LesleyBrogan
LesleyBrogan
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  • Home
  • Advent 2020
  • Lent 2020
  • Lent 2019
  • Writings from 2019
  • Lent 2018
  • Advent 2017
  • Lesley's Blog: Holding On and Letting Go
  • Relying on the Moon: Companioning Grief for 29 Days
    • Relying on the Moon (book excerpt)
    • White Horse Questions
    • 2014 Advent Daily Readings
  • Advent 2018
  • Traveling This Tender Advent

Traveling This Tender Advent

Stepping Off the Merry-Go-Round

11/30/2019

3 Comments

 
Picture
                                                                                      Waiting in the Midst of Grief

  My best understanding of grief is that it is circular, not linear.

     In 1972 when Elizabeth Kuebler-Ross wrote On Death & Dying, we were invited into a new language around -- and insights about -- grief. In this book, Dr. Kuebler-Ross gave us hooks and resting points for understanding and communicating with one another in our seasons of grief. She described grief in stages: denial, bargaining, anger, sadness/depression and acceptance. Although I am forever grateful for this work of opening doors to help us in our understanding of grief, this image of stages hasn’t always felt exactly true. It hasn't been enough. Stages of grief implied that we were to engage grief as a linear exercise or as a check list. Over my life, grief has not been like that. Places and moments of grief come around and back again. 

 
     Loops of two or three or even four stages can sometimes be circling round me at the same time. These cycles are never really measurable or orderly. In no way predictable, rarely if ever do these circles feel very manageable. Sometimes, when I’m able to pay attention, these loops can be seen as who and what they are.  Just circles. Other times, they feel all-consuming. Somehow, it's as though these loops swallow me up and become my identity, become all that I know myself to be. One place or stage leading into another. Sometimes stopping and staying, sometimes feeling like a whirling dervish, round and round again. 
 
     This current looping place where I have been grieving is bargaining, anger and sadness. One loop feeds or dumps or belly-flops into the other. Bargaining. This unrealistic time of wishing, believing, hoping beyond hope that something will change. This bargaining with the universe that this awful, life-changing loss didn’t really happened. Bargaining can even be the emotional exercise of hoping myself into believing that what has been lost will be found again. But what has been lost cannot be found.  It does not, it will not return. Next is anger. In this place I find myself revisiting this impossible-loss that hasn't/that won't be changed and what is now truly my reality. In facing this stark, ugly truth I can become immersed in rage. When the energy runs out of being consumed by anger, what is left for me is only sadness. And somehow, somewhere along the way an impossible, unrealistic hope returns and then the grief cycle begins again. 
 
     Advent has found me ready for a new season. My wounded and weary heart feels similar to these growing-darker days. AND I believe in my wounded and weary heart of hearts that just by entering into the season, there are songs and rituals that can bring a loving, resting place for this old, suffering spirit of mine. O Come, O Come Emmanuel. 

     This journey to Bethlehem is not one that can be experienced by looping round and round. Staying on this merry-go-round will not bring peace or healing.  A merry-go-round won't take me anywhere. It will only go round and round. It won't lead me where I am praying to go in these coming days. There is a star to follow. There are hills and valleys to cross. Left foot, right foot I am invited, called, bound to step out into the story that is greater than my pain. Left foot, right foot I am seeking the One who created and is creating still. I seek to follow the One who knows me and my story as well or even better than I do, the One who calls me by name.

 

3 Comments
Pamela Vasali
12/2/2019 04:06:07 am

When I find myself cycling back through one of the stages in grief I remind myself that perhaps there is more for me to learn about and sort through in that cycle, whether it is in denial or anger or bargaining. I have found myself dreaming of my son, not remembering the past but in new situations; however, in my dreams he is still young. I am finding comfort in these dreams, in an odd way. I know that becoming his mother, and all the responsibility that entailed, opened the door to becoming a better "me" and I feel gratitude mixed in with the grief as I realize I will always be that "better me" even though he is no longer alive.

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Susan Buchholz
12/2/2019 11:59:59 am

sometimes the grief is a hidden object. you think you are getting some grasp of moving forward, of enjoying life, people, dogs again and then the grief jumps out at you. I say to myself "where did you come from? I thought I had taken care of you??" I started having just one scripture verse in my head and repeating it endlessly, trying to get the grief away from me...but it still would hide for the next time. now it doesn't jump out as often or as quickly. a friend suggested embracing grief...don't think I can ever do that, but seeing that it might always be there has actually helped.

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Gatra
12/2/2019 05:23:57 pm

My dearest friend....my "ride" is more like a roller coaster...the highs are there but the sudden dips can leave me breathless. Seeing at Trader Joe's my son"s favorite"blue girl" rose, stopping to breathe, to claim the roses for myself but unable to tell anyone WHY because it was impossible to speak. Now writing, my tears are free.......

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    "Writing more often than not helps me find my way home." Lesley is an ordained minister in the UCC and co-parents two remarkable young men, John Brogan and Sam.

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