way of meeting grief, I cannot know their life path. So for the woman I mentioned, she gets to do it her way.

Thus, there are books and videos, and podcasts, and professional papers, articles, courses and workshops and retreats and training on Grief. Each with their own uniqueness. Each with their own nuggets of wisdom and guidance. Each with their own fans and critics. More power to you if you can read and sort through them all. There are many I’ve read that I don’t agree with. That rub me the wrong way.

Still, as a Grief Educator and Ritual Tender, I am always seeking new resources for people whom I support. Recently I came across a new book. “When Grief & Loss Won’t Shut Up” by Dena Betti. I loved the title. I bought the book. I began reading and was delightfully impressed by the practical, actionable offerings. Until I got to chapter six. In that chapter Dena speaks to the different relationship losses. Spouse, Child, Parent, Sibling, etc.

I read the page and a half on spousal loss and flipped. I read the rest of the chapter and thought “Does this even need to be in this book!?!?” She seemed to want to wrap up the losses in nice, neat boxes with a bow. I wrote a review on Amazon praising the actionable nature and being quite frank about how that one chapter struck me.

A short time after that there was an email from Dena asking to talk with me about my perceptions of the book. I was, at first, skeptical of how this might go, but also curious about her intentions.

Turns out Dena, whose 14 year old daughter Jenna died in a tragic accident, was truly seeking to better understand what I had reacted to. She invited me to do an interview with her to share with her followers. She has created a legacy project, #hersmile, and wants to be of service to all who are grieving and navigating the rocky territory of loss. She also wants to be a better writer and servant to Grieflings.

Subscribe now

And so, we talked. I don’t know how much time she originally thought to allow. I can’t recall what she told me. But, we talked for over two hours.

In that time a mutual respect and appreciation developed for us both. We found that we were not so far apart on so many points and experiences. I came away from the experience feeling a shared sense of purpose with someone whom I would otherwise have held a caveat in relationship to. We both came away with full cups, I think. And it was imperfection that brought us together.

The interview also served me by reminding me, even though my intellectual self knows that I’m imperfect in my perspectives on Grief and grieving, that I can still learn something unexpected and nourishing.

Each time an opportunity like this arises, I am able to peel back some of my own armor and let in a deeper understanding.

I’ve found that to be true of my own Grief. More space. More spaciousness. More room for an open heart and a willingness to both challenge what I ‘think’ I know and learn.

I know I’m better for the experience. Of course, I still have a radar that can, perhaps, more lovingly question when something doesn’t feel right, and that’s not a bad thing.

We’re all imperfect, perfectly. That too, is not a bad thing.

Here is the link to my conversation with Dena:

MY INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR DENA BETTI

I hope you’ll give a listen.

And get the book. It’s worth it!

Share

Leave a comment

Share Wisecracks

There you are, grieving a profound loss, minding your own business, staying in your lane….and POW!!!! You get T-boned by another loss.

A treasured pet dies. A dear friend dies. Another beloved family member dies.

You lose a job, a home, get a divorce, you have a health crisis, get a diagnosis, get in an accident…..You name it. It happens.

And new losses bring old losses along with for the ride. They bubble up and complicate our grieving.

OOOooooooof!

Soon after my husband and I met, his ugly divorce created an untenable situation for visiting and spending time with his son and daughter. He decided not to force them to continue to spend time with him, telling them that he would always been there if they needed him.

For seven long years his children were separated from him. Then, at 17, his son decided that he needed his father and came to live with us. Eventually his sister danced around the edges of a relationship with him. However, after the birth of her fourth child, she estranged herself completely from him and that side of her family.

That estrangement was a constant and deep grief for him, for the last seven years of his life.

After his death, his youngest brother convinced her to come back to the family.

For me, because of drama with David’s sister, I am not able to engage with his parents or sister and thus, his daughter.

Sixteen months ago she got a Stage IV cancer diagnosis, with metastasis.

Last Saturday, she died.

I got the news. Because I still have a good relationship with another brother - and - got a perfunctory text from my father-in-law. (is he still that now?)

As is my way, when there is intensity, I wrote a poem. It says, as well as I can articulate, the strangeness of estrangement and how it sits in me in an odd and complicated way:

In the middle of my heart is a hole full of love in the shape of my Beloved

For a long time it was this empty space that ached

I don’t mean that only metaphorically

I mean my physical heart would throb with the pain of heartbreak

It is real….

heartache.

After a time,

I can’t say exactly when

...all the pieces that I could find of my broken heart

finally stayed together

...the gold of love creating something new

....and then

......and then.

I knew it was coming.

I knew when I heard the diagnosis…

but no one really gets to ‘know’ the when.

The word came down today

“Katie died this morning”

David’s daughter is now passing through the bardos on her way to the land of ancestors

Father and daughter finally reunited without all the hammajang junkalunka of our mortal lives

That reunion never got to happen while he was alive

I think it is what broke his heart

the ‘why’ of his early death

that’s my ‘story’.

It was fraught

.....that estrangement

and part of me blamed her…

...we are all foolish at times and cannot see or know all that swirled together to create our circumstances

and....

I heard the news

and that hole in the middle of my own heart

has a hole in the middle of that hole

and an ache

because

....her father loved her so....

....and for over six years now, it has been a peace that passes our understanding…for him

......but

now

there is a grieving husband and children and mother and brother and grandparents and aunts and uncles and friends

and me here

with a strange ache

knowing all too well the territory they have all been dropped into

I start with the ground

so I can open my heart

...for now we all know the pain.

tears for the holy

only the gold of love as a balm.

Meet her well and whole my Beloved.

Soothe what hearts you can in what ways are available to you

In the end

Love

.....that’s all

all the rest are stories we tell

This is a conversation space exclusively for subscribers—kind of like a group chat or live hangout. I’ll post questions and updates that come my way, and you can jump into the discussion.

Join chat

How to get started

1. Get the Substack app by clicking this link or the button below. New chat threads won’t be sent sent via email, so turn on push notifications so you don’t miss conversation as it happens. You can also access chat on the web.

Get app

2. Open the app and tap the Chat icon. It looks like two bubbles in the bottom bar, and you’ll see a row for my chat inside.

3. That’s it! Jump into my thread to say hi, and if you have any issues, check out Substack’s FAQ.

How do I tell you what you need to know?

I can’t really.

We cannot know until we know.

In the wake of the death of your partner, many will try to tell you ‘how to’ all sorts of things.

How to be ‘resilient’.

How to feel.

How to behave.

How to cope.

How to ‘let it go’ and get on with your life.

How to think about it all.

How to grieve.

Everybody’s got an opinion and they’re not afraid to share it with you. (Me included - let me be transparent.)

It’s almost like we need an inoculation to protect ourselves from the mostly well intended efforts of the uninitiated to cheer us up out of our grief.

The ones who try to empathize by telling you about the time their dog, aunt, great-grandmother, co-worker….died, so they know what you’re going through. NO, they don’t.

Not to minimize their experience, but you are in the immediate throes of YOUR experience and they are comparing griefs in an effort to connect.

The ones who say over coffee, “You’ll bounce back!” in cheery tones so you learn to smile and politely say “Thanks.” while you’re secretly thinking you’d like to stab them with your spoon.

But let’s set them aside in a nice dark room that we can close the door to and have a heart to heart with someone who belongs to that ‘club that no one wanted to or expected to join’.

What I want to tell you.

One grieving heart to another.

NOBODY knows YOUR grief. Except you.

YOURS is the WORST.

So is mine. You get the idea.

NO! You are not crazy. You’re grieving.

Normal is whatever YOU are experiencing.

You feel like you don’t want to be here in this life without your person? Normal.

Caveat:

I’ve said it before here in these posts, but I’ll reiterate it:
IF YOU ARE CONSIDERING HARMING YOURSELF - SEEK PROFESSIONAL ASSISTANCE. The National Suicide Prevention line can be reached at 988 via text or call for immediate support.

You cry all the time? Normal

You can’t sleep? Normal

You keep their ashes on the nightstand next to your bed.

You talk to them. Write them letters. You look for and find signs that they are still with you. And sure, maybe it is a cardinal outside your window…but…maybe it’s the billboard with a message that was some private joke between you and your beloved that no one else could begin to understand. You’re thinking of them and a favorite song you shared starts playing at the restaurant you’re sitting alone at.

You want to scream at the receptionist at your doctor’s office who asks, “Is (name of your partner) still your emergency contact?” because now you have to say out loud again, “No, he/she/they died.” and you have to choke back the tears - AGAIN!

How do I tell you?

The first year is awful.

The second year can sometimes be worse.

Grief doesn’t go away. People will try to tell you it will get better.

It gets different. Better is not in the lexicon. Softer? Not so loud? Sweeter perhaps - with time. By that I mean that memories start to become a gentle hug, not a gut punch. At first memories can feel like a fire that consumes you because those memories hold in sharp, sharp contrast the absence in your life now.

When? Can’t tell you.

It is different for every one of us. However, the further out from the point of impact (the death), the more likely it will feel more like a deep breath and less like you’re holding your breath.

What is encouraging to me is that there are more resources than ever before for us.

Grief support has become increasingly more available than it was Pre-Covid.

A LOT of grief rose up then, but I want to stay with the loss of a partner.

What I want to tell you…

most of all?

You are not alone.

I know how desperately it feels as though you are. AND certainly, you are the only one experiencing your personal loss (yes - others are grieving your person too - but no one else but you feeling the unique loss that you are).

You are not alone.

There are so many of us out here.

We know the profound loss of the one person with whom you shared a unique language. A language spoken by only two. We know the irks and quirks that you can share with only a few.

We nod with you in affirmation.

We cry with you - because we felt and feel those tears.

We laugh with you as you find laughter again.

We celebrate the small and large joys and moments of leaning into the life you have now, always bringing your partner with you, one step at a time. One breath at a time. That love, afterall, is still there in you. A part of you always.

You will live. And it sucks, what happened. And you will find meaning again.

How do I tell you?

Like this.

Subscribe now

There are many resources that I have gathered that I personally have found helpful. Reach out if you want or need and I’m happy to share that list or just listen if that is what you need.

Patti is a Peer to Peer trained Grief Educator and Grief Ritual Tender. All that she shares comes from her experience and is not meant as professional advice or prescription. Her training and experiences have provided a framework for her writings and perspectives.

Still other grief support folks on IG and FB and I’m sure other social media, are proclaiming that NO ONE is talking about this or that aspect of grief - and look - everybody has an axe to grind with something or someone these days. It’s become a National Pastime for us to get fired up - get our panties in a twist - our thongs stuck where the sun don’ shine and our tail over a fence.

We don’t seem to think (as a generalization of our culture) - for the most part - that grief should still bring tears after some nebulous timeline has proclaimed that we should be better at managing our leaking eyes - at least - so - as my friend said - we don’t upset other people.

My mother was one who could not bear to cry in the presence of others. When my grandfather - the one man she seemed - to my young eyes and mind - to value above all others - died? She refused to let any of us cry or ‘make’ her cry. She held it in. She folded in on herself and held a hard line that few, if any could cross.

Knowing what I know now, six years out from my husband’s death, I realize that there are some who find their own unique ways to release the pressures of grief that may not look as we expect. I also know that holding in our tears and pain for the comfort of others, or as a way to avoid questions and platitudes, is not really healthy for the body, mind OR spirit.

So how do we find the outlets we need when we feel restricted, whether self-imposed like my mother, or the result of social pressures?

My mother found a way.

I’m old enough that as a child Sunday evenings meant watching the Wonderful World of Disney. The classics of Dumbo and Bambi and Ol’ Yeller were among the offerings. We would perch on the floor as kids while my parents sat and joined us for the treat of entertainment on the small black and white television. As the stories progressed, we could hear our mother behind us, sniffling when Bambi’s or Dumbo’s mothers were snatched away from them. When Ol’ Yeller finally had to be put down, after a heroic stand against a rabid wolf, she could be heard to sob. We daren’t look at her. But she would let herself cry in those moments.

All the uncried tears of her own grief were given permission to flow. I see now that it did not matter what ‘hand’ turned the faucet on, only that it did.

For the record, I will continue to speak loudly whenever the opportunity arises, about the importance of allowing tears. And too, to advocate for grievers and to educate the uninitiated about the realities of grieving. How no matter how much time has passed, we still have moments of grief. How a griever should not be shamed into hiding their truth to take care of the feelings of others. In fact, it would be a great service if when someone cries or feels the feels of sadness that grief engenders, we sit with them and allow the moment to be. It doesn’t last forever, that moment. It passes. Like clouds. And if we sit with someone in those moments and allow our hearts to open, we access something far more powerful and comforting than looking at them in pity or rushing to stop the tears. Saying “Yes. Yes.” Not “Oh I didn’t mean to upset you.” or “Here’s a tissue.” or any other move to fix or diminish the moment.

If you are the Griefling and the situation truly will not allow you to be in the moment that rises up? What would allow you to shed those tears? What would give you the necessary permission to lean into the sadness, the sorrow, the gaping absence?

It is a worthy question I think.

Share

Leave a comment

Share Wisecracks

Albert was a farmer. He had purchased 360 acres of bottomland and farmed corn and soybean. A couple of horses and some pigs. It was good, rich land with dark black soil.

To be the only child of a farmer, and a girl, was not an easy life, I imagine. A son was likely preferred. But that is speculation.

Dorothy adored her father. Tall and broad shouldered, with huge hands he was, in my memory, an easygoing man who loved to watch the Sunday evening fights on a tiny black and white television. The story was that he had been a Golden Gloves boxer at one time. This was how he won the money to buy a ring for Mae, a straight backed, meticulous and quiet woman who showed little emotion. How he managed the money for the acreage, I do not know. I only know that my own childhood was there, connected to the earth in intimate ways that most people have not experienced.

When I was born, whatever scars my mother carried from unfulfilled expectations of her parents, she passed on to me. First born and female. A lot to atone for throughout my life, but that is another story.

When I was thirteen Albert was diagnosed with cancer. Hospitalization for cancer was rare at that time and in fact, there was a stigma around the disease, like somehow you might catch it. I was only allowed to see him one time in his decline. Shriveled and diminished, he was not the strong man who had ridden me on his lap on the tractor, or taught me to dig worms, bait a hook and fish. No longer the elder who pointed one night at the ring around the moon and told me that there would surely be rain the next day.

We, my brothers and I, (because the sons finally came) were told that he did not want us to see him in that condition of decline.

When he died my mother went to her parent’s home, a mere football field’s distance from ours, and did not return home for four days.

When she did at last come through the door, she was weary and wrung out and we were instructed to not make her cry. She insisted. There was no funeral. No memorial. No casket to walk by. Only gone. And my mother’s grief was so large and insistent that we not ask questions or cry, that we found little boxes - well - I am not certain about my brothers - but for me - somewhere inside me - I tucked that grief in and did not speak of him again.

My first lesson in grief for a person I loved.

At 74, the same age I am now, my father died.

My brothers, my mother and and my uncle, dad’s youngest brother, were all at his beside, this time in a hospital. He gave his last breath back to Source and the room filled with a glow that I can only say was magnificent and oh so brief. I stood between my mother and my uncle and I began to sob.

Dorothy, the one who would not permit tears from us so many years before, her husband of over fifty years having just died, said, “Oh! I see Sis can’t handle it.” The first words out of her mouth.

My uncle leaned into me and said, “That’s hers not yours. You do what you need to do.” Bless him for that.

The next day I drove to my parent’s home and sat with Dorothy. With my mother. There really was nothing to say. But, I was there.

The following day she called me. Her voice thin on the phone, “Your brothers and I are worried about you. We think you may need to see a therapist. We don’t think you’re handling this very well.”

I was in shock. “Why is that?” I managed.

“Well, you sat here yesterday and sighed thirteen times.”

My brain had a microsecond of explosion. “AND YOU COUNTED?!!!”

I called my brothers. Neither had yet spoken to her that day and neither had any conversation with her about MY mental and emotional wellbeing or lack thereof.

My father was cremated. There was no funeral. There was no gathering of family and friends. It was as it had been with my grandfather. He was rarely if ever mentioned after that.

THIS is how I learned that grief was supposed to look. I avoided talking to those who had experienced losses. I looked the other way. I mumbled condolences under my breath and thought that everyone, even those who had funerals and memorials, wiped their hands clean and with stiff upper lips, carried on.

We learn from those closest to us. No matter how many movies and tv shows dramatized the bereft widow throwing herself onto the casket, we still learn from what our own culture, beliefs and faith demonstrate to us. Or, as in my case, my mother’s armored insistence on not showing emotions.

Imagine my shock and disorientation when my husband died and I found myself on the floor tears flowing, howling at the ceiling, my heart shattered and unable to find a box large enough to contain what threatened to consume me. Imagine how months of shock and pain turned into a year and then two - Covid disrupting my social opportunities for moving back into Life.

I thought for certain that I was weak and probably mentally unhinged.

Of course I wasn’t, however, I had one helluva time finding grief support that didn’t suck.

Many of us are, well, at the mercy of how our culture expects grief to look.

And many of us have found ways of to educate ourselves and others.

I’m curious.

How were you acculturated around Grief?

What/Who have you found most supportive?

What resources have best served you in your Grief?

Let’s start a dialogue.

Let’s share stories.

Subscribe now

Below find my most recent Resource List:

"The Smell Of Rain On Dust: On Grief And Praise" - Martín Prechtel

"The Wild Edge Of Sorrow" - Francis Weller

"Die Wise" - Stephen Jenkinson

"The After Grief: Finding Your Way Along The Long Arc Of Loss" - Hope Edelman

"The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss" - Mary Francis O'Connor

http://www.grief.com - David Kessler

The Emerald Podcast: 'I Wish It Could Have Been Another Way':

https://www.buzzsprout.com/317042/10876384-i-wish-it-could-have-been-another-way-a-lament-w-peia-luzzi - Joshua Schrei

http://www.refugeingrief.com - Megan DeVine (good in early grief)

https://www.facebook.com/groups/692942161086618 - Beautiful Ramblings: Much More Than A Grief Support Group

https://www.centerforloss.com/ - Allen Wolfeldt

https://www.missfoundation.org/sta/dr-joanne-cacciatore/ - Joan Cacciatore

https://clairebidwellsmith.com/books/ - Claire Bidwell Smith

-Sobonfu Somé

https://www.dreamingawake.org - Dr. Mia Hetényi (spiral model for grief work)

https://www.wildheart.space - Mirabai Starr (Holy Lament - 12 Threshold model for grief work)

Earth Grief: The Journey Into and Through Ecological Loss - Stephen Harris Buhner

Grief Recovery Handbook - James & Friedman

Invisible Loss - Christina Rasmussen

CPR For The Grieving Heart - Margaret Stoiber, RNHelp For The Hard Times - Earl Hipp

When Grief & Loss Won’t Shut Up - Dena M Derenale Betti (Practical - Actionable)

Demystifying Grief - Diane Kirby

The Grieving Brain - Mary Francis O’Connor

Loss (Poetry) - Donna Ashworth

Rosemerry Wahtrola Trommer - Poet (Her son died by suicide)

Allianceofhope.org - (For those who’ve loved ones died by suicide)

The Big Wave - Pearl S Buck

Tear Soup (also one for kids) - Pat Schwiebert

Grief Workbook For Skeptics - Carol Fiore

Courage To Grieve - Judy Tatelbaum

Names To Check Out

Jennifer Mathews Death Is Certain - Grief Is Optional (TED Talk and website)

Sarah Nannen Website and FB

"I wonder about prayers sometimes

A whisper to save a child from leaving too soon

A sigh against the cheek of a beloved parent slipping from the shell that still holds their soul scream into the night as the one you love the most in the world is suddenly gone

.....don't go

....don't let Death take them......not now

A pleading against the way of life...

...that it is such a fragile gift

Somehow we think

...if only enough of us will lift our voices and intentions

...that we will be spared

...that there will be no loss

...that OUR prayer will be answered

Why me?

Why should I be spared?

Why should You?

What plea can we make that will make our individual longing

the one worth answering?

pray for the small things

pray for remembering to SEE what is worth loving

pray for the ease of suffering

...even as you suffer

...for the quiet way the world breathes and all things are moving according to the rhythms of that heartbeat

...for the Beauty that comes from being just as amazed and wonder-filled as a child comes in and another leaves

...for the Praise of all that is and all that is lost

pray for the moment when your own dear heart opens so wide that you can feel the Way of all that is

....a small beat on a very large drum"

~ patti shaffner

Subscribe now

Share

When I opened the door she spread her arms wide, flowers flung to the edge of her reach, crying. “Oh Patti!!!” she sobbed, waiting for me to step into the embrace.

Something in me refused to accept the gesture. Something told me that I would suddenly be comforting her while I was standing there, gutted, in shock.

“I can’t right now.” I managed. Thanked her for the flowers and closed the door and locked it.

Some weeks later I was having lunch at an outdoor cafe’ when a woman I knew saw me and wanted to hug me.

“Let me give you some healing energy.” she said.

I literally put my hand out in a ‘stop’ signal directed at her chest.

“I do not need healing.” I said quite frankly. “I need to be very protective of my own energy right now.”

“Oh!” She said, startled by my abruptness. “I just meant to offer a kindness.”

“A kindness I will accept.” I replied, and then, with a strong sense of my own spikey energy, allowed a brief hug.

In moments like this, for some, the gestures would feel like a welcome acknowledgement that something shattering had occurred.

And yet…for others of us…it feels intrusive.

A couple of months ago a good friend’s father died. She sat and poured out her stories, as many of us need to do, to me and another dear friend.

As her stories unfolded she spoke of a client, she is a hairdresser, who came in for an appointment and did nearly the same thing that the woman I mentioned above did. She started with the “Oh!!!……” The knitted brow of concern and sadness. What my friend did was this:

She stopped the client, saying: “Right now I need you to do something for me. I need you not to be more sad than me.”

As soon as my friend shared that, I knew it was what I had experienced.

Wowwee!!!!

Brilliant!

In early grief it is a bit like the line from Paul Simon’s Graceland song:

“Everybody sees you’re blown apart. Everybody feels the wind blow.”

Your brokenness may or may not show on your face, but most certainly the ‘feel’ of your energy leaves a neon trail for anyone sensitive enough to feel the shift in you.

We need boundaries in grief so that we may keep ourselves from dissolving into the expectations of others of how we are ‘supposed’ to grieve.

This bears repeating.

If we do not set boundaries - and I freely admit that this feels like an impossible task when we are often doing good to remember to put on clothing when we go out into public - we can easily collapse into how others expect us to look and behave.

Recently a friend’s husband of fifty plus years died. He was well known and respected in the community. The visitation line was at least a hour of standing to finally approach her and the family. I watched as she greeted person after person in what I perceived of as a calm demeanor. When I finally was there with her I asked her if she was weary of all the hugs. (I had found that I could not hug more than a few people who knew me well without becoming overwhelmed when I was the one greeting people at my husband’s Celebration of Life.)

“No,” she said, “One more hug is good.” (note: we all grieve in our own ways)

I did not say anything else. We hugged. We the widows. We pulled back from the hug and she said, “I’m going to miss that old goat!” and tears began to fall.

I marveled at her ability to stand steady in the presence of all that grief of others and well wishing and curiosity about ‘what happened?’ and most likely some of the usual, “He’s not in pain anymore.” - “He’s with Jesus now.” - “He’d want you to smile.” - “You’re strong.” - and the seemingly endless barrage of default platitudes we culturally hurl at the bereaved.

She is a powerful presence. That alone can serve as a boundary. The respect garnered from a life well-lived and as a partner to a kind and valued human, I like to think, gave her some familiar ground on which to stand.

But what if that is not you?

What if your world has collapsed so completely that you barely know what you need? Which, by the way, most, if not all of us have moments of. How can we put our hand up and say “Stop!”? Even if metaphorically.

Some ideas:

1. Notice how you feel in your body when someone hugs you. If you feel held and comforted. Go with it. Soak it in. If you feel like you’re about to burst, or a desire to run away, or a build up of tension, end the hug quickly and perhaps say to others, “I’m not able to accept hugs right now. I need some time.”

2. Ask yourself what you most need. I know, I know! You may not have a clue. I didn’t eat or sleep unless someone told me to or set a glass of water in front me with a gentle suggestion to drink. Regardless, ask yourself if you need people with you or need to be alone. Ask yourself if you need someone to take you to a meal or to bring you food or even cook for you. Do you want to receive visitors? Phone calls? Texts or emails? Or does that feel like too much? If so, and social media is a good way to make contact with people you know, post about your desires and/or needs. Personally I did not want to hear “Sorry for your loss.” in any form so I posted a request for others to find some story or memory of my husband to share with me other than the typical cultural response.

3. If you are not feeling comforted by the words that people are using, you need not worry about their feelings being hurt if you say, “What you are saying is not comforting to me.” You don’t have to say it unkindly. But say it firmly. Do not be afraid to express what works and does not work for you. Often what is needed is someone to hear us. No fixing needed. No cheering us up. No advice and no judgement. Concern for our well-being can be welcome, as long as it is not accompanied by unsolicited suggestions about how to heal, process or otherwise minimize our grief. Call up that best friend, or family member and say, “Can I just vent for a bit and have you listen?” (or cry or babble or….)

4. Seek resources in the form of groups, (in person or online) books, therapists, or friends who can offer a safe, soft place to land when everywhere you step feels like broken glass or a field of landmines.

5. Trust this: Grief will get different. I cannot tell you when or how that will unfold for you, however, I know this to be true. I will never tell someone I am working with as a peer to peer Grief Educator that grief will get better. Words matter.

6. Allow yourself to feel ALL the feels. If that means one day you’re angry at everything and everyone, then let that be how you are. It is not necessary to apologize for feeling what you are feeling. You might lash out - and if you do - later, when the fire is not so hot, you can apologize by saying something along the lines of, “I realize I was harsh when I said___. Feelings are difficult for me right now. No harm was intended.” (Perhaps that sounds like you are being insensitive to others. You’re not. Recognize that feelings can be like sudden summer storms. There and gone before we can do much more than blink.) If you allow feelings to be there when they are there, no matter how uncomfortable, you will learn that they are not permanent. They will circle around again, but they will not define the entirety of your being. If you can let them pass, like those summer storms, you will have a better ability to not lash out in anger. Allow the floodgates of tears, tremble in fear, howls of anguish, moments of confusion, loneliness, floating directionless, the weight of sorrow on a heart broken open.

7. Write in a journal or type into a blog, all that you feel and think. That can assist in giving expression to all those thoughts and feelings that seem to have gone mad. This helps boundary building because you’re not as likely to be unaccustomed to what is cycling through you. Sometimes though, we’re still caught off guard.

8. Buy a t-shirt that says: “I’m fine - It’s fine - Everything is fine” - or - “Ask first” - or - “Apparently I have an attitude” - or - “Don’t ask” - something of that ilk and wear it when you’re feeling like you don’t want to explain yourself. Heck! Have many so you can announce your mood in advance and you’ll probably get a laugh out of it when you see yourself in the mirror bedecked in such a manner.

9. Literally put bare feet on the ground. If it is winter or getting outside barefoot is not possible, stomp your bare feet on the floor a bit to wake up the soles of your feet. Lay on the floor. Feel yourself held, if by nothing else, the Earth herself.

10. Imagine a translucent bubble around yourself that you can control the size of that nothing that feels threatening to you in any way can penetrate. Check it daily. Make it strong but flexible so you can move around in your life with a sense of protections.

11. Build an altar to honor your person. Photos, mementos, their favorite candy or food. I still have an altar that I tend with loving attention. It evolves as my grief has. My husband loved Twizzlers. I had those and candles and a cup of Saki that I refreshed regularly until it no longer seemed necessary for that. Now it is special stones and flowers. It helped me to have a focal point that I didn’t have to explain to anyone unless they asked and I felt ready to. It helped me feel connected to him.

12. Care for yourself in the same protective manner that you cared for your person.

    

    All these and more are possible for you.

    These boundaries are important.

    They will shift and change over time.

    Early on though - they can keep you from the expectations of others who think that they know how best you can mourn and experience your grief.

    That’s all for now. Message me if you are looking for resources. I have collected many.

    Patti is a Peer to Peer Certified Grief Educator and Grief Ritual Tender - trained by David Kessler and Francis Weller PhD - Her opinions and offerings are from the perspective of someone who has experienced profound loss and are suggestions, not

    prescriptions.

    As Francis Weller said: If we depend entirely on therapists to do the work of tending grief, we are truly f’cked. Coming together in community to do this work is important.

    Share Wisecracks

I gave it a good shot. I did. Truly.

Every time though, something went sideways. I would end up feeling like the fifth wheel - the outsider - the one who didn’t fit in.

Hell, I’m still trying, sometimes, to fit in. I still don’t.

It has felt isolating at times. This tendency to not quite get it right.

Normal eventually became something that I eschewed. Why would I want to be like everyone else? How mundane! How boring! How ‘establishment’! YES - I am a child of the 60’s.

Maybe it was my contrarian nature that was attractive to my beloved. Through the nearly thirty years together David would refer to me in that way. Always with a bit of a smirk and, I’d like to think, delight.

Who needs normal?

And then,

And then…

Grief.

In the wake of great loss we can find ourselves ‘Strangers in a Strange Land’.

We both long for something normal and somehow in the background of our new reality something whispers , “nothing will be normal ever again.”

When you look at the definition of normal it seems oddly oppositional. I mean, there is a boring quality that runs through it. At the same time there is a safety or security in recognizing that ‘expected’ is one of the possible synonyms.

Normal - Definition:

1.

conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or expected.

Similar: usual, standard, typical, stock, common, ordinary, customary,

conventional, habitual, accustomed, expected, routine, day-to-day… (and so on.)

2.

technical

(of a line, ray, or other linear feature) intersecting a given line or surface at right angles.

Expected. When we have experienced loss, everything that felt dependably expected is altered. We become like thirsty beggars for a single drop of the warm, slaking draught of normal.

“Is this normal?” we ask of therapists and doctors and friends, when we cry every day. When we can’t sleep. When we attempt to grocery shop and find ourselves paralyzed, standing in front of a bin of apples or a row of towel paper. When we crave company and are simultaneously terrified of being with people who might ask “How are you?”, knowing that they most likely don’t want to hear the honest answer.

From time to time in being with people in early grief, I too am asked, “Is it normal? (to cry everyday - to feel physical pain - to feel so overwhelmed that ‘I must be crazy’ - to the feels: angry, guilty, afraid, anxious, depressed, confused, unmotivated, isolated, excluded…. I say. ”Yes. All that. Normal doesn’t look like ‘normal’ to our grief avoidant culture.”

So here you are. Here I am. Life does not return to normal. It does not return to the state of being and knowing and comfort and security that it had when your person was still in a body.

Sometimes what is normal for Grieflings is a bit stickier for those around us. We can, usually in the earliest grief, the acute pain (mental, emotional and physical) wish that we could will ourselves to stop breathing and escape from this life. Life without our person feels so painful that going through the motions of day to day does not seem worth it. People who love us and see or hear our expressions, large and small, may fear for us. Personally I experienced a gentle intervention by a couple of friends after I had written about my feelings and thoughts around ‘Why do anything? Why am I even still here?!’. I assured them I was not entertaining suicidal ideations and that it felt like something a lot of people in grief probably experience.

My caveat is this: If you are contemplating self-harm, please seek professional therapeutic support. Call or text 988 for immediate assistance.

Maybe it is time to understand the parameters of NORMAL in the context of Grief? I have faith in our capacity in our culture to shift the narrative around Grief. All of us who know the experience can become the educators for others. We can ask for growing awareness from the people around us and spread a more affirming, generous, loving and supportive way of Being With Grief. Not saying it will be easy, but it will most definitely be worth the effort!

Let’s make that NORMAL.

(Original Art by Patti Shaffner)