The Art of Grieving involves processing life’s significant losses to discover the wisdom in them and to use that for our future lives. The arts can be powerful tools in this processing, and often provide ways to share this wisdom with others. I am excited to share with you one of the best examples I’ve seen of these principles. The example is coming in the form of a free screening for a film “Surrounded,” written and produced by a man I met a few years ago, right here in my hometown of Pittsburgh.
Sam Weider and I became acquainted during monthly meetings of the Pittsburgh National Speakers’ Association sometime around 2015, about five years after the death of his beloved wife Jacqueline. A shy, soft-spoken man, he didn’t back away when he learned of the losses in my life, and of the fact that I was speaking to promote a book I’d written about them, Warrior Mother: Fierce Love, Unbearable Loss and the Rituals that Heal. We shared how art and artmaking processes were helping us to grieve. He mentioned how his interest in the power of music had ramped up after he played what few songs he knew, on the piano for her during the process of her dying.
Fast forward eight years now, and despite no special background or training in doing such a thing, Sam’s film “Surrounded,” is available to the public this week during its free screenings July 26-30. The film is a love story of his life with his wife Jacqueline, a health professional that taught him a great deal about living a healthy life, and the journey he went on when, after 10 years together in a home designed and outfitted especially to be a healthy environment, she died.
Many magical things happened during the time of his early grief, while he was trying to make sense out of what might have caused or contributed to his wife’s early death. At one point, while standing in the home office they shared together, he was holding a newly released book he found on her desk. The book by nutritionist Ann Louise Gittleman was titled “Zapped,” and it was about electronic pollution. He hears his wife’s voice say clearly to him, “Read this book!”
He follows her directive, along with following his own emerging interest in music, storytelling, and film making, which gives him the skills to tell their story in an artful and engaging way. Gittleman and other experts are interviewed about the potential effects of the sea of electronic magnetic fields that surround us in our homes and throughout the modern environments of our daily lives. Sam’s use of clever songwriting lyrics, cartoon images, and musical backgrounds help the medicine go down in a most delightful way.
A particularly brilliant section of the film imitates the formatting of an old-time silent movie, asking and answering the question, “If we were masochist, how could we make it worse?” It was partly self-recognition that caused me to laugh out loud when Sam becomes a “masochist on the move” by using his cell phone in the metal box of his car to worsen the effects of its electronic pollution on him.
A surprise comes when we learn, from a practical standpoint, that the solutions offered to overcoming the negative health effects of being surrounded by electronic pollution are simple, commonsensical, and inexpensive. I did not see that coming.
Here’s the invitation from Sam Wieder –
Could the radiation from your cell phone and other electronic devices be wearing you down each day, keeping you up at night, or slowly and steadily assaulting your health? Maybe you’ve heard about the numerous scientific studies that show why this may be the case. What you may not have heard is a compelling personal story that has motivated and guided you to do something about it. This is what you’ll find in a documentary film called Surrounded, available online during a free screening from July 26-30. Watch the film trailer and learn more at: https://surroundedfilm.com/trailer
