Grief does not feel like the wisest business strategy lately – Especially as a coach – A small protector part of me -influenced by “perfection only” past mentors, feels this deep obligation to be cheery and “positive.” (Those same mentors always “shoulded” that concise was imperative. Buahahah. This is not concise. NOTHING I do is concise).
I know that is just a part of me – a part that wants to be accepted and not rejected. I also know that humans need human leaders and public people who hold space and compassion for the wild edges of being human. This is the work I came to do in myself and for the world.
It’s a breeze to hold the pretty center – it’s another thing to lead and BE in the wild edges. Grief, my friends, is not in the shiny center; it is the definition of the wildest and most unpredictable of edges.
The grief of losing Leroy is the easiest of grief. I feel more familiar with some versions of this heartbreaking experience. Francis Weller speaks of the 5 Gates of Grief in his book The Wild Edge Of Sorrow(see image).
The Grief that is asking for my presence is the 4th Gate. Three recent moments helped me come to this awareness – gifts through connection with others (not with my head in a book of information but through relationships) have helped me SEE clearly.
- The first was my ADHD diagnosis 11 months ago and how the symptoms have impacted me + and that I harshly judged and hated parts of me – incessantly trying to FIX these defaults for 49 years. It is wobbly holding those as ISness and considering a path forward where I create accessibility for myself instead of trying to fix something that isn’t broken, only different.
- The 2nd was the ACA Adult Children of Alcoholics Bill of Rights, a beloved shared with me. Already coming into my own awareness of and recovering from people pleasing, over-functioning, over-achieving + boundaries – this document spelled out losses so clearly – in 20 distinct and familiar points. A gut punch…but also a re-set point. And so much grief in my body. My head already gets it, but my body is coming online and integrating, feeling, and releasing. And my thinking parts have a hay day with the discomfort.
- The third was in a session with my new coach yesterday: I remembered the 18-year-old me – so full of hope and faith, innocence, and ignorance -and physically strong and athletic. Joyful because she didn’t know. She didn’t know because she was young and privileged, and protected. She had so many dreams and so much belief. She was sourced in religion and brainwashed in privilege and ableism. I felt both sorry for her and jealous. I have been beaten down by what has not happened that I had so much faith would in life and work. I’ve been timid around desire and goals. I’ve been too tired to want as I chopped wood and carried water in this last season of ailing parents, ailing dogs, other private family matters never mentioned here, and caring for my business, marriage, mental health, and heart attack.
As I compassionately sit with this – and allow myself to be held in the presence of this grief and validation- my body acclimates to the discomfort, and I remember that I am safe- struggling but not broken. And that it is just moments of struggle. It is not my I AMness.
And then hope comes back in. There is a way to have hope and faith. I don’t have to go back to being the 18-year-old (or any other version of my joyful-faith-filled selves), but I can cultivate the hope and faith, and strong body of the 51-year-old woman I am. This feels both exciting and crushing to be a beginner all over again.
If you read UNARMORED all the way to the end… you’ll have read the part where the HUMANness reconnects with the spark of Spiritual again, followed by a heart attack; that, for me, was a metaphor for restarting my heart with the electricity of SPIRIT.
That’s where I stand today.
Comfortable in my humanness, holding others in theirs, and now ready to build both my physical strength and my faith and prayer – in my own unique way. And ‘strong ankles”. I’ll share that story another day.
AC
