“Grief stirs the heart. It is indeed the song of a soul alive.” – Francis Weller

The culture in which I was raised is not hospitable to grieving. We pride ourselves on being rugged individualists. From minor tugs at the heart to the most deeply rooted sorrows, we largely process such feelings alone or in the privacy of therapeutic relationships. We may bypass grief altogether through amnesia (forgetting) or anesthesia (numbing out) to avoid unpleasantness and get on with life.

Francis Weller’s book The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals and Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief calls for a different response. He argues that “grief is not a problem to be solved, not a condition to be medicated, but a deep encounter with an essential experience of being human.” We are meant to be open and vulnerable to all the joys and sorrows that attend to the natural rhythm of growth/progress and decay/death. That is the essence of leading a vital and full life.

Weller defines five gates through which we all experience grief: one familiar and four typically outside conscious thought.

First Gate: Everything We Have, We Will Lose. We learn early in life that all things are impermanent. Everyone and everything we know will eventually fall away from us. While grief is inevitable, it also reminds us that we dared to love. We’re admonished not to let grief become a weight that drags us down or to allow our feelings to go underground and harden. We’re meant to feel and be present for grief.

“It is a holy thing to love what death can touch.” – Judah Halevior

Second Gate: The Places That Have Not Known Love. We may deem parts of ourselves unacceptable in the eyes of the world. They may be sources of shame or contempt, so we hide them from ourselves and others and deny them kindness, compassion, and warmth. Unfortunately, we cannot grieve that which lies outside our circle of worth. Weller encourages us to welcome our full range of being with interest, care, and curiosity. In so doing, we free ourselves from comparing ourselves to others and the obsession of getting things right.

“I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just to the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.” – Diane Ackerman

Third Gate: The Sorrows of the World. Our lives are inexorably tied the health of the planet. And yet we have lost our connection to nature and the voices of the wild. Air, water, and land have become polluted. Every day up to 150 species are lost. The planet is warming, and the protective ozone layer depletes. We need to remember our bond to the earth and grieve her losses.

“We have lived our lives by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We must change our lives so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption, that what is good for the world will be good for us.” – Wendell Berry

Fourth Gate: What We Expected and Did Not Receive. We are born with certain expectations for connection and engagement. We long to belong; we want to contribute. We seek welcome, a sense of worth, and purposeful existence. We feel empty in their absence. Weller encourages us to recall the “original cadence of the soul,” acknowledge these wounds, work toward healing. Running away is not the answer. We’re admonished to be courageous; facing our pain is the key to freedom.

“Always remember you are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.“ – A.A. Milne

The Fifth Gate: Ancestral Grief. Our forebearers’ sorrows insinuate themselves into the fabric of our lives: slavery, violence, disease, substance abuse, etc. We partake of their history; they shape our narratives and our futures.

“The long shadow of this violence persists in our psyches, and we need to address it and work with it until there is some genuine atonement for these wrongs.” – Francis Weller

We can develop skills and practices to tend to grief – by listening and being present, by giving ourselves space for silence and solitude, and by reaching out to community. As Weller says:

“Our ability to drop into this interior world and do the difficult work of metabolizing sorrow is dependent on the community that surrounds us.”

We need time to reflect and open to the experience. Weller says: “Holding grief is an act of great devotion to the soul.” When ready, we move out to share our sorrow with others, giving ourselves sustenance while strengthening bonds and belonging.

We are remade in grief – broken and reassembled. Per Carl Jung, our transformation rests upon three principles: insight (a new ways of seeing), endurance (keeping insights in front of us), and action (new gestures in the world). When we embrace these truths, we have the opportunity to come out the other side with emotional closure and wisdom born of darkness. At the end of the day:

“Don’t let sorrow drag us back into history. We are freed to love this life, and when we are asked finally to release it, we can let it go.”