This week I've seen my inbox flooded with e-mail notifications from bereavement support resources I subscribe to offering "guidance" to anyone walking the journey through grief during the holiday season.  There are endless tips, often ten at a time, for ​coping, overcoming, and getting through the holidays.  And honestly, with each one, I can feel my sense of self, my life, my worth, my vision, my new normal, and my hope being pulled out from under me like a beautiful Persian rug being replaced with the cold tile floor of projection, pity and "should."  

It's not that they're offering bad advice. In fact, it can all be quite valuable and certainly has withstood the test of time, and oftentimes, science too. What feels violently hard to swallow is simply that I'm being bombarded by the message (and from multiple, reputable sources, even) that as a widow, "tis the season for deep suffering" is the expectation and my only option.  I'm being given my lines in the holiday pageant before it has even begun. My role as bereaved already written, to include a thorough description of what my emotional landscape from late November through early January shall be.  

If you're seeking a survival guide for the holidays, you've come to the wrong place. You're so beautifully not wrong for looking for that, and I know there are many available for you elsewhere. Thank you for caring for YOU and seeking the specific support that feels most safe for your heart and soul this time around.  I deeply acknowledge that the holidays can trigger our hearts and rustle up bigger, louder thoughts and emotions than we experience during the grind of day-to-day life (which are big and loud enough!!). I remember a not-so-distant time when I felt like I needed a map to proceed through life after loss, and believe me, they are out there in every size and scale.

Instead of telling you how to get where I think you should go, coming from a place I assume you're at, I'm offering you a topographical perspective allowing you to zoom out, take in the landscape, and point yourself in the direction of nourishing snack breaks for your soul and gorgeous vistas that make it easier to breathe. I'm not saying you won't encounter some harrowing, deeply felt experiences on your way there.  I'm not suggesting you bypass the journey, pass go and collect $200 on the way. I'm in no way suggesting you skip the pain when it comes.  We need it all. It's there to inform us. It's there to guide us. It's there to help us integrate and heal. With so much love, I want to ask you to take a deep breath and know this truth: you WILL survive this journey. You have what it takes to find your way. But, there's more.

Since the beginning of my story with loss, what felt most suffocating to me was that survival was the expectation and the summit; the only possibility. There is so much more than survival waiting for you on this journey.  You are allowed to want and expect so much more than a lifetime of suffering from your grief and surviving your pain.  One day as you walk along the path you'll come to a place where your head peeks above the treeline and you'll see a whole new landscape of previously unseen summits awaiting exploration. That view is the rest of your story, the life that's waiting for you.

Now then...

If you're seeking a new perspective for your holiday season with grief as companion, then you've found your tribe.

If you're ready for permission to try a new way of seeing, stick around.  

If you're craving to begin living beyond the limits of cultural understanding, I've got you.

If you're not there yet, that's real. I've been in that space too. Honor that and be true to you. Go tenderly. Take your time. We'll be here when you're ready.

If you're thirsty to lean in, feel, heal, and live, all with eyes wide open, let's begin.

I invite you to join me in excavating the truth of what's possible, and more importantly, what's true for you, from within the constantly and culturally reinforced mythology of grief during the  holidays. My first holiday season as a widow, I over-performed to convince others, and mostly myself, that I was ok. I forced my way through, dedicated to creating some semblance of a proper holiday and found myself depleted and numb by Christmas eve. My second holiday season, I completely checked out in the anticipation of experiencing exactly the same as the previous year, did the minimum to get by and waited for the month of December to pass.  My third holiday season as a widow, I'm ready to experience the holidays from a place of mindfulness, intentionally practicing compassion for my authentic emotional experience at every turn.

And so, a manifesto:
 
I want to live in a world where grief is allowed to co-exist with living. Where sad is both safe and permissible, and yet, never requisite. Where joy is welcomed in guilt-free, sans judgement and always accepted as truth. I want to live in a world where the realm of what's possible within our emotional landscape isn't restricted to happy OR sad, but seen instead for what it truly is: vast and endlessly shifting. I want to live in a world where people understand that the depth of our humanness allows us within the same breath to feel heartbreaking devastation and pure joy too, one no more "real" than the other. I want to live in a world where "authentic" is the new little black dress; it's always appropriate and looks good on everyone every time.

I believe life after loss gives us a rich perspective on living, loving, and gratitude that few can truly access without a journey into grief. I believe because of who is missing from my life, I am able to more deeply appreciate those I have by my side. I believe it's safe to feel the pain and cry out with the guttural ache of my soul when it comes. I believe it's beautiful to welcome the giddiness of laughter, dance and inspiration that springs from the soaring heights of my hungry-for-life belly when the time is right.  I believe in allowing the authentic, true-for-you emotional experience to unfold and be expressed in ways that cultivate healing and integration. 

I love finding ways to honor my late husband and incorporating his memory into our holiday celebrations in a way that feels safe and valuable to me. I love finding ways to honor who I'm becoming and incorporating joy, just for me, into this holiday season when it feels good. I love finding ways to honor who I'm becoming and incorporating quiet, just for me, into this holiday season when it feels right. 

Here's what I know for sure: grief can make you feel invisible. To others, at first, and eventually to even yourself if you abandon what's true for you. When we numb with substance, use affection as filler, choose grief as identity or pack our calendars so full that emotion can't be felt in our exhaustion, we move farther from Self. There is no healing in disconnect; this is the place of forever pain so many believe is inherent to grief. Here's what I know for sure: grief is an intense journey we move through and the revelations, even more than the loss, will change our lives in powerful ways.

I am deeply committed to choosing what feels right and passing on what doesn't fit right now.  I am committed to asking for what I need and letting go of what I don't. I am committed to changing my mind when I need to without making myself wrong. I am committed to self-care and blank space on my calendar with room to breathe in the in-betweens of holiday to-do's. I am committed to sobbing and smiling at the same time if it is the genuine expression of my soul in that moment. I am committed to saying "yes" to events that enrich me and "no" to any offer that doesn't feel like a gift. I am deeply committed to trusting simply that come what may, within my authentic experience, every last drip of me is worthy and so deeply loved. I am committed to giving up the need to perform, and release the need to live up to perceived expectations of me. Instead, I commit to living fully, authentically, out loud, and in the moment as it comes. I am deeply committed to hearing "I love you," when others aren't quite able to meet me where I am on my journey, I know they're doing their best. I am committed to sharing when it feels safe and holding back when that feels safer.

I remain open to seeing magic. I remain open to shedding tears.  I remain open to being in this moment.  I remain open to connections I choose and seeking refuge when that is what I most need. I remain open to learning from my pain. I remain open to experiencing joy. I remain open to experimenting with what feels right for me right now and making anything that doesn't pass the test simply information to guide my way forward instead of calling it (or me) a failure. I remain open to practicing gratitude. I remain open to experiencing longing. I remain open to knowing that gratitude and longing are allowed to walk hand in hand. I remain open to trusting that the depth of my pain is not a reflection of the way I honor him, my life is. I remain open to receiving what comes next on this journey of life, knowing what has been will always be part of my story, and therefore, me.

Go gently, my friends. Go tenderly. Go with compassion for what's real, always inviting in your authenticity. That's where your lines are for the holiday pageant: your truth. Go powerfully and fiercely forward with the courage to be vulnerable enough to know what's true for you, eyes wide open to whatever moment you find yourself inside of.  It's all information. It's all medicine. It's all life.  

Happy Thanksgiving. I'm thankful for you.



I talk about widows because I am a widow. This post, like many others, is about grief and life after loss which comes in the form of divorce, struggles with declining health, longing for financial and physical freedom, and death at all the ages from all causes too. Please know that the language I use is intentional as a direct and effective way to tell my story but it's intended to be inclusive of each of your stories too. Feel free to adjust pronouns and descriptors to support your journey. Thank you for being part of the conversation.

A lifetime has been lived since then, but this memory so vivid in my heart is only just three years old.  I can't help but wonder what would it feel like if I took you out tonight to celebrate another trip around the sun?  What would it feel like to sit across from you like we did so many times?  Would we remember how to be "us?"  Would you recognize me the way I'm now so unfamiliar to myself in that picture by your side?  Would I remember all the ways of your face?  What would I tell you?  What in the world would I tell you?  Where would I even begin?

What would I tell you about my life that's so completely changed from that night in Hiroshima singing "Happy Birthday" to your shining eyes over the ridiculousness of the flaming, Japanese-Italian desert plate?  We were so busy, so weary, and so happy in that stolen night together.  Our lives were so full and always moving in opposite directions, and sitting here tonight I'm so grateful we forced our way into the coveted space for two, if just for one night.  I don't know if I'd remember how to look into your eyes and see you there but that night I knew the placement of your every lash and the way your dimple turned in when your cheeks moved just so.  That night I knew the way of your breath, and the meaning behind the angle of your shoulders, and so many times the next words you would speak.  And tonight, I'm left to wonder:  what would I say to you from where I sit from in this place that feels so far away?

I would tell you about our babies because that's all you'd want to know.
About the things they say, each in their own curious, full-of-magic way,
And the way they hug me now that their arms reach all the way around my middle and squeeze.
About how they want to know all the "why's" and how it's so hard to answer now because they ask things I never thought to wonder about like you always said I did.
About how fast he is, and how easily she climbs, and how brilliantly he see's, and how tender-yet-wild that littlest one becomes every day.
I'd tell you how they're all so like you, some in looks, some in deed, and how it's amazing to me because they knew so very little of you and yet there you are in his grin and her sparkling eyes.
About how I help him fall asleep with meditation, and tickle her back lightly at her request.
About how he needs to tell me he "loves me to the moon and the stars and our house" before I turn out the lights, and she wants to plant a kiss on the tip of my nose when we say goodnight.

I would tell you about the wild election and the maybe lady president, and your Cubs that keep winning, and the three things that made me cry today at the conference.  I know you'd just giggle while your eyes danced so I knew you heard me because that's how you always listened. I would tell you about cub scouts, and landscaping, and how long it took to paint the basement. I would remember you've never been to our house, and I'd invite you over for a tour of the home we've made in this new place we live without you.  I would tell you about the book I'm writing, and the business I'm growing, and the way I finally stepped into this huge vision that makes me want to throw up in fear just a little bit when I say it out loud.  You'd look at me like I'd already done the thing I'm only dreaming of now it because you always knew I would.

I would tell you how scary it's been to learn how to be "just me."  
I would tell you how magical it's been to learn how to be "just me."
I would tell you how exciting and terrifying it's been to go on dates with men who aren't you.
I would tell you how much I have learned about the human heart's capacity to love; it's so much bigger than I ever knew.
I would tell you that I feel taller, more beautiful, more powerful, more passionate, and more alive than the me you ever knew.  I wonder if you'd love the me I have become the same way you loved that girl you were married to. 
I would tell you I finally learned how to love me so you didn't have to love me enough for us both. 
I would tell you that I will always love you.
I would tell you that I'm not scared anymore to do life without you.

I would say to you:
I'm so much stronger now and leaning into life in a way I never knew was mine to live.  
I believe so much deeper now in the grand mystery behind it all that none of us really understand and I'm grateful.
I miss you.
I miss you and I'm ok.  
I miss you and I know you're never far, opening doors and aligning stars in a way only you could know how to do.
Life is beautiful and I know you know, but I just have to tell you - it's incredibly beautiful now that I know how to see. Thank you for showing that to me.

You never were a dancing man, but at some point the words would run dry.  It's hard to lean in and really imagine because the sense of possibility in this fantasy reminds me just how far from me death has taken you.  Yet, somehow imagining is easy too because ten thousand times I sat across a table from you, and I know without a doubt that sitting across from you tonight, talk would feel so cheap.  While the words would roll, my hands would sweat and the tips of my fingers would ache to touch you and be held in return. Talking is so base and there would be so much to feel.  I wouldn't need the invitation of music to take you by the hand and with my eyes, ask you to dance.  Our two souls dancing together would say all the things words could never express.

What would you say to your loved one if you could take them out for dinner tonight?

Within the emotional landscape of grief, there is a source of deep suffering literally suffocating us within its iron grip.  Surprisingly enough, it has nothing to do with someone’s death, as we’d presume, although that’s the catalyst.  This pain feels like darkness; like constriction in the physical body, often the heart, belly and throat.  It feels like grasping for anything concrete to hold onto; like gasping for breath.  Our expectations of grief readily include sadness, darkness, and longing.  The five stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, yet, something profound is missing from the widely-accepted list that affects each of those stages and the hundreds more real stopping points along the circuitous journey through grief.  Judgment or “meaning-making,” is so often at the helm of our suffering; self-judgment, and the perceived and sometimes incredibly real judgment of others. 
 
While it’s easy to blame the community around us for misunderstanding and “casting the first stone,” as they observe and judge  our process against their own reality, at the core of this sensation of suffocation and grasping as we grieve is the judgment of self.  We harshly and aggressively judge our personal grief on a micro-level against the social norms uploaded to us by our unique lifetime of cultural experiences, mostly as a mechanism of self-preservation.  We assign meaning that makes us “wrong, ” “unworthy,” “undesirable,” or “unhealthy, but our authentic experience goes unchanged.  As a result, we suffer more deeply for it because our judgment makes our personal reality unsafe and we’re all in the business of surviving at the end of the day.  We’re literally wired on a mental and physiological level for surviving. However, that survival mechanism was originally intended to keep us alive when a saber toothed tiger attacked, so it’s often a bit over-aggressive in its perception of danger when it comes to our emotions and not our actual life.  Judgment can come across our survival center as a matter of life and death, it’s the modern-day saber toothed tiger.  With our evolved capacity for reasoning, we’ve taken survival to a whole new level, perceiving threats to our existence in the disapproving glance from our co-worker or the unusual silence from a friend.  We do seem to have a harder time detecting self-judgment as a threat, we simply accept that voice within as true.  The fascinating thing is, so many of us grappling with judgment in grief are rational, capable, deeply-insightful, socially functional humans whose attempts at healing continue to be immobilized because of our inability to identify the block.  It shows up as unnamable pain, which we misinterpret as sadness because… someone died; of course that’s the source of our suffering.   
 
Maybe.
 
It has been fascinating to watch my culturally informed expectations of my own grief be measured against the truth of my journey.  
 
We writhe around inside our own grief so heavily intoxicated by the belief that we are doing it wrong that we can’t move through the experience we’re actually having.  We’re so preoccupied with orchestrating strength and grace in our grief that we defer, sometimes indefinitely, the true work of experiencing our pain that’s necessary for healing.  Our process gets interrupted over and over because we’re continually disconnecting from what we’re actually feeling in the name of self-preservation.  Grief is misunderstood as being a cruel and heartless human experience we’re forced to endure and equates to a lifetime of suffering for everyone it touches; suffering because of sadness.  We see those in mourning as victims of tragedy instead of humans living out reality, however intense and painful their present experience may be.  What’s actually happening in the meticulously designed process of grief is a systematic rewiring of our personal reality, triggered by the deeply felt loss of someone or something that was intrinsic to our sense of Self.  In our western culture, grief is seen as an ongoing expression of sadness about who or what is now absent from our lives.  I see grief as a hard-wired, systematic function of healing, engineered uniquely for each and every trauma or loss we experience as a way to process the information on a mental, emotional, physical and spiritual level so we may evolve.  Grief is a rite of passage that, when fully integrated, affords us a deeper sense of Self, gratitude, and the magnificence of human life.  This doesn’t mean we get to spiritually bypass the pain on the way to our resulting personal evolution.
 
During my yoga teacher training in 2014-15, I learned the concept of swadyaya or "self observation without judgment."  Two and a half years into this grief journey, I can say with certainty, it has afforded me a perfect (and intense, and terrifying, and delightful, and back again) terrain for practicing the study of Self.  Yoga teaches us to sit with what's truly there, acknowledging, naming and feeling the full scope of our experience.  We lean in rather than numb out, or compartmentalize.  This self-observation, or “witnessing mind,” as my teacher Yoganand Michael Carroll calls it, teaches us to see the uncomfortable experiences in life with new eyes.  Whether spotlighting something that needs more attention, love, integration, release, or perhaps revealing a truth of our essential Self we've never before recognized, this work changes the landscape of our personal truth.  Instead of being lost inside the stories of suffering that feel so true they overpower our emotions, responses, and oftentimes our physiology, we come to see they actually mean nothing about ourselves, or the ability to choose differently.  They are simply things we must identify, hold in compassion as we heal the wound generating the story, and move through our emotional landscape as we evolve.  I want to recognize that within the traumatic fog of grief, it is almost impossible to see we have any choice at all until some baseline healing occurs.  This takes time and often professional support, so please be tender with yourself if you’re not there yet.  The hero’s journey through healing a broken heart requires patience and stamina, there’s simply no quick fix.
 
Before you conjure up some idea of how perfect I must believe myself to be to have transcended the enormity of my own humanness, please let me be the first to say that this is a daily practice and I bring myself back to it over, and over, and OVER again.  As my awareness grows, the practice of self-observation becomes more natural, but within the vast experience of life, it is a constant practice.  Self-study is a fascinating thing to explore, particularly when you're a recovering perfectionist or people-pleaser who knows what it feels like to so heavily self-filter your own needs, desires, thoughts, and emotions that you're not always sure if they're actually yours or a version of what you think you're “supposed to be” feeling and choosing to secure your worth in the world.  Embracing vulnerability while acknowledging and honoring our personal truths is a daily practice.
 
The second anniversary of my late husband's military crash afforded me an excellent, and painful opportunity to lean into this judgment of self and witness personal evolution.  The dates that mark the anniversary of a loved one's death do culturally elicit a resurgence of grief from the spread-far-and-wide social network who, too, were so touched by the death we’re grieving.  As the notes of condolence and in memoriam posts came in, I felt equal parts gratitude and disconnect.  I was touched by those who remembered my late husband, our story, and reflected on who he was in their lives in the days leading up to his rainbow day*; yet, there my grief was showing up differently this year in a way that landed far outside the cultural expectations as I perceived it.  To be sure, it's a date that demands acknowledgement because of the way the world shifted for so many of us that day, but to me it's a marker of time passage that is about me and not him.  Cue self-judgment around all the reasons that makes me feel like a really "bad" widow:
 
How dare I make this day about me?  There is no honor or grace in making his death about me, this is his day to be honored.  I am supposed to be mourning my beloved husband, extra hard, on the day of his death, and I'm making it about me while everyone else is missing him!”
 
See?  It's a practice.  It’s so easy to regress to see it all in black and white, making meaning where there is simply human experience and judging ourselves against a standard of right and wrong that exists only in the recesses of our most primitive brain space.
 
With the help of so many incredible healers, way-showers, and sisters, I have done tremendous soul-work around healing the wound of my husband’s death.  That work has been all about mourning who he was in my life, and the Self I lost when he died.  It has been processing his absence from my life, and the experience of losing what then felt like absolutely everything.  The fact is, my experience has shifted from mourning his death to feeling gratitude that he was a profound and beautiful part of my story.  My grief is no longer about suffering, longing and despair, it’s about navigating what his death means about my identity and life in the aftermath.  This shift in my experience has turned his rainbow day into a day that isn't about missing him…let me explain.
 
That day before the two-year anniversary of his death, something shifted in me.  I never saw it coming, and had no awareness around it the year prior.  There it was: that sinking-into-the-depth-of-black-waters feeling.  It was as though I stepped out of my body, and literally spent the day hovering around myself as I went through the motions of my life, watching from the outside as I made breakfast, wrote love notes on the napkins in my kids' lunch boxes, chaperoned a field trip, and stopped by my favorite bike shop.  I was fully “functional” to the casual observer, and completely numb and disconnected within; a feeling so familiar.  This was my normal state of being for much of that first year doing life without him.  It happened as soon as I saw them standing in full dress uniforms on the threshold of my home to notify me of the accident.  And here I was, two years later, everything in a fog all over again, totally numb and disconnected. 
 
Except, that day, it didn't feel like grief and, it felt like anxiety and bracing for something I couldn’t name at first.  It felt like tenderness and exhaustion.  Over the course of the day, I came to realize what I was being hyper-triggered by was an all-too-familiar sense of being watched by everyone, and seen by no one.  What was being rustled up was a struggle between my social self (the “me” interacting with the outside world) and my essential Self (the hard-wired “me” that lives in my soul and psyche).  Self-preservation and despair were rising up in response to the belief that my true experience on the anniversary of the crash was not in alignment with what I believed was expected of me that day.  I was assigning meaning to that violation of “proper grief protocol,” as I saw it.  The self-judgment that I was wrong and the fear that I would be abandoned by my social tribe for that wrongness left me attempting to replace my genuine emotional experience with one that matched more closely to the “right way” of grieving.
 
What I was feeling in anticipation of that date wasn’t intensified grief over his death, although I fully acknowledge that many experience exactly that.  The tone of the messages I received were overflowing with loving-intentions, offering comfort for my deep sadness.  They were messages honoring him and offering words of solace and strength to me.  That was their experience with the date, an absolutely culturally appropriate understanding of what I would be feeling.  No one knew that I was suffering in a completely different way, reliving the trauma of receiving the news of his death.  I remember the details so vividly, I can close my eyes and put myself right back there in the hours preceding and following the knock on my door that changed everything.  For me, the calendar marker of his death doesn't show up as being about him.  For me, that date is about the trauma I experienced when they came to my door.  It’s the day my old way of living and seeing the world ended.  It’s the day my heart cracked wide open and the hopes and dreams we had made together were enveloped in darkness.  It’s the day the life we were envisioning, sacrificing for, and working toward ended.  It’s the day they came to my house and told me our “someday” simply would not be. 
 
In a fabulous podcast episode, Elizabeth DiAlto riffs about the purpose of triggers, and it deeply resonates with me.  As Elizabeth puts it, one of the roles of a trigger is to, "reflect back the disowned pieces of yourself that want to be loved, healed and integrated."  She later expanded the idea further, saying that ultimately, triggers create an environment "for growth and expansion" and teach us to practice discernment in our lives.
 
The anxiety I felt so viscerally as a mechanism of my grief was there to help me see what needed healing, pain I hadn't yet consciously known I was carrying: I was bracing against the trauma of finding out that he was dead again.  My hard-wiring was literally waiting for them to come to my door all over.  When I finally named the source of my suffering, I could see the healing that was waiting to be embraced.  I spent the rest of the day making space for what I was truly feeling, and finding my way back into my body so I could connect more fully with the experience.  I called my two best friends to talk it out, a ritual that has helped me find my way so many times in this wild ride of grief.  I messaged my life coach to hash it out further.  I went for a run, made space for stillness in meditation, and of course, journaled my heart out.  I called in every form of support and self-care I had at my disposal, because my work that day was twofold: to soften and hold with compassion the true nature of what I was feeling, and to use my tools and support people to identify and unravel the beliefs that were being triggered.  In doing so, thanks to neuroplasticity, I was rewiring my brain to know there was no threat awaiting me in that calendar day, no stress response was required, no fight or flight would be necessary.
 
The hours ticked closer to his rainbow day, but because I leaned in to the discomfort of my triggers, the suffering diminished.  I was safe.  There was peace where there had been anxiety and bracing.  He was still gone, but it wasn’t happening all over again.  I had released the fear of being judged or misunderstood by my community, trusting those who loved me would support my authentic experience and those who couldn’t understand weren’t truly the tribe I wanted to draw most close to me.  The next day, his angel-versary as some call it, was simply a day of gratitude as I received love and memories of him from hundreds of people who loved us both.  I was able to stand outside the suffering I had experienced the day before to simply receive what everyone else felt inspired to give that day.  It was safe and beautiful that the date marking his death was one that they connected with to remember him and reach out to me.  The story of suffering I felt so deeply in my body the day before was simply gone because I had named it and leaned in to understand what it was showing me.
 
I chose the words on his headstone with great intention: “We dance your legacy.”  Every one of us who was touched by his life has an opportunity every day to honor who he was in the way we choose to live.  This perspective makes honoring the date of his death a non-event for me.  I honor and celebrate the way he lived.  I choose to honor his life on the days that made him most happy, not the day his life ended.  I choose to celebrate all the ways he lived instead of reflecting on the fact he died.  To me, that feels like a more true way to honor all he was.  While those dates of celebrating him are beautiful and full of new memories made with my loved ones, they’re also incredibly painful because in the joy of remembering comes the depth of what’s forever missing.  In terms of the calendar, July 4 (his favorite holiday, packed with years of memories) is significantly painful for me while March 1 (the date of his death) is essentially a benign experience.  He is a part of our every day, so a single day marking his death feels, to me, insignificant.  Every day I remember.  He remains a part of our story, even as that story expands and shifts and fills with new hopes and visions of what will be. 
 
Danielle LaPorte writes, “These days, I’m more attracted to people who are attracted to the light.  And it turns out that those people who are most committed to the Light have already battled a lot of darkness – initiated.  Some people can be swimming in emotional shit and say, I’m getting back to the Joy, whatever it takes, however long it takes.  And with those Friends, I will get in and shovel, weep, climb, incant, and row as long as it takes.”   
 
I truly believe this is the journey we are all embarked upon as we walk each other home: “to shovel, weep, climb, incant and row as long as it takes.”  Getting back to the joy has nothing to do with disconnect, numbing, or compartmentalizing.  It’s all about leaning in and finding your way through.  We must create space for our individualized, authentic grief experience to be fully felt and integrated.  In doing so, the suffering and sadness shifts toward gratitude and an eagerness to embrace the gift of life we have before us.  Thank you to every single one of the Light-filled humans in my tribe that has kept me on the path of getting back to the joy in a raw, authentic, help-me-see-my-blind-spots kind of way.  Forever gratitude to every single one of you who has shown up with me, authentically open, walking alongside as I figure out what my uniquely engineered-for-me process of grief is becoming.
 
In Gratitude,
Sarah
 
*I’m often asked why I use the term “rainbow day” to describe the date my late husband died.  Some call it the anniversary of his death or transition, others call it an “angel-versary.”  When I talked to my then very young children about his death (which was an incredibly hard concept to explain in its own rite), I used the idea found in Native American mythology of a spirit “crossing the rainbow bridge” as they transition from the earth to what lies beyond when they die and leave the physical plane.  This imagery was something my children could connect with while working to grasp the concept of death.
 
I want to acknowledge that my experience with the anniversary marking the day my late husband crossed over is not going to match everyone's.  What I know is we're all at different places on our specific, non-linear grief path and we will weave in and out of universal experiences and those that are unique only to our own journey.  Please comment and share if this resonates with you.  Please comment and let me know how it is that you honor the life of the one(s) you're grieving.  xo

This post, and most shared in this space, speaks directly to the grief that comes with death.  I fully and deeply acknowledge that grief comes in myriad forms.  The imprint of loss goes far beyond death.  We lose relationships, dream jobs (or even mediocre ones), fortunes, hopes, self-worth, and health too.  Grief is a guaranteed part of living.  Please take the bones of this post and internalize the message, knowing the core of these words apply to all grief situations.  Death, divorce, sickness, and tragic misfortune all come with a heavy dose of grief.  What you're about to read applies to it all.

They are burying the baby girl they never held.  His wife is dying of cancer.  She lost her husband in an accident.  His brother committed suicide.  Her best friend is gone forever and far too soon.  No one saw it coming.  No one ever does until it's their story.  Their lives will never be the same, and our hearts are breaking.

Everyone wants to know: What can I do?  How can we help?  What's there to say? 

We feel compelled to save them from it; to make it all ok.  Such beautiful compassion comes seeping through our typically guarded social norms when we witness the deep trauma and desperation of grief's early expressions.

We are all pulled to show up to support and to honor the enormity of their loss that so many times is a deep-felt loss in our own hearts too.  We're desperate to help somehow, grasping for the right words that might soothe their pain for today.  You can bet we'd swoop in and rescue their grieving souls if we knew the way.  The pull of our humanity to be present and offer comfort is matched equally with complete confusion and hesitation about what might be both appropriate and useful to someone deep in grief.  If that weren't enough to cause us to take pause, just beyond our second guessing lies the voice of self-preservation and the enormity of our own suffering we've been keeping at bay, just compartmentalized enough to access when it's appropriate and adequately stuffed to allow us to function.  We realize showing up inside the intimacy of someone else's raw grief may force us to FEEL so much more than we're prepared or interested in doing.  Where our heart was nudging us toward communion, there instead appears disconnect in the name of playing it safe.  Inside this emotional equation of loss and expressions of love, we get mixed up in the difference between pity and compassion, which generates invisibility precisely where we're trying to truly see.

As a veteran, military spouse and former birth professional, I have stared deep into the belly of grief with many a client and friend.  I have witnessed the scorching emptiness and horror it brings without fail in my own journey as a military widow too.  An insatiable student of the human experience, I watch from the inside looking out at our culture doing its beautiful best to support me in the aftermath of my late husband's fatal aviation accident.  I am so grateful for the sheer volume of loving acts of kindness we were (and continue to be) shown, but would be dishonest to withhold that many of the gestures and words (that I know came from a place of love) landed with more pain, insecurity, confusion and a sense of judgment in my already seemingly abysmal existence within the throes of grief.  Watching the world crumble around me as everyone turned themselves inside out trying to support me, I learned something seemingly obvious, yet invaluable about our culture and myself too: we are petrified of death and grief and what it all means about who we are and how very little control we have over anything from our tiny vantage point on this beautiful spinning planet in a vast universe.

From deep down in our souls, we long to ease the pain of grief in others without understanding what that really means or how to do it.  How many times did I hear dear friends and complete strangers alike whisper the words, "I don't know what to say...I just want you to be ok."  

So we dress in all black.  We arrive in droves to show support with our presence, whispering requisite, echoing words that feel somehow empty yet necessary as they pass our lips and glide as silently and cautiously as possible around those in mourning, doing our very best not to let them see us cry or say something that may cause them to shed more tears.  Careful.  Ever so carefully.  We don’t speak for fear of reminding them, although words won't come anyway.  We don’t share or show our sadness for fear of placing on them the burden of witnessing our sorrow.  We keep our composure and save our tears for a private moment because the grieving family already feels enough pain, they don’t need to see ours too.

We set about doing because that's easier than being or feeling or holding; whipping up comfort food as remedy with a loving smile.  We tell then "I'm praying for you" and offer condolences in the form of flowers or donations or carefully worded, just-superficial-enough notes (to avoid, of course, making them feel worse by saying too much) or our own spiritual insights to explain why this was the way of things.  We do this all in the name of somehow drawing them from their all-encompassing emotional entrapment and making things ok.  The time-tested, canned (and sometimes contradicting, see below) phrases we all know and repeatedly go to are wrapped in safe, alluring threads of Dear-Abby-approved-appropriateness.  Yet so often, these  "go to" words arrive like daggers of disconnect leaving the recipient reeling and isolated from within a shroud of invisibility because your certainty makes no sense to them inside their place of deep pain.
 
They're in a better place.
This is part of "God's plan."
Time heals all wounds.
They were doing what they loved.
​Please don't cry.  Don't hold it in.
Be strong. Take your time to grieve.
There is a reason for everything.
They wouldn't want you to be sad.
Get some fresh air! Stay in bed!
Get some exercise! Get some sleep!

And then, once we follow the requisite recipe our culture has created for how to show up, we give them space until it all goes away (it will eventually, right?) because we don’t know what else to do and truly, this feels most prudent, respectful and appropriate.  We follow these rigid social rules because we have no idea what else to do to make it all ok.  At the core of that need to make it ok for them lies our own fear of death and what it would look like to walk in their shoes.  We need to know that if (when) we one day find ourselves grieving a lost beloved, that we too will somehow be ok.

Can I get a witness?  If we're honest, we've all been in that strangely incapacitating space of wanting and desiring to help someone we care about on their journey through grief, yet never quite knowing for sure what to do or how to say it while keeping everyone's heart in tact.  We've all said or written something to a grieving loved one that in hindsight was so evidently awkward and potentially painfully disconnected we could cry.  We've all shown up too much and smothered as we try to save.  We've all kept a wider than necessary distance because what's there to do anyway, and it's too much for our hearts to hold.  I believe it all comes from a place of love and wanting, but not knowing how or when or what to do.  

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE how people feel pulled to show up when others are in the deepest manifestations of pain the human heart can hold and I am NOT here to ask you to stop.  EVER.  What I long to do instead, is to bring some clarity and consciousness about the ways we show up and offer ourselves in service to their journey into and through grief.  What we need to be clear on with ourselves before we show up or say a word is the real answer to an important question: "How do I fit into this person's story?"  Before you show up, carefully read from a place of honest introspection the insightful article entitled "How Not to Say the Wrong Thing," about the rings of grief and your appropriate and allowable role you have within them.

What I'm offering is a conscious perspective to the doing so we may more fully show up in someone's grief journey simply by BEING.

Before my late husband's funeral, the Chaplain asked me what words he might offer those attending who were seeking the safe and right thing to say to my broken heart.  With clarity and simplicity and very little thought needed, my response was this:

                                       "I love you and I am here for you."

That's literally all I needed to hear.  And, every time, it feels right.

"I love you and I am here for you."

Of course, the universality of grief only goes so far and I know for certain that what felt most safe and nurturing and loving to me won't always be exactly what someone else needs to hear.  Sometimes any words at all are too many to receive.  But if you close your eyes and consider the times of deepest pain in your life and imagine receiving the words, "I love you and I am here for you," and notice how it feels in your body, what do you sense?  
Peace.  Nurturing.  Safety.  Connection. Solidarity.  Support.  Trust.  Calm.  Love.  
The exact feelings those in deep grief most need, crave and seek.  

"I love you and I am here for you."

Say it, and then wait.  Allow there to be quiet.  Know it's enough.  
Smile with your eyes.  Send them love with your whole being.
Let go of the need in you to fix or save or help them.  Say it, mean it and live it.

"I love you and I am here for you."

Hold them if their body language invites it.  Give them space if you sense that's what they need, no matter how much YOU need to hug them.  Social norms be damned, turn on your intuition and sense where they are and what they most need.

"I love you and I am here for you."

And mean it.

And, to mean it, you must then show up and continue to do so in ways that are appropriate to your relationship to the person you're supporting.  It might be five minutes a day.  It might be a text one day, a written note the next, a delivery of banana bread the following Tuesday and a quick stop by to clean the bathroom the next afternoon with a sincere and unwavering commitment to walk their dog the next three days.  It's staying up all night with someone sorting through pictures to create a slideshow for the visitation.  It's being willing to dance and laugh and cry at the very same moment because that is where your dear friend is at in this very moment.  And so much more.

Show up with your face and your eyeballs and your helping hands in proximity to their hurting heart if geography allows, and get creative if it doesn't.  Tend to their most basic human needs without asking them what they need (and being humble of heart if you get it wrong).  It's nearly impossibly to know what you need when you're devastated by loss but there is such sweet relief when someone dear to you can intuitively discern your needs and meet them before they become a burden.

I get messages weekly, sometimes daily asking how to show up and there is a top ten list of *fears* that plays on repeat and is keeping people from taking meaningful action (calling, texting, writing, sending notes/cards/flowers, showing up).  Here they are with my response to these trending, and totally legit concerns coming from our center of self-preservation: fear.

1) I don't want to bother them.  
There is relief in seeing your people show up.  Go into it without any expectation and from a place of love and service.  You may walk in, hug your friend or family member, take out the trash and leave.  That's showing up.  You may never even see the person you're showing up for face-to-face.  That's still showing up.  Don't expect to be entertained, don't expect deep conversation, and don't show up empty handed (bring something along to contribute like a freezable meal, flowers, a book for their kids, a treat for their dog, a hand written note for them to read later, a photo to leave behind - get creative).  Don't sit around in their parlor as though your presence is required for a certain period of time for the visit to "count".  Unless they ask you to stick around - make it brief.

2) Don't they need their space?
They absolutely need their space.  They also need to know they are loved and supported by a tribe that will show up.  Applying all the notes from item one above, consider that they also need to know they are loved.  One of the deepest fears I hear from those deep in grief is that after the initial community shock and outpouring of support, their pain will be forgotten and they will be abandoned and alone in their despair.  The more their community rallies around them, the safer they feel knowing they will always be supported.

3) I'm not sure what to say.
"I love you and I am here for you."  See above.  Any conversation beyond that will be guided by the person you are showing up for, if any conversation ensues at all.  You are not there to be their therapist, their chaplain or their saving grace.  If you don't know what to say, try listening.  With your ears and your intuition.  Life, emotions, and social interactions are incredibly overwhelming in the early days and weeks (and sometimes months even!) of grief.  Know that by showing up from the start and letting them lead will make you a safe person to go to for conversation and exploration of their experience later when their hearts and minds are ready to go there.

4) I don't want to make it worse.
Showing up with a hug and a casserole has never made worse the deepest pain of someone's heart.  Sending a text to say, "I love you and I am here for you" will never make it worse.  Mowing someone's lawn will never break their heart more than it's been broken by grief.  Trust yourself.  Let your intuition and your loving heart guide you.

5) I'm terrified I'll cry in front of them.
Literally hundreds of people cried in front of me, or with me in the weeks after my late husband's accident.  I'm not a statistician, but I'd estimate that upwards of eighty percent of them APOLOGIZED for their tears.  I'm talking about profuse, sometimes deeply embarassed apologies.  What I told them was this: "Thank you for crying with me."  Their tears, their vulnerability, their meeting me where I was in deep sadness and pain, made me feel seen and met.  There was no superficiality, no canned lines attempting to soothe.  They brought their heart and their pain to my side and together we hugged and sobbed and without words said, "I can't believe this has happened. I am so sad."  

6) I'm afraid it will be awkward.
It will be awkward if you make it so.  Yes, we have a cultural epidemic of disconnect from our own mortality.  Yes, we are typically emotionally illiterate when it comes to grief.  Yes, we rarely show up with someone we love in an unguarded, completely vulnerable, heart-wide-open way.  If you feel awkward going into it, sit with that experience for a bit and try to understand what it is that feels awkward.  Perhaps journal about what you're afraid of experiencing.  And then, march to your friend's side because, all your fears aside, they need you.  Now.  If you go into their sacred grieving space having examined your own discomfort, with a wide-open heart of service, and the intention of being for them what they need you to be, there will be no awkwardness.  This is true emotional intimacy and it is what those deep in grief most need.

7) What if I lose it and they end up comforting me?
See number five above and review.  This actually happened in my personal story countless times and my widow friends have shared similar stories.  I was always so touched by the intense pain that was expressed over the loss of who my late husband was to them.  He wasn't just mine; he was so many things to so many people.  I never knew about some of the roles he played in people's lives until he was gone.  I was tremendously appreciative of the ways people shared with me how much he meant to them, how he affected them, how he changed them and how much they missed him.  And yes, I, his widow, comforted many a family member and friend.  I let them cry into my shoulder as I wrapped my arms around them and felt their pain meet mine.  Was that easy? Never.  Was that intense?  Absolutely.  It also made me feel seen where so often I felt invisible.  Their vulnerability felt like deep connection.  It felt good to know he was so deeply missed by so many.  It made me feel, for one split second, a tiny ounce of empowerment to know that I could still show up for others in my deepest pain.

8) It will be so painful to be in the house where I have so many memories.
This is absolute truth and so crucial to your grief process.  It's important to remember that right beside your desire to show up and provide comfort to your loved one, is YOUR very own grief.  You have a real human emotional experience to navigate too.  That house is full of memories and the visualization may initially bring pain.  It may always bring pain.  It will also absolutely bring you more fully into experiencing your grief and processing your pain and accepting that this tragic loss is real.  If you're not ready, don't force it.  If you go and it's too much too soon, don't go back for a while.  Don't go back ever if that is what your heart needs.  But don't disappear, they still need you.  Communicate the pain of the experience to them and make sure they know it has nothing to do WITH THEM.  Let them know you're still there for them and get creative about ways to show up that don't involve going to their home.  Eventually they will be desperate to go for walks with the sun on their face, and someone they feel safe with by their side.  Eventually their whole day will be made by the invitation to meet your for coffee.  Eventually they will be so elated that you are showing up because they know without a doubt that THEY are still here.  It's easy to feel forgotten when people are just tiring to protect you (or themselves) in the pain of grief.  Make sure they know you're ready when they are.  

9) There are so many people there already.
People do tend to gather around the epicenter of pain.  I was recently invited into the home of a woman whose husband had died in an aviation crash just over 24 hours earlier.  When I walked in, her home was filled with people who loved her.  They were everywhere.  They brought their broken hearts to her side to be of service in any way she needed.  And there she was sitting among this mass of silence, hurting humans.  The pain in that beautiful gathering of humanity was palpable.  Suffocating, even.  I invited her to go outside with me to chat.  The people who came to be with her weren't wrong, you see.  This is what we do in our culture.  Our people come to our side.  What I want you to understand is that you can be the breath of fresh air to usher in new light and new love to their space.  You walk in with pastries and a loving hug and suddenly everyone is smiling and thanking you through their tears.  Not faking their way through obligatory thanks, but deeply grateful that you brought your heart to theirs.  Your loving kindness and warm embrace can be a game changer on a dark day.  You can also model behavior to mobilize those who are already there.  Some will feel permission to get up from their place on the couch in the room full of sadness and bustle around the kitchen and whip up a meal for everyone present.  Others will feel relief to say their goodbyes alongside you and take their leave, having been unsure of when or if it was ok to go before you showed the way.

10) What would I do anyway...and how long should I stay?
​Do what you're good at and stay until it's time to go. You will know.  Don't overthink it, just pay attention.  This is where intuition comes into the equation again.  Are you an amazing cook? Do that and show up with food so good even the most brokenhearted soul with no appetite can't refuse at least a bite or two.  Are you an amazing musician?  Do that, perhaps you take them a special cd with a note or offer your musical talents for the services if they'd like.  Are you a dog whisperer?  Do that and take their dog to the dog park, offer to come by every evening for a long dog walk.  Are you an impressive organizer?  Do that and create a chart where people can record the loving acts of kindness that will come rolling in to include names and addresses whenever included.  You have NO idea how daunting this task can be and how heavily desire to thank others later for their kindness can feel to those grieving.  Are you the most impressive homemaker ever?  Do that and clean their kitchen until it sparkles and don't forget to take out the trash.  Are you an amazing, empathetic listener?  Do that.  Are you a financial wizard or legal expert or event planner?  Do that.  They are deeply in need of all those services as they navigate wills and explore life insurance policies and tend to estates and plan memorial services.  And on the question of how long to stay, the shorter the better unless asked to stick around.  Don't underestimate the value of a very brief, heartfelt, helping-hands visit.

When the commanding officer of my late husband's squadron came to my door to tell me of the crash, I lost the ability to know what I needed.  I was living in Japan on a military base with my family an ocean away, and my six-week-old baby and her three older siblings in my kitchen ready to eat lunch when they showed up at my house.  After he told me the news of the crash, the next question was: "Who would you like us to call?"  My answer was simple.  I wanted them to call my husband, the man who had crashed on the other side of the planet, so I could tell him what had happened and feel seen and held and safe and ask him, "What do I do?"  After a few minutes when I finally remembered the names of those I could call on, I asked them to get ahold of my angel neighbor just a few doors down.  She showed up for me and held my world and my grief, and her own breaking heart too, on her shoulders all week, single handedly orchestrating the most selfless, generous, intuitively guided week of caring for me and my kids I could ever fathom.  She mobilized my tribe to meet our every need while protecting the raw tenderness of my condition by only asking of me what was absolutely necessary day by day in the enormity of "the process" of burying your beloved.  I can remember my angel neighbor saying to me with such tenderness and compassion, "The only thing you have to do today is eat this smoothie we made you, meet with someone to sign one form, review the chaplain's plan for the memorial service, and maybe take a shower."  The needs of we five were vast and my tribe of sisters showed up huge.  They literally organized a watch bill, ensuring there were at least two friends in my home around the clock to manage the scene, and tend to whatever came up.  Just recalling the soft and safe place to grieve they created for me the first week after my loss brings tears streaming down my face and such peace and gratitude in my heart.  The way they showed up for me and with me was the only reason I survived.

Grieving hearts don't need to be saved, you see?  They have their own healing work to do, that often it doesn't truly begin until the person they're grieving is buried and everyone goes back to work.  That healing work takes TIME.  That healing work happens with so much more grace when loving hearts rally around them with support and stick around.  Grieving hearts need you simply to show up and love them as they find their way.  What they need is someone to meet their most basic needs in life and let them know they are seen, love and supported.

Showing up doesn't necessarily mean around the clock and it doesn't mean the same thing for everyone in a circle of support.  So much of this is guided by your relationship to that person and that ​relationship doesn't necessarily have to do with your blood relationship to them.  Consider your day-to-day presence in their life pre-tragedy (funny how time takes on a before the crash and after the crash).  Are you the first person they call when devastation strikes?  Show up big.  Haven't spoken since high school graduation?  More subtle acts of love and support will suffice and be just as touching.  When people grieve, they need THEIR people by their side.  When people grieve, they are bombarded by love.  It's touching.  It's beautiful.  It's also incredibly overwhelming.  If you aren't part of someone's intimate tribe, or family or their dear and beloved friend, there are important ways to show up behind the scenes.  So many unsung, heroic and invaluable things happen and continue to need to happen, and you can be part of that and believe me, THAT is showing up too.  They need you.  

Simply show up and bring yourself wholly to their hearts in service.  In the days leading up to the memorials, ceremonies, services and burials, show up.  In the weeks just after the funeral, they need you.  In the months beyond, when "real life" begins demanding they participate again and the pain of loss rears up in new and unexpected ways, be there.  In all the years of living that come after the loss, show up.

​"I love you and I am here for you."  Today.  Tomorrow.  Always.

​Grief is a deeply embodied natural response to the human condition of loving and loss.  It's not a condition anyone needs rescued from.  Grieving hearts just need to know there are people who love us and have our back, come what may.  From within grief, the only thing that is certain is absolute uncertainty of what's to come.  To know you are loved by a tribe who is, and continues to be there for you provides comfort like you wouldn't believe.  So, show up, love them hard, and let them grieve.

In gratitude,  Sarah

Let's create a community of conversation in the comments!  What was the most powerfully touching way someone showed up for you in your early days of grief?  Please tell us about it in the comments!  Did something in this post resonate with you?  Please leave a comment!  Is there something you'd like to add?  Please leave a comment!  Is there a specific topic, question, or challenge you're facing that you'd like to read a blog post about?  
​E-mail your idea to Sarah at: hello@sarahnannen.com and you may see a blog post about that very subject in the near future.