I Have Been Going Through Something Big

Embracing what remains wordless.

A fairy house that was found embedded in Ivy.

“Grief work is soul work.” — Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow.

I have been going through something big.

My body tells me by its heaviness, by the way my limbs feel as they stay close to the rest of me, not wanting to venture too far away. The space that surrounds and protects my heart has been both hard and tender. My eyes, heavy, almost feel as though they need to stay close to self. It is as if they are reminding me that there is so much more to see than what is visible to them. My mind tells me that something big has been happening by way of its run-off thoughts. Nothing quite making sense, yet a desperation for it to. The ground below uneasy, even when I am lying upon it, trying my hardest to just be, to just feel, to just connect to, to just figure out what is happening, and how I can find my way through.

I try to tell myself that making sense of it is not necessarily what I need. Instead, I just need to allow myself to move through whatever is happening and to trust that my body knows the way and what to do. And that eventually, some sort of clarity will arrive.

Clarity, I know, does not come in the muck of it all. It doesn’t come in the eye of the storm. I also know that clarity doesn’t always come in words. For me, clarity comes when a little bit more inner space is made. When my lost breath finally experiences a drawn-out exhale, when the light gets in, when I get to catch up with a loving friend, when nature opens herself up to hold me, when laughter feels like it is going to burst me open, when the tears start to well, and I follow them.

I have been going through something big.

My grandmother is dying. She is my maternal grandmother, which feels significant, and grief has been guiding me through. Some days it feels easier to connect to the flow, and other days I feel the grief trapped deep inside. I have been riding the waves, making peace, and honoring her transition. I have gotten to hold her hand, tell her I love her, tell her she is safe and will never be alone. I have been calling upon my ancestors, asking them to guide her. I have been praying for ease, for her to know how loved she is, and most importantly, for her not to feel afraid. I have been crying in public. I have been quieter than usual and more tender to the touch.

Mothering has been hard with my almost five-year-old who just wants me close and engaged all the time, and my inability to show up fully for him has been causing great inner tension and guilt. I keep reminding myself that where I am is okay and that we are allowed to move through the bigness of life not always neat and without distress, and that the messy also needs love and understanding.

Death itself is not new to me. For almost a decade in my twenties, I worked in hospice where I witnessed and supported loved ones and patients transitioning. I held big grief, I learned from it, I saw the beauty in letting go, and I saw the gripping that often came when fear and unresolved wounds were present.

Grief is not new to me. I feel like I can meet and understand it. It is not easy by any means. It is painful and uncomfortable, confusing, and all-consuming in moments. It is hollow and full in the same breath. It is the companion to love. It is honoring and tapping into the reality of our time here, of the impermanence of life itself, and the hardest of truths—that we will all be touched by it. It is vast and simple. It is both heartache and heart-expanding.

Even though it is fair to say that moving through losing a loved one is difficult in all the ways, something else seems to be happening. Something else seems to be working its way through me. Something else that holds great mystery seems to be occurring, and for the past month or so, it has been uncomfortably happening wordlessly inside me.

Until a few days ago.

My husband and I recently bought our first home. A home that was built in 1912, a home that needs a lot of love, tending to, and care. A home that needs a new dream, fresh eyes, new ways of imagining what is possible, as well as ways of honoring her bones, her story, the foundation on which she was built.

Over this last weekend, we decided it was time to get started by beginning the project of cleaning up the yard that has sat untouched for decades. The house is in the Pacific Northwest, land that is densely alive with plants, bushes, trees, moss, ivy, weeds, clover, and flowers. Beautiful in all the ways, and a lot in all the ways. To get to the house, a lot had to be cleared, and there was so much grief to be found in every direction. Even though I knew that the old remnants of what once was needed to be removed to make way for the new, even though I knew that the plants and trees were being suffocated and injured by all that was overgrown and taken over and the only way to help them survive was to free them, I still found myself grieving for what was untouched for so many years.

Where there is life, there is death.

Where there is death, there is life. 

My mother’s mother. My grandmother holds with her the stories of my family’s wounds. She holds with her the remnants of what she endured, what my mother endured, and what I have endured. She holds all that has been untouched and overgrown. She holds the fullest cup of the intergenerational trauma that was given to her, and my heart breaks because a part of her is dying with it. She is dying without ever being able to cut the ties of the old stories, the old fears, the old pains of needing to cut herself out of her own life to survive.

In the same breath, I know that she is also dying with so much love for her family. Love that I have felt throughout the entirety of my life. Love that I see engulfing her when she sees my son. Love that, no matter how hardened the wounds may be, is ever-present.

What has been simmering in me over the last month—the wordless, unnamed process that has been making its way through my body—is a wondering: “What is going to die with her? What is going to live?”

The job that I decided to focus on over the weekend was clearing away the decades-old English Ivy that was taking over most everything. Ivy, although beautiful, is incredibly invasive as it wraps itself around the living beings that surround it. Ivy is also strong—so, so strong. As I attempted to combat it, I quickly realized just how embedded in everything it was. Its grip was fierce, and as I tried to make my way to its roots, I only found more and more ivy.

This repeated action of cutting it back and returning became an embodied awareness of the trauma that has entangled my family's history. Its stories and wounds are woven together without the ability to ever find the source—for there were too many. As I cut back the ivy that was clinging ever so tightly, an opening of my heart emerged, and out poured a well of tears and an inner knowing that so much more is being untangled in this grief. So much more is happening below the surface of what is.

“Where there is sorrow, there is holy ground.” — Oscar Wilde

In my grandmother's transition, I am seeing what is dying with her and all the suffering that was endured. I am also seeing what I will not be passing on, what I vow to live no more.

Grief is more mysterious and complicated than we know, and there is no wrong way to grieve. I write this fully trusting the ebbs and flows, the deep inner work that is happening, and the mystery of it all.

In my grief, something else is transforming in me, and even though I don’t have words for it and may never have, I am trying my hardest to trust its wisdom and teachings.

“Embrace your grief, for there your soul will grow.” — Francis Weller