OPENING UP TO SADNESS AND GRIEF
Today is surgery day!
After more than 6 weeks of waiting, I am so relieved to finally get this out of my body and get on with the necessary treatments if needed. Compared to the first experience with breast cancer, this is pretty easy- operation and perhaps radiation. I got the whole shebang the last time! So I am pretty much at ease with what will happen.
What will unfurl ?
What I didn’t expect as the news of the surgery date came last week, was bottled up tensions between me and my husband. We both had our trauma responses resurfacing and with our different coping mechanisms, we found ourselves in heated discussions. Good thing I have such a wealth of support that I can take a step back and find my footing again. One of my go to when challenging patterns emerge is to book a session for EMDR which I did for yesterday morning.
I am grateful for the access to an amazing therapist that can guide me and hold space for me. The session gave me a lot of insights about my own expectations around “care” and how I have the tendency to “outsource” care in the spirit of “fairness” when it comes to my relationships. I am still unpacking this insight, perhaps in another blog I can write about it more.
What was also very alive in the session was deep sadness. I have been exploring sadness and grief thanks to two wonderful friends and collaborators, Nynke Vos and Jamie Colston of Community Rituals. In one of the sessions that I attended they presented their grief map shown below.
“Ritual work for me, is cultivating attention and an open orientation to a kind of aliveness with everything in the world that wishes to speak. It is a creative and care driven act to be in deeper relationship with what is and what is emerging.”
- Jamie Colston
Going into a constellation process of moving between love and grief, I realised that I hold a lot of imagined grief. (We were asked to write the words love and grief on two papers then placed them on the floor and step on one word then the other. We were encouraged to just let what emerges from that stance to come up and to notice the thoughts, emotions and sensations). I have been holding the sadness around “what would the future look like for my husband and kids if I am not around anymore?” and the narratives around “not knowing me, being lost, untethered, without an anchor surfaced.
I know that in our family I am the one who initiates the conversations and practices when it comes to emotional awareness and regulation. I also know my role as the one holding the vision for the next generations. These are part of who I am and what I easily bring in our family unit. Hence my genuine concern around “what would happen if…?”
A big part of the sadness that I have been sitting with for the past 2 months came from these worries and fears for the future and what it would look like specially for my children. Yet tapping into ancestral grief helped me realise that “things turn out well in the end”. When I thought about my mom and how she died young, I also realised that as much as I grieve losing her when I was in my early 20s, who I am now turned out to be not bad at all.
I did well.
I coped.
I managed.
I found grounding.
I leaned in to their guidance.
I took in what I know.
I savoured.
I became more grateful.
This process also helped me look into my personal grief. I grieve what my body is going through and how these uncertainties are warping my mind. I grieve the sense of agency as I had to rely on other people’s timelines to get things done. Going through another breast cancer scare, I realise how I much I am in love with life and the possibilities that this breath, this mind, this body can create, bring into life - alchemize.
As I stood on love, what came up for me was how much I have taken measures to ensure that my children know me. All these years of sharing, talking, modelling, and practicing with them what I have learned or learning make me feel so secure on who they are as individuals and that these interactions have enabled them to really get to know me. I trust in their capacities and capabilities to hold space not just for others but more so with themselves. Our teenagers are amazing humans and the next generations will surely benefit from the richness of their beings.
This was such a powerful process and no wonder that in the EMDR there were more around sadness that came up.
My therapist, who also happens to be an elder that I am learning from, Inay Maria Josephine Johanna Schilt said “Our history is in our body. Our history is in our presence. The healing process is without emancipation.” These words deeply touched me. The freedom that I seek is not just to be rid of the breast cancer.
The freedom that I seek is deeper.
It is bridging the grief from my history with my mom.
It is accepting the present and knowing that how I am showing up now is enough.
It is looking at the future with bright possibilities and not only through the lens of pain.
Sometimes we need to let sadness takes its place for us to see the beauty of what we are holding on to. These days how I miss my mom and my grandma. How I long to be cared for by them in this phase of liminality. I also yearn for vitality. The sadness is also showing me how deeply I care. Leaning into these, I feel so much tenderness and compassion for the grief that I hold.
P.S. How are you when it comes to sadness and grief? What resonated with you in this post?
Feel free to message or comment on this post on what is surfacing for you.
Hiraya manawari,
Lana