The Many Faces of Grief

In most Grief Tending spaces we will intentionally stretch out the small word “grief” to be a wide welcoming doorway through which many feelings, expressions, flavours and sources of grief are welcome.

Welcoming Feelings

As well as sadness, we use the word grief to include all the feelings – emotions, sensations, bodily expressions, images or other, which are painful. Sometimes we cannot separate sorrow and love, knowing that whatever we love will one day be gone. No list is complete. Here are some feelings that are regularly named by grief tenders:

We would also welcome joy, compassion, tenderness, and any others that want to be named.

Sources of Grief

We also find it helpful to remind ourselves that grief flows from many sources.

There are personal, relational and collective sources of grief. Things which have happened only to me, though others may be impacted. The grief of relationship challenges, endings, breakdown. The many roles we have – as friends, partners, parents, children, professional, community member and more. The grief of group or organisational dynamics which are stressful, hurtful or difficult. The collective grief of systemic harms, of inequality, of patriarchal forces, colonial historic and present violence, of racism, ableism, homophobia and more. The grief of war, state violence in all its forms. The harm to the natural world, ecosystems that are breaking or failing due to human activities.

There are griefs whose origins lie back in the past, which continue in the bodies of our ancestors down to those of us living today. Grief for things which happened recently, in living memory. Grief for what is happening right now, as well as for what is to come.

There is grief for what has been done to me, what I bear witness to, and the harm and hurt I have caused.

None of this intends to label or restrict what grief may be, but to keep extending what can find a place in the spaces we hold. Here are lines from Naomi Shihab-Nye’s poem Kindness, which speaks to this:

“..Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth…”

Gates to Grief

Another way of naming different sources of grief comes from “The Wild Edge of Sorrow”, by Francis Weller. Here he names five “Gates to Grief”. The sixth has been added by Sophy, and also comes through Azul Thomé, who received a formal blessing from Francis Weller to include it. Here they are, in no particular order:

• Everything we love we will lose – people, relationships, identity, health, roles, pets, even life itself.. the nature of life is that we lose all of these – sometimes to make space for something new, and sometimes with the finality of endings, ageing and death.
• Places which have not known love – the places in us which were not welcomed, often holding shame and need loving attention, past hurts, traumas or abuse.
• Ancestral trauma – what comes down to us from previous generations, unhealed trauma, shame, patterns of hurt, avoidance and more. Wider systemic harms such as colonial destruction, patriarchy, and other forms of structural violence.
• Sorrows of the world – our natural responses of anger, sadness, outrage, horror and more, when we see the suffering of others, the destruction of nature and beauty, when our hopes for future generations are dented or broken.
• What we expected on arrival and did not receive – perhaps loving holding from mothers and other caregivers who are supported in their role, a vibrant community of adults that know how to support peace, leaders who care for all, a world that sees and welcomes us at all stages of life.. many of us carry deep longings that modern society fails to meet – and has no way of acknowledging.
• The harm we’ve caused to self and others – recognising that we are not just on the receiving end of hurt but also the cause of it helps us to take responsibility and ensure we don’t get stuck in a position of being a victim. Sometimes we need to understand how we hurt ourselves. Sometimes it’s harm to other people. It could be the harm to the natural world through inevitably being part of a destructive consumerist society.
• Other – anything else which cannot find a place. Some also name anticipatory grief, trauma, and more.

How can we welcoming the many layers, shapes, colours and expressions of grief