Dancing
with Everything
Grief, Money and Dirty Pain
To become resilient and grow from what happens to us, we must choose to face and metabolize the pain of loss. That’s what the art of grieving is. Psychotherapist Resmaa Menakem describes “clean pain’ as that which is faced and transformed while “Dirty Pain” is pain that is ignored or denied and stuck in our bodies. It interferes with our thoughts and ability to function, causing us to transmit the pain to others in an unfocused or purposefully planful way. It seems likely we’ve experienced a version of the latter this week.
The television broadcast is interrupted with breaking news. We see the shadowy figure of a hooded man pointing a gun with a silencer on it towards a figure of another man who is walking in front of him in the Wall Street section of NYC. We’re told that the second man was a 50-year-old health care executive, and that the hooded man shot him in the back and killed him.
We soon learn that three bullet casing were found, each labeled with a word, Deny, Defend, and Depose. Along with millions of other people in the US, I recognize these words as descriptive of the process health insurance companies use to deny patient and provider claims. As health care providers, my husband and I immediately added another D word –Delay. I was immediately transported to January 1992, when “managed care” entered the field of behavioral health, 5 years after we had established our own successful health care clinic. Divisions of health insurance companies become gatekeepers between providers and patients. Employees they hired determined what claims were allowed, and eventually how much was paid to those who provided the service. In the spiral of my own grief, I saw again the new furniture the health care company displayed proudly when I was at a meeting to discuss their paying our invoices in a timelier manner. While we waited, and juggled our own cash flow, I expressed my anger by researching, writing and presenting a paper at a health care conference on the 42 steps that now became necessary for employees of our company to accomplish in order for us to be paid. Any missteps out of order (service not pre-authorized) we would not get paid at all.
The public reaction of humor or scorn on social media to the murder seemed to be people offering the company “a dose of their own medicine,” ––reactions that shocked many people. But given the number of people who have been denied coverage for their own treatment or for the care of a loved one’s illness, it seems likely that the incident connected people to their own unprocessed pain. Add to that the fact that 500,000 people per year experience medical bankruptcy due to unpaid medical bills while health care executives are paid, as this gentleman was, 9 million dollars a year. It’s clear that our systems are broken and unjust and not serving individuals or the greater good.
Returning to Menakem’s powerful book,” My Grandmother’s Hands,” the path forward does not mean just providing more security for people working as executives in our healthcare system. Rather, we need to recognize and process the immense pain that the system causes (clean pain) and not just respond from our most wounded parts. (dirty pain). When enough people face the problem, we are more likely to heal ourselves and the systems that are meant to serve us.
The Power of Community Art
With all the media attention on the incoming president’s appointments, you may not have heard that this week, in honor of World AIDS Day 2024, sections of the AIDS memorial quilt were exhibited for the first time on the White House South Lawn. Our current President Joe Biden and First Lady Dr. Jill Biden hosted an event with survivors, their families, and advocates, offering a powerful tribute to those who have been lost to HIV/AIDS. Each square of the quilt has been handcrafted by friends and family members in memory of someone who died of AIDS since the disease came on the scene in the US in the 1980s. The AIDS Memorial Quilt began with nearly 2000 individual squares and was displayed for the first time in 1985. It now has 48000 panels, weighs 54 tons and spans 1.2 million square feet. In the nearly 40 years since it began, it has traveled and been exhibited in communities all over the US.
For those of us who have been impacted by HIV/AIDS, the expression, “better late than never applies” with this exhibition and with how long it took for the governmental authorities, politicians, and scientists to recognize the threat of AIDS and put resources into addressing it. Millions died, included our 31-year-old son, Kenneth. In my mother’s memoir, Warrior Mother: Fierce Love, Unbearable Loss and the Rituals that Heal there is a scene between Ken’s father and I, holding a conversation in a hospital corridor when we first learned of Ken’s diagnosis in 1993.
“How is it we get to go to the head of the class?” I spit the words into the atmosphere. “No ten years of symptom-free HIV status. No time to try alternative approaches to staying healthy. Nothing I know will be of any use now.”
George seems to be studying the patterns on the floor. “When are these people gonna wise up? They pay no attention to nutrition and then wonder why people get sick. “
” And where were the Centers for Disease Control? I raged. “Why didn’t they pay more attention to this disease when it first came on the scene?”
Finally looking me in the eye, former radio broadcaster George, said in his most professional newscaster cadence, “They ignored it because it was discovered in gay men.”
The AIDS Memorial Quilt has become the largest community arts project in history. It played a huge part in gaining support from health care authorities to address the disease and in eliminating the stigma that was part of what caused the disease to run rampant in the gay community in the US.
Why might this exhibition of these handcrafted art pieces sewn together and sprawled out on the White House Lawn be important at this time?
As one of the surviving family members, I’m glad to be reminded of the role an art piece such as this has played in helping the public identify the people behind the numbers when we learn of a communicable disease. Numbers are just numbers until an art piece shows us how many individuals they represent–the people behind the numbers. I also appreciate the opportunity to remember my son and his friends who became victims not only of the disease, but of the way it was handled by the governmental agencies that our taxpayer dollars had funded to keep us safe and healthy. After all we’ve been through it doesn’t seem the time to put people into leadership positions who have no experience or intention to achieve what these organizations are charted to do.
Here’s a link to Warrior Mother – https://amzn.to/3CZqJJj
View the AIDS Memorial Quilt here https://www.aidsmemorial.org/quilt
December 5, 2024, the White House Office of National AIDS Policy (ONAP) is convening a symposium to address core aspects of quality of life for people living with HIV. Portions of the summit can be viewed virtually Exit Disclaimer from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. EST.
Grief at the Holidays
As the holidays approach, the subject of Grief becomes more common in articles, social media posts and advice columns. And for good reason. These special days of family celebration can be reminders of who will not be at the table this year. And perhaps as the rotation of another year comes around again, we are returned in memory to a time we still long for –when the children were small, when we lived in a part of the country were the weather seemed to cooperate with our holiday spirit, when gas was under $2, or when holiday gatherings did not involve the accommodation of complicated diets and eating programs. We may remember an idyllic time, which many never have existed, when we didn’t dread or try to avoid gathering at a common table with loved ones, some in deep grief over crushing losses while others ecstatic at the victory of their candidates.
So, what ancient recipes can we call upon to help us navigate these unsettling waters?
As a grief advocate and author of The Art of Grieving: How Art and Artmaking Help Us to Grieve and Live Our Best Lives I am often asked to speak or write about these dilemmas and challenges that are not unique or new to this year or this place. I grew up in Louisville Kentucky in the 1950s though my ancestors were not from there, so I was surprised to learn that during the war between the states, which was less than 100 years prior, Kentucky had been a border state, not officially joining the North or the South in the Civil War. I heard stories that were still being told of families who had sons that fought on different sides of the conflict. I remember thinking that must have made for difficult family gatherings.
There was a time when we knew how to grieve, when we understood as a culture that grief is not a stairway we climb where, we tick off a series of emotions on each step, and reaching the top, put our palms together and declare we are finished. There was a time when we knew that grief was not just a private matter, something to keep to oneself so as not to bring others down, but as a time to companion one another with compassion through disrupted terrain. To enter ritual space together for a time between the worlds, not to put the past behind us but to honor and keep close through the years to what we will always love.
I offer the visual art image of the spiral as an image that can help us grieve. A well-known author of the 20th century C.S. Lewis wrote of his own bereavement process in the book,” A Grief Observed.” He wrote it under another name, which tells us something of the unpopularity of the topic. He shared what I believe are elements of a universal model. “For in grief, nothing stays put. One keeps emerging from a phase but it always recurs. Round and round everything repeats. Am I going in circles or dare I hope I am on a spiral?”
The spiral is found in nature and in cultures worldwide, one of the oldest intuitive symbols of the physical, mental and spiritual development of a human life as it winds its way through the seasons of its years. Grief is the processing of our life experiences to determine what to cherish and what to hold dear, and what to let go of that will no longer serve us and the person we become in the future. For this we need a new perspective. The spiral brings us back to the same place each season but on a more evolved level. The anniversary of the loss occurs or a situation of remembering occurs, and the mourner now has another year of living without their loved one. They are viewing the situation from a different vantage point.
The festivities of the family gatherings provide opportunities to use the art of storytelling to bring those gone from our sight into the present moment and to honor their contribution. For those too young to have known the deceased, they are shown where they have come from, and what has allowed them to have their turn at life. Don’t worry about repeating your stories. In my family, we kids knew Auntie’s stories so well we could tell them ourselves, but we begged to hear them again and again. At the time, I thought it was the humor in them, and the fanciful way she told them by adding made-up new passages which we of course, would call her on. But now I think we needed to hear them again and again because the subtext of the stories was that our ancestors survived tough challenges so there’s a pretty good chance that we will survive tough things too.
If you live in the Pittsburgh area, I’d love to have you join me for an evening service on the theme of dealing with grief at holiday time. The program Blue Christmas is next Tuesday December 3rd at 7 pm in the chapel of First United Methodist Church 5401 Centre Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15232.
Reentry
We’re finally getting the rain we’ve needed all summer which keeps me from my usual slow withdrawal from the outdoors as I return to Pittsburgh from the piney woods of east Texas. The fall women’s retreat was later than usual this year, and I needed it more than usual. But, what’s usual these days? Wisdom comes from what’s worked in the past, but I tell myself we’re in a different climate now, more unpredictable, requiring different creative practices. Sleeping in one’s own bed is still rewarding after a 3-hour drive to the airport followed by a 3-hour wait in the Admiral’s Club (a special treat now that I have my own frequent flyer membership card) followed by a 3-hour plane flight and, after my husband picks me up, a half hour car ride home.
In retrospect, the 3 days in the woods are always different, yet overwhelmingly the same for me since 1991. It’s always uncertain, who will show up, who will get to come. We call the names of those departed from this life, and those housebound or struggling in particular situations. We remind one another of other times, other years when we switched places on what native American’s call the Medicine Wheel and what I think of as the grief spiral. This time we included especially our country, and the larger world impacted by our country’s past, recent and future actions. We meditated on what is ours to do, in the long list of what needs to be done to continue serving life. One certainty–being in the Women’s Circle is always worth all the trouble and inconvenience it is to get there and back. And for a while, maybe a long while, I am different, always aware that I am because we are.
Invitation – I couldn’t take you to the woods with me, but this Sunday November 24th from 4 to 5:30 pm eastern time I’d love to have you join me and several other InterPlay artists as we meet on the Let’s Reimagine online platform. We’ll be exploring themes from my recent book, The Art of Grieving: How Art and Art-making Help Us Grieve and Life Our Best Lives.
Here’s the link to register:
https://letsreimagine.org/76768/the-art-of-grieving-how-art-art-making-help-us-grieve
The Arts and Collective Grieving
Collective grief is stimulated by large scale losses and tragedies, some impacting people and communities far from the initial ground zero of the event. I began putting together the material for my current book during the lock down phase of COVID when most everyone’s list of recent losses was extensive. In my dance studio turned media studio I opened my zoom window on the world and family members, students and colleagues from around the country joined me in taking the first steps in grieving –recognizing and naming individual and communal losses. In the years since, there has been no shortage of community-wide tragedies that need to be collectively grieved. Reports of mass shootings in schools, shopping malls and places of community worship or celebration flicker across our various size screens along with the images of environmental climate devastations like floods, fires, and earthquakes.
Writing The Art of Grieving: How Art and Artmaking Help Us Grieve and Live Our Best Lives was a discovery project, one begun as a writing practice blog. I looked at most everything that was unsettling, disappointing, even devastating, in our individual and communal lives through the lens of loss and the need to grieve it. The secondary emphasis to my exploration was how art done on our behalf or made by a mourner for themselves or as they companion another, can help us to grieve. Discovering these connections offered extensive examples and confirmed their powerful effect.
- Healing the Culture
Art can call attention to a cultural problem or injustice in such a way that it makes an emotional impact, inspiring people to act to change the unfortunate circumstances that created it. I learned of the problem of more than one-thousand missing and murdered native women and children in North America when visiting the native American relatives of my native American granddaughter. Kyra was 9 years old at the time when she joined a friend and I as we visited an art instillation of the Red Dress Project in the desert near Palm Springs, CA. Standing in the dry dusty breeze we move our focus to the red dresses hanging on clotheslines, each dress blowing independently at various rhythms as the wind swirls around them. We experience the women’s presence, in this marking of the absence of their bodies to fill the dresses.
In the quiet, yet powerfully loud social commentary, I hear a protest and remember the wisdom of grief expert, Francis Weller. He suggests, “Part of the medicine we need right now is to come out of the fiction that grief is individual.” Or to imagine that grief ends with the generation that first experienced the loss. “If the sequestered grief that surrounds us made a sound, the whole world would be weeping.”
- Art helps the healing of those impacted by horrific incidents of loss–gun violence,
History and fate had put me in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania a few miles from the Tree of Life Synagogue where on 10.27. 2018, a lone gunman killed eleven worshipers and wounded six including several Holocaust survivors. In the years since I have had the opportunity to closely observe and participate in the communal rituals and art projects that the 10.27 Partnership has initiated and coordinated. I wrote about the 5th anniversary Commemoration Ceremony to honor and remember the lives lost.
“As leaves flutter gently down from nearby trees, friends and family members share stories of their deceased loved ones before an audience of several hundred community members…Musicians play restored string instruments from the Violins of Hope, an exhibition of instruments played by Jewish musicians before and during the holocaust. The message, communicated through the rhythmic tones of the music is one we are all living: how the human spirit can overcome even the most daunting of circumstances.”
A good place to explore the topic of Collective Grief is the online platform Let’s Reimagine Life, Love and Loss. Here’s a link to programs on this month’s theme– https://letsreimagine.org/the-whole-world-in-our-hands
Join me and colleagues Sunday afternoon November 24 at 4 pm eastern time – https://letsreimagine.org/76768/the-art-of-grieving-how-art-art-making-help-us-grieve
The Morning After
I arrived home last night from my job as a poll watcher about 9 pm. I warmed up some soup and checked the television news for early returns as the polls were closing across the country. Checking into my own body, I realized I had “left it all on the field,” as the sports athletes say, after weeks of door-to-door canvasing and nightly phone banking and I went to bed. I was surprised seeing the sorrow on my husband’s face when I awoke at 8 am since I was not expecting any definitive election results to be available this early. In 2019 it took 6 days for enough of the votes to get tallied to declare a winner, and my county in PA, along with my friend Christine’s in GA were the ones that determined that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were going to the White House.
Rather than checking the news reports I attended to the text stream of my women’s spirituality group which included this encouragement from our teacher and leader Glenda Taylor “I have no shallow words to say, but I do send calm certainty, ‘Love endures and is never defeated.”
Next in the stream my friend Christine asks, “Who are we in this moment? When our hearts are broken, and cynicism is sneaking in to help us side-eye our neighbors.”
I’m reminded of the people whose front porches I have stood on throughout the Pittsburgh region and of the essential similarities I found. No matter the size and quality of the home, or the amount of land surrounding it, or the idyllic peaceful scene of the neighborhood most everyone is afraid of their neighbors. Many are afraid of family members. Most wouldn’t put up yard signs supporting candidates, and some expressed concerns for my safety as I traveled in their neighborhood. “You be careful now.”
Christine continues, “Who do I want to be in this moment? Yes, there is a part of me that wants to curl up in a ball under the covers…but a bigger part that gazes out through my tears and feels the resolve in my heart that there is more goodness in the world–let me look to find it and work towards it. I want to be the light that shies hope in a dark situation.”
During my day long stint as a poll watcher, I was able to observe that goodness and light in a dark situation. First off, I ran into a musician friend, Mimi Jong, who was participating in a project called Play for the Vote. “What are you doing here?” she greeted me cheerfully. “You don’t live in this neighborhood. “Though it wasn’t my neighborhood, I, along with the poll workers and people who came to vote, as we moved in and out of the building were serenaded by the calming tones of the musical collaboration between Mimi’s Chinese erhu and her colleagues’ robust accordion. I received another gift in the opportunity to get to know an experienced woman poll worker who had worked these polls for over twenty years. I noticed nearly everyone, both young and old, who entered the auditorium space stopped to give her a hug before or after placing their votes. Turns out she had been a crossing guard in the neighborhood for over twenty years, a job she had dearly loved, and she was still, years later beloved by all.
Back to the text stream–Jean expressed her “need simply to mourn. Deeply. Mourn for that which has claimed power and mourn for that which has lost and will surely suffer. Yes, I will rise up and fight…but I need space and time to grieve as well.”
For me, this is the time to mourn- to listen to the wisdom of my own body, to rest, and dance, and wail and moan–to express whatever sound is there. This reality is unprocessed–we do not know what this loss will teach us and what it will ask of us. I am sustained by the knowledge that I will be in our women’s circle in person soon.
The doorbell rings and I experience another action to take when the answer to our prayers is, for this time at least – a firm no. My colleague and dancing social worker friend Lynn is here to present me with a bouquet of flowers. It is an expression of her gratitude for what I have been doing on behalf of the citizens of the Pittsburgh region. She discovered that acts of kindness make her feel better as she helps someone else feel better. What a delightful surprise in this dark day. This takes me back to Glenda’s message–“Love endures and is never defeated”. And a message that emerged from the 10.27.2018 massacre at the Tree of Life Synagogue that has been ringing true since then –“Love is stronger than hate,” and so, too, we together are.
Here’s an article by Daniel Hunter, recommended by my mentor and colleague Cynthia Winton-Henry. https://wagingnonviolence.org/2024/11/10-things-to-do-if-trump-wins/
I also recommend online programs on the Reimagine platform, especially on communal grieving – https://letsreimagine.org/experiences/upcoming-events
Remembering and Making Meaning through The Art of Storytelling
Last Sunday, amid the extreme bruhaha in the swing state of Pennsylvania related to the upcoming national election I attended the Commemoration Ceremony of the sixth anniversary of the Tree of Life Synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh. Eleven people lost their lives, and four others were injured in the worst attack on Jews in the history of the United States. This occurred in an area of the city locals always referred to as “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.” Maggie Feinstein, the director of the 10.27 Healing Partnership, the organization that has provided resources and support to the Jewish and non-Jewish community throughout the past six years began the commemoration. She acknowledged the impact of that event. “We’re here today to remember six years ago when our Pittsburgh community and Jewish people around the world were forever changed by an act of violence, changed because of the loss and suffering, but also changed because of the incredible outpouring of kindness and solidarity.” A part of the legacy of the attack is the realization that “we are stronger together.” Since I have attended most all of the these yearly commemorations and ceremonies I would add that today they prove the truth in the slogan born of the event, “Love is stronger than hate.”
I watch family members and survivors of the violence approach the platformed stage, assist one another in navigating the steps and in lighting the candles, as the names of their loved ones are called. They offer hugs and appreciation for one another and to the professional helpers that Mr. Rogers always told the children to look for. I look around the large, packed room that holds maybe 100 people, some seated, many more standing on both sides of the room. I take in the energy of the supportive respectful silence. My mind travels back to images of people I have been meeting and talking with as I’ve been canvassing for the election in many outlying neighborhoods in the region. These people here look like they could be related to the potential voters I have met but the fear of one’s neighbors and the anxiety and uncertainty of the future I found outside this room are thankfully absent from here.
Noah Schoen, the co-creator of the Meanings of October 27th Oral History Project summarized what he learned from the stories of 100 Jewish and non- Jewish members of the Pittsburgh community. With some time to reflect, they were invited to tell their own stories about the attack and what it now meant to them. “I learned two things,” Schoen said. “We get to choose the stories we tell about the attack. We get to choose how and what we remember.
As he speaks, I see an image I choose to always remember from that time. A few days after 10/27/2018 my husband and I called a Jewish couple who are close friends and asked if we could come with them to the next Friday night service in their synagogue. It’s dusk as we arrive with our friends and park the car. Moving towards the entrance to the synagogue our path is lit by dozens of people ahead of us holding lighted candles. Reaching the sidewalk to the entrance we join other congregants and process through two rows of Christian and non-Jewish neighbors, each holding a candle and standing in a silent solidarity of support. I look at this scene through damp eyes.
The word “oscillation” gets my attention as Schoen suggests the back and forth between horror and appreciation that’s needed to tell a story that builds resilience and helps people to tell their stories in what I call, “transforming ways.” Such stories as these are too big for one or even two bodies to hold. They must be told and held in community. Oral History is that kind of storytelling. According to Schoen, “The truth is multi-vocal art; a collection of individual narratives that paints a more nuanced picture of the community’s experience than any one story. Let’s keep telling stories about that day, about the people who we lost and the people who touched us, about what we can’t seem to get over and about what we never expected to learn.”
Healing from atrocities takes a lifetime, but in community, what is broken mends, not by putting it behind us but by remembering and keeping its transforming meanings and community members close.
The Art of Grieving Domestic Violence
October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, so designated as such in 1987. In the nearly 40 years since congress passed Public Law 101-112 officially designating October as National Domestic Violence Awareness Month, hopefully we have become more aware as a culture of what domestic violence is, who can be its victims, how pervasive it is in our culture, and how to address it. Current figures of intimate partner violence in the US show 22% of women and 19.3 % of men being assaulted by their partners at least once in their lifetime. Younger dating populations have higher rates which has caused programs for prevention to start early, beginning with anti-bullying programs in elementary, middle and high schools. Programs to engage men and boys have proved helpful, moving good men from having an interest in the matter to making an investment in standing up against the bullying and terroristic attitudes and behaviors of their perpetrating brothers.
An innovative project Standing Firm, the Business Case to End Partner Violence, now affiliated with the Pittsburgh Women’s Center and Shelter, teaches employers about the critical role they can play in protecting the workplace from violence. Four women a day lose their lives at the hands of someone with whom they once shared a bond of trust and love. The potential for violence in the workplace increases once a woman finds a safe haven in a shelter– her aggressor doesn’t know where she lives, but he knows where she works.
Through the years one of the most difficult issues to understand is expressed in the question, “Why doesn’t she just leave.” As I’ve looked more closely at family estrangements of all types, I’ve decided that looking at partner violence through the lens of grief might help answer this question. People in close relationships often reveal to one another, and see one another, at their best and at their worst. Sometimes these two aspects are not well integrated with one another, so it seems like the person is two people. One day the person you met and fell in love with, or the person you raised, or knew in a positive way for years begins treating you as an enemy, and the source of all their unhappiness. Then, perhaps they apologize or, even if they don’t, they seem to regret their behavior and begin treating you in a more positive way. Now it seems the person you love has returned and you reinvest in the relationship. Then the cycle begins all over again.
For many people, it is hard to give up on those we love and on the dream of what we hoped for when the relationship began. If the person dies, we are forced to separate. In that case, funeral rituals and family and community members provide support and companionship as the person grieves the loss and reconfigures their life without the loved one. When the person is still alive, but the bond of trust is broken, grieving this loss is more complex and complicated. Both parties need to learn, in order to continue loving themselves, and for the safety and health of those around them, how to love this estranged person from afar. When the person longer operates out of love or resembles the person we fell in love with, or raised, or befriended and becomes a danger to themselves and their partner, both parties need support to separate and begin reconfiguring a new life without one another. The community of support which shelters have put together in recent years includes medical personnel, (doctors, nurses, social workers,) lawyers, police officers, financial advisors, volunteers, and foundations.
If you live in the Pittsburgh area – Here’s something not to miss –
I’m excited to be providing one of the keynote presentations for The Women’s Center and Shelter of Greater Pittsburgh’s 50th anniversary offering– a day long Supporting Survivors Summit. Over 100 participants will be exploring the complexities of domestic violence this Friday Oct. 25, 2024 at the Regional Learning Alliance and Conference Center in Cranberry PA. Love to see you there.
The Impact of an Art Image on the Art of Grieving
Most communication, especially for teachers and writers involves finding the right words. As a therapist whose first profession was as a dancer, I often use expressive arts to help people connect with the creative side of themselves and to help process the experiences that life is currently presenting them. Frequently these challenges involve loss or the anticipation of losing something or someone that feels essential to life itself.
For the past 30 + years I’ve used the modal expressive art forms of InterPlay which involve storytelling, dancing, music, voice, and stillness. These art forms get people in their bodies and more fully into the present moment–the only place where transformation can occur. These forms can be done in a one-on-one situation, but their power is enhanced when they happen in a group. People would ask, “who are these groups for?” and my answer would be, “anyone I can talk into them.”
As a grief advocate, I have not always been able to find the right words to convince people that grief, when experienced in the presence of loving companions is not something to fear or run away from as Western culture has led us to believe. Misconceptions about the grieving process abound which is no small matter since grieving well is our essential connection to what really matters and to a meaningful vital future life.
As a mental health professional, I had been taught Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s 5 stage model of grief, the one that continues to appear in most every journalist’s article about grief. The model first appeared when the Swiss-born American psychiatrist published her first book, On Death and Dying in 1969. It was a theory to encourage psychological counseling for the dying. How it has become most everyone’s model of processing the emotions of grief has been a mystery to me. Researcher, John Bernau in his article, “The institutionalization of Kubler-Ross’s Five Stage Model of Death and Dying,” suggests it was “early scientific interest and commercial promotion” that is responsible for the popularity of the model and notes its current use as a model is “to understand everything from rent prices to COVID-19.”
Besides the fact that Western culture tries to reduce everything to a step by step, one and done intellectual process, my curiosity has led me to focus on the role of the angular graphic image of the model featured in the original edition. After all, we know the power of an image, it’s worth a thousand words. Reading from left to right we view the shape of upward stairsteps, each named with a different emotion on each step– “denial,” “bargaining,” “anger,” “depression.” Arriving at the top landing we read the word “acceptance.” As a dancer, I can almost feel the action of climbing the stairs, ticking off each emotion and then, arriving at the top–brushing the palms of my hands together in the gesture of completion. “I did it. I’ve arrived. It is finished.”
Noting the quotation marks around the word “Stage” in the phrase “’Stages” of Grief” underneath the image, I’m certain that Kubler-Ross did not intend for this process to be viewed as a series of linear steps or stations, but in my own work with clients, I feel it necessary to point out that though all the feelings listed in the model could and often do occur in the long arch of grieving, there are many emotions missing including critical ones like anguish and sorrow. And though I usually wait awhile before introducing the notion, I eventually remind people that it’s possible to feel more than one emotion at the same time. Eventually experience teaches all mourners that grieving bears little resemblance to this organized illustration of the grieving process, leaving us longing for a model that comes closer to our actual experiences of grief and loss.
I discovered a better image for the grieving process while during the research for my recent book, The Art of Grieving: How Art and Artmaking Help Us Grieve and Live Our Best Lives. In “A Grief Observed” by C. S. Lewis, which was published in 1961, nearly a decade before Kubler-Ross’s work, he shared in his description of his own experience of grief, what I’ve come to believe to be elements of a universal model. It fits better with the experiences of mourners and helps explain some of the odd occurrences people in early grief report. “For in grief nothing ‘stays put. ‘One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round, everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope, I am on a spiral.”
Found in cultures worldwide, the spiral is one of the oldest intuitive images and symbols of the physical, mental, and spiritual development of a human life as it winds its way through the seasons of its years. Representing the cycle of the seasons and the cycles of life, growth, and change, the spiral brings us back to the same place each season but on a more evolved level, offering new perspectives with each turn. The anniversary of the loss occurs, but the mourner now has had another year of living without their beloved, and they are viewing the situation from a different vantage point.
As the cover of my new book features a multicolored image of a spiral designed by a Pittsburgh artist, Crista Varley I have been engaged in a kind of unintended informal experiment. The spiral image seems to captivate people who view it, drawing them in to explore the subject with me or the contents within. One art museum carrying the book placed it near the checkout counter and found the image stimulated impulse purchases, sometimes as gifts to friends dealing with grief. Other books of mine on grief, like my 2013 mother’s memoir, Warrior Mother: Fierce Love, Unbearable Loss and the Rituals that Heal did not stimulate such a welcoming response.
Help Resolve the Grief of Releasing Creative Projects
If your work is in a so called, “creative field” you may already be familiar with the type of loss that I am focusing on today. For writers, performance artists, designers of various types that engage in projects requiring intense dedication and a considerable length of time –– once the project comes to an end, the producer or performer experiences loss and many questions of identity and purpose. The manuscript is finished, opening night has come and gone, the deliverables have been delivered. The completion itself is life changing.
Who are we now that the structure provided to our lives by the project is gone? Our creative production now needs to be distributed or presented and received by its audience, but much is required of its creator to make that happen. And this getting our work out into the larger world makes very different demands on us than those demands of the creative phase. How has the effort to create this product or event changed us? Are we being changed further by the comments of friends and family members, and in the official reviews of people who claim to know? It seems we are risking encouragement and discouragement, elation and disappointment. In this new phase it can feel like we are risking losing ourselves.
When I was in high school and the final night of the dance concert wrapped up, or the cast party for the school play was over, I noticed the mix of emotions that accompanied this bittersweet time. There was the self-satisfaction of accomplishment, “we did it” and the sadness of saying goodbye to the people and activities that had been the focus of many months of my life.
As a writer, I’ve known the reluctance to decide that I have come to the end. Might there be something else this piece needs to stand on its own and deliver the messages I have struggled for months or years to express? A friend who writes poetry told me that as she edits the poem, again and again, (and poets are really picky about where the comma goes), when the arrangement of the words returns to the same place a third time, she declares the poem done.
This after phase of a creative project is not spoken of as often as the crafting part, yet it seems to be as important to the work and the wellbeing of the work’s creator. As a writer who has just released my 4th book the end of May, Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew’s new book The Release: Creativity and Freedom After the Writing is Done has come just in time. If like me, once you have completed the production phase of your creative work, it now demands more from you than you feel comfortable and skilled enough to give––Elizabeth’s new guidebook will be just right for you too. She offers her releasing process to help “spare us some grief,” so we may form habits “that support our project’s final flourishing and keep us creatively engaged.” As I work through the suggested activities in the book, I hope to find personal answers to the critical questions The Release raises. “Is it possible to approach the period after finishing (one’s work of art) as an opportunity for continued creativity? What might it look like to stay grounded as we share our work with its intended audience?”
I recommend this book to anyone who has suffered the depression and anxiety that often accompanies getting creative work out into the larger world. Consider not only getting a copy for yourself but gifting the book to young writers and artists in your community to spare them the grief we experienced creatives know all too well.
Another way to help ––It takes a village to get a book or art project to its intended audience so if you get the book and find it useful, please leave a three-sentence review on the bottom of the book’s Amazon page. It takes a minimum number of reviews to have the search engine recommend a book when people begin shopping for a book on a particular subject on the Amazon platform. While you’re there, I would be most grateful if you would become a part of my book village by leaving a three-sentence review on the amazon page for my new book, The Art of Grieving: How Art and Artmaking Help Us Grieve and Live Our Best Lives. With both these actions, you will play an important part in making what Elizabeth calls, “the transformational dimension of writing” available to more people who seek it.
