grief and healing – Feminism and Religion

Saying Goodbye to May by Sara Wright

Friday night’s dream alarmed me. I had already lost two dogs, and the dream told me that I had lost three. Was my present beloved animal companion at risk?

The weekend passed with increasing heat and dryness and a strange escalating depression that dominated the atmosphere around me. This, with so much astonishing autumn beauty on my doorstep.

Maybe this mood was why I was having so much trouble completing an essay (The Doorway) that when done would finish a heartbreaking odyssey that began last December 24^th when my beloved Hope almost died from heart failure. Eight months later Hope was dead. With Lucy’s death five weeks later, I was left dogless and bereft – except for the help from a couple of friends and May, a 15 -year – old Springer Spaniel who had stolen my heart months before when I first met her.

Instant recognition characterized our first meeting – woman and dog – linked through that mysterious animal thread that was grounded in deep compassion.

The Doorway by Sara Wright

When my dog Hope told me it was her time I listened and immediately prepared for our leave taking. In 13 years, I had never had to pry Hope out of her carrier. But this time when we arrived at the vet I did. I knew that Hope knew that she was going to die and that she was afraid, although it was her decision that led us here.

Wrapping her in a fleecy blue blanket I remember little except the precious bundle I held in my arms. Our eight- month ordeal with her exploding heart was about to end.

Seconds before she slipped away Hope raised her head, stared into my eyes with liquid onyx as she kissed away a flood of tears. Always keyed into my every mood and behavior this final gesture of undying love was no surprise.

The grave was waiting, but I took my time, feeling the power of Hope’s presence as I bathed and anointed her with sweet lemongrass and then lay with her on the porch preparing us both for the final goodbye. Murmuring repeatedly the words ‘I love you -we will never be separated’. I believed.

Lucy’s Light by Sara Wright

12/?/ 13 – 7/21/25 written morning after her death 22ⁿ^d

Purple and scarlet
orange flames
lemon and gold
lavender blue
cobalt hues
we are
dogs,
bees, bears,
butterflies,
hummingbirds too
Innocence seeking
a place
we once knew…
Grief pulled us down
into an old familiar
place. Darkness reigned
hopelessness too.
All we had was each other
At Hecate’s Crossroad
she couldn’t let go
and either could I
Lucy was my dog
you see
A ‘familiar’
just like me.
I couldn’t read her.
Forced to make
the decision
for us both
I let her go…
When we lay together
that one last time
nestled under
a purple shroud
she breathed
Feathers of Light
a Tree circle
marks her grave
Earth took her in
roots, soil, leaves
Hemlock
holds
her body
like
I once did.
Between North and East
Bear Medicine flowed
through a crack
in the Round…
Rising
on the wings
of cool green lights
she lives …
Firefly Nights.

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: What is the Nature of the Hope that Can Trump Despair in the New Year?

This was originally posed on December 20, 2013

“All hope abandon, ye who enter here.” These words posted on the gates of hell in Dante’s Inferno have an eerie resonance in our time.

Marie Cartier recently posted a blog on children and hunger with facts so devastating I could not finish reading it. Earlier in the month Jassy Watson wrote about her deep feelings of grief on hearing Luisah Teish’s “Prayer for Disappearing Species.” Grief, despair, and sadness about the injustices in our world can be overwhelming.

A friend of mine has recently fallen into a deep depression. When I try to talk her out of it, she repeats that they are threatening to cut down the last remaining old growth forest in her home state of Oregon and that she can no longer eat fish because radioactivity released in the Fukishima nuclear plant disaster is reaching the seacoast of Oregon.

When I tell my friend she should not dwell only on these things and that she must remember that the world is still a beautiful place, she responds, “I do not want to give up my feelings. I know I must find a way to acknowledge my sadness and make a place for joy, but I don’t know how to do it.”

I have been in the grip of deep grief about the planet myself, not once but many times. But this happens less frequently than it used to. When I think about the differences between how I once felt and how I feel now, I think the difference is that I have come to terms with and accepted the likelihood that “the world as we know it” is “going to hell in a handbasket”—as I put it.

I believe that the most likely conclusion of the choices human beings are making on planet earth today is massive environmental destruction leading to great suffering and probable extinction for human and many other species on planet earth. This is what I believe, but I also remind myself that I cannot know for sure. The earth and its species including human beings may have resources of resistance and survival, transformation and adaptation,that I do not know about and cannot imagine.

When I began to accept that the world I know and love (where spring follows winter, where birds sing, and where there is hope that injustice can be rectified) may not exist in the very near future, I had an astonishing insight. The death of the world I know and love will not mean the death of our planet or the end of the evolution of the universe.

Thinking about the disappearance of species and the death of human beings from starvation often feels too much to bear. None of this should be happening. Still, it can be strangely comforting to remind myself that the world I love is not the only possible world. There have been other worlds on this very planet—the time when the first cells were formed, the time of the dinosaurs, and many others. Evolution will continue on planet earth for several billion more years, and when our sun burns out, other suns will most likely still be shining in the universe.

This insight was followed by another. The reason for hope is not the conviction that we will be able to save the world we love. The reason for hope—and the reason to keep trying to save our world—is the deep knowing that it is right to try. Even if we cannot save the world we love for all time, we can savor the gift of life, and we can continue to try to create a world in which the gift of life is shared widely today and tomorrow.

I have written many times that we must learn to love a life that ends in death. I was speaking about accepting that each one of us will surely die. I do not fear death. Overcoming this fear has opened me to a greater and more clear-sighted love for life.

Can we learn to love life while accepting that the world we love may be dying? Can we continue to work to improve the conditions of life for individuals and species knowing that the world as we love it may not survive? Do we have any other choice?

For me the hope that can trump despair in our time begins in gratitude for a life that has been given to us, a life that has come down to us through the generations, and through billions of years of the evolutionary process on our planet.

Let us bless the Source of Life.

Let us bless the Source of Life, and the cycles of birth, death, and regeneration.

Let us turn back from despair.

Let us embrace the gift of life and share it with as many others as possible in the new year.

Carol P. Christ learned to be grateful for the gift of life in Crete on the Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete she leads through Ariadne Institute. It is not too early to sign up for the spring or fall pilgrimages for 2014. Carol can be heard on a WATER Teleconference. Carol’s books include She Who Changes and Rebirth of the Goddess and the widely-used anthologies Womanspirit Rising and Weaving the Visions. She wishes you great joy in the new year.

Gift From the Beyond, part 2 by Sara Wright

Part 1 was posted yesterday

My friend Lise sent me some words on the eve of Davey’s birthday (unbeknown to me until the 6^th) that reminded me of how often I spoke to him during those months.

“The reason I pray to the dead is I trust their timing. They have all the time in the world, after all, and they also see the big picture and the long story. I pray to the dead because, I admit, how little I know, how little I can understand, and how vast the mystery is of the soul.

Let me circle myself with the living who can hold both, with the dead who can hold it all. We are entangled souls…. We are all praying together, with the flowers, the trees, with all that is.” (I substitute talk for pray because that is what I do)

Gift From the Beyond, part 1 by Sara Wright

The words came unbidden “go outdoors”. It was dark but I felt my way to the door. I always listen when Nature calls.

I had just re -membered that Davey’s birthday was the next day. ‘Happy birthday Beloved’. My little brother would have been 75. I calculated the years with difficulty imagining what it would have been like if he had lived…

Dead at 21 from a self – inflicted gunshot wound, part of me died with my Gemini Twin. I failed him at the end, turning into a parent who was incapable of being emotionally present to listen to a young boy on the verge of adulthood at a time of desperate need. Instead, I parroted my parents’ script, not having developed one of my own…

”You have everything to live for,” I screamed when Davey tried to tell me that he was tired of living.

I no longer blame myself for my inadequacy, but regrets linger on just the same.

It would be eleven years before I was able to begin grieving. Catapulted out of my body at the time of my brother’s death I felt nothing for years as I self- medicated with alcohol and a dreary round of boyfriends while being unable to be emotionally present for my own young children. To feel one must inhabit a body but mine was overflowing with anguish and abandonment. Too dangerous to go there. Isolated and alone, I huddled in my house in silent torment, an absentee mother following the parental script with children of my own.

Earth Day Remembrance by Sara Wright

“It is the Whole Earth You Are”

I was on my knees awash in the kind of grief that only people who have been torn from the same skin can begin to comprehend.

I sprinkled most of the ashes lovingly in the shallow depression that I dug into half frozen ground. I had never felt so alone. Unknown to me, once a beloved companion, my little brother’s ashes had spent 32 years stuffed into a cardboard box in my parents’ attic. Every year since his death my nightmares intensified… he was left wandering in the dark with no place to rest.

Death By Drowning: A Poem Written the Day After The Supreme Court Overturned Roe v. Wade by Marcia W. Mount Shoop

Today at 10:06am
I found him
belly up
only a little bloated
water his deep
dark grave.

Turn the bucket
over
Talk gently
“How long have you been
in here, friend?”

Turn him over
his final rest
decomposing leaves,
Poison Ivy canopy
Sets off the blue

Mirroring Loss Part 2 by Elizabeth Ann Bartlett

Part 1 was posted yesterday.

As a society, we are not good at grief. Three days max, then we are expected to be back to work, keep the economy humming – shop, go to the movies and the mall, “put on a happy face.” Required to wear a cheery countenance, we deny our suffering and the suffering of others. However, loss unacknowledged compounds its effects. Grief will unleash itself somewhere, whether manifesting in excessive consumption – of food, alcohol, Netflix, stuff; or in unquelled anger, violence, hatred, enemy-making, and scapegoating — all of which have been erupting onto our world in devastating ways; or in the unmetabolized pain we pass on to the next generations. It is essential to our individual and collective well-being that we welcome grief, and tend it.

Mirroring Loss, Part 1 by Elizabeth Ann Bartlett

Strains of “In the Bleak Midwinter” have been accompanying me on my wintertime walks. Yet “bleak” is the last word I would use to describe these glorious winter days. The sparkling snow, dazzling sunshine, and deep blue of the sky against white birch branches offer solace to my soul. Still, the carol rings true, for in this midwinter, bleakness – a sense of desolation, loss, and despair — shrouds the land. Many dear to me have suffered tragic losses – of brothers, mothers, sisters, children, friends, partners and spouses – to cancer, suicide, alcohol, a hit-and-run driver, injury from a fall, dementia, sudden death, and sheer despair. An aggrieved world spins out tendrils of affiliated losses — of community and country, safety and security, watersheds and wild places, touch and tenderness and trust; family and faith — whether in god or humanity or the future. Thousands have lost the tangibles of jobs, shelter, savings, and physical capacity, and millions more the intangibles of dreams deferred, hopes for a nation, and belief in the basic decency of our fellow humans. And then there are the ordinary, everyday losses. As a friend recently posted, “I am grieving. I miss Sunday breakfasts at the cafe. Live music. Dinner parties. I miss seeing people smile in the grocery aisle.”[i] We are all suffering utter and ongoing loss.