Embracing Loss

I've long intended to post this article from the Sept 2008 Science of Mind magazine titled “Embracing Loss - A Lifelong Healing Journey” by Karen Warren-Severson

What if we embrace loss in a lifelong healing journey toward wholeness?  What if from childhood we were taught and encouraged - in our homes, our extended families, our schools, our churches - to explore life's varied losses in a manner that would be more about embracing than bracing against … more about courageous companionship than fearful endurance … more about joyful memory than heavy remorse … more about discovering and reaping than suppressing and burying?  How might this understanding ripple out into the larger world?

Loss: Universal and Compelling

Regardless of age, socioeconomic status, religious or cultural background, we each must face the universal fears of illness, aging, and death.  In the past, we kept death closer at hand.  Victorians wore lockets that held deceased loved ones' hair tresses.  Scholars kept skulls atop their desks as reminders of death.  People often died at home, were “laid out” for viewing, mourned and celebrated by family and community, and then buried.

While we may look back through history and judge our forebears as maudlin in their seeming obsession with death, today we are steeped in fear about it.  We've become isolated from the dying process; final days of life are most often spent in hospitals or other care facilities.  Our insulated way of dying has not brought us peace.

Increasing this disconnection, American culture worships youth and wages war on the aging process as if it were the enemy.  Age-defying products and procedures are touted in all our media.  Some of our most respected authors write how-to books on stalling the aging process.  Our medical schools commonly teach future doctors to be scientists first - that death is a failure - and to keep their hearts out of their clinical judgement.  Although some insired medical professionals are building caring bridges, the so-called “medical model” still predominates.  Its built-in coldness makes end-of-life even harder.

Yet we are an aging society on an aging planet.  Loss is a compelling subject we must face - personally, culturally, globally.  There are many faces to loss: death of a loved one, waning health and vitality, mental illness, a child with a handicap or life-changing illness or injury, a beloved pet, a life role, a professional identity, a financial debacle, an environmental accident … the list is long.  Moreover, what would be minor in one person's experience is major in another's - the result is a great lack of understanding among us as we carry our grief into the world.

A complicating factor is that we are often expected and even admonished to conceal our emotions and “get on” with our lives, to finish our grieving in three days' bereavement leave … here, too, the list goes on.  This advice can translate as impatience toward our grief, causing us to shortcut and shortchange our personal journey.  Such impatience often thinly veils the well-meaning advisor's own struggle with loss.

I had the great life blessing to be married for twenty years to Paul, a gentle inspirited soul of a man, who was also a Religious Science practitioner.  He was a great teacher last year as he was dying, largely because of his abiding faith and role modeling of grace under duress.  He had to endure harrowing discomfort and daily losses as the illness took its toll.  Yet the twinkle in his eye was always there.  He inspired many through his good-natured, trusting approach to a difficult life end.

One priceless memory I have with Paul occurred during his final days.  He was in his hospital bed in the living room, never to get up again.  I sat on the parallel sofa, my feet up on the bed against him, his warm hand enfolding them.  Over a few precious hours, I read aloud one of Janet Evanovich's hilarious Stephanie Plum novels.  Together we hooted with laughter over the characters' comedic dilemmas.  In the midst of huge fearfulness over his impending death, we miraculously found we could play.  When I long to feel the joy we shared in our life together, I bring that memory to mind.  It sustains me.

Life has demonstrated so many such affirming moments to me that I can only conclude there is so much more to this great eternal life than we can see with our eyes … that all is well, no matter outward appearances.

Easing the Process

In the past two decades of counseling and coaching others, I have found that unsupported, ongoing grief often sits in the center of the life muddle that brings a person in for help.  When a new loss activates an inadequately addressed earlier loss, sadness deepens and life can become untenable.  I've found that while belief systems offer a strong underpinning to navigate through our life experiences, at times we seek to be more actively engaged.  It can be useful to explore methods that serve as springboards for expanded awareness, deepened understanding, and new life-fulfilling behavior.

In coaching others and in my personal life, a powerful tool I use is the “inquiry” process, a technique I first learned over ten years ago with Coaches Training Institute.  The inquiry process starts with an open-ended, thought-provoking question to ponder.  This is done with light-hearted curiosity in an open-minded manner.  The question has no correct answer; its power is in stimulating and inviting our consciousness to shed new light on an old subject.

It is in this spirit of inquiry that I propose we explore a friendlier and gentler way of grieving loss.  What follows is an invitation and method to ponder a loss-related inquiry question in the coming week.

On note cards, in your daily planner, on Post-It notes affixed to your mirrors, computer, dashboard, write:  “If I accept loss as my lifelong companion, how will my grief change?”

Read the question each day at different times.  View it from a new angle as you ask it, intending a new perspective.  Keep an open mind to what percolates into your awareness.  Hold lightly what comes … don't conclude … simply notice.  If you write in a journal, you might ask the question there.  Consider it during a walking meditation, or practice the “loss-as-companion” meditation (in the comment below).  Talk with a family member or friend about it.  If you enjoy drawing, you may wish to express one inquiry of the question in that manner.  Don't work hard at this process … simply stay open to what it offers you.

Through the week, above all, stay curious.  Remember the purpose is to deepen your awareness and experience of the inquiry subject, ultimately, to explore new ways to view and approach the losses you are currently grieving and those to come.

When you sense you are ready at the end of this weeklong process, spend time writing about what you have learned.  You might consider sharing what you've noticed in your inquiry with a friend, or a group you belong to, to enlarge the subject with their thoughts on the question.

Trust that action will grow from your new awareness … that opportunities will present for you to apply any shift you've experienced through your inquiry.  Use the power of intention to integrate what is relevant to your life.

Never forget that loss comes to all of us.  It does not discriminate by age, culture, socioeconomic status, religious affiliation, spiritual maturity or global location.  It can be blatantly obvious or hide itself in the folds of change.  We have a choice in how loss affects us and how we grieve.  We can opt to turn away or we can choose to expect and accept loss as a way of life, to see it as a source of heart-opening grace and growth.  We can choose to use loss to deepen our relationships and by so choosing, we will embrace loss in a lifelong healing journey toward wholeness.

Re: Embracing Loss