Digging Deep

Every November I write a Perspectives Post to celebrate Thanksgiving. I observe the American Thanksgiving because of my connection to the US, but many cultures give thanks for the bounty of the harvest and all that has been gathered in protective readiness for the starkness of the winter ahead.

For 13 consecutive years I hosted the Thanksgiving dinner in London until my son moved to New York two years ago. I gave the first dinner back in 2010 when two of my American friends were stuck in London and I blithely offered to host the ceremony. I had assumed it would simply be roasting a turkey with its trimmings but how wrong I was! I discovered there are, within each American family, deeply entrenched expectations of what must be served at the Thanksgiving table. As in all cultures, this ritual of ‘breaking bread’ together has profound emotional and psychological resonance, unconsciously connecting us to our familial and ancestral roots. We can all get disproportionately upset when long held, unquestioned traditions…particularly around food…are altered, even if the change is infinitely healthy for us.

In keeping with the American tradition, we always observe the ritual of sharing what we are thankful for. I deeply love this: it is a meaningful pause as we approach the end of the year, allowing us a moment to reflect on the year behind us before we begin the sparkling festivities of December and create our hopes and wishes for the forthcoming year.

There have been years when giving thanks has been joyous and easy, when the festival catches us in a happy moment in our lives. And there have been years when it has been tough, when some of us are in a place of adversity or sorrow and sharing has been painful. Either way we have learned not to sit in isolation. That to share the happy and also the sad times in our lives is what creates intimacy and brings us even closer.

Two weeks ago, I was talking with a close friend, Sue Walter, about grief, prompted by a phrase I had just heard: ‘Grief is

love with nowhere to go’. It resonated deeply because I’ve been grieving these last two years with deaths and endings that have hit me hard. As we talked, Sue suggested I write about grief, and I knew I wanted to bring it into my upcoming Thanksgiving article. I intuitively knew there was a connection between grief and gratitude, but cognitively I was confused: how can anyone feel authentically thankful for the sorrow of grieving? And how to express this without reeking of schmaltzy platitudes?

I’ve learned much about grief over my lifetime: there is no neat timeline for when we are ‘done’ and the way we grieve is different for each person, dependant on many factors, including our early experiences of attachment…i.e. how we first learn to relate…our experiences of endings and our early experience of change: was it generally positive or challenging/traumatic?

We grieve because of an ending of someone or something. For many years, I cut myself from feeling an ending, protected by my defence mechanism of ‘intellectualisation’, i.e. over-rationalising and staying safely in my head. This served me very well: I did not have to feel regret or the raw pain of loss. I would bury any pain and rush to the next chapter, the relief of a new beginning.

Of course, this inevitably meant I carried all that unprocessed grief with me: to the next relationship, the next job, the next country, the next ‘whatever’. It grew worse; each supposedly fresh start brought accumulated, heavier baggage. The more I ran, the more I came back to the same emotionally stuck place. Nothing ever really changed.

Until one day I was forced to stay and face an ending. I had run out of places to run, and I had to stay and face what I was most afraid of: me. This is what Gestalt therapy calls the ‘futile void’. It is a very scary place, the unknown with no certainty or guarantee of outcome. It is why many keep pulling back from this place, why they keep spinning in the ‘busy fool syndrome’, filling it with noise, anything not to stay in their stillness and face the void. It’s also why many try and ‘fix’ those in the futile void with banal clichés like: ‘Everything will be fine!’  

This particular existentialist moment came to me because I had a miscarriage. It was not the first sorrow in my life, but it was the first one that came following intensive psychotherapy in which I had begun the necessary work to bring down the walls that were harming me: ‘It is your defences, not your original wound that cause the problem and arrest your journey.’ James Hollis  

With nothing to stop me, I collapsed into the fullness of grieving: it was raw and brutal, and I howled and wept in unrelenting and unbearable pain. I remember, amidst all my emotional turbulence, thinking indignantly: ‘This isn’t fair. I’ve done all this work and surely the reward and point of all that healing is that I don’t feel such pain and that I am spared such devasting sorrow.’

Such naivety! Our therapeutic healing doesn’t stop sorrows happening and it certainly doesn’t protect us from feeling the intensity of grief. The opposite is true: the more I heal the greater my grief. But now I know the only way through is to surrender, to enter into the ‘futile void’. For this is not a de-void place: it is deep and full and the container of deep often buried feelings.

And this is the reward: beneath all that ‘no-thing’ is something far richer: the ‘fertile void.’ This is where true creativity and rich experiencing happen. It is the field that, having been allowed to stay fallow for a season replenishing its nutrients… ‘the futile void’…is now ready for growth. This is the place of hope and rebirth. We still need to be patient in the fertile void, but it is not a passive waiting. It is an active one, building our strength and fitness on all levels: mind, body, heart and soul, preparing us for the perfect timing of action and new beginnings.

So where am I with Grief and Gratitude?

• The more I love and attach, the greater my pain of loss is. But intense grief is the price I’m willing to pay for loving and attaching so deeply. I am hugely thankful that my heart can still love passionately and that I care so much.

• I am thankful I have not succumbed to cynicism and living without passion and depth.

• Love is the greatest transformer, and its full experiencing makes me who I am: my compassion, my wisdom, my insight. Each experience, however painful, strips my defensive walls and opens me to my ‘authentic self’ and the person I am supposed to be.

• Fully experiencing grief allows me to feel genuine compassion for others too. There is nothing more isolating when we are grieving than to be with someone who panics or denies their own fears with, for example, a false cheerleader positivity or trapped in over-rationalising.

• ‘Grief is love with nowhere to go’: all that love inside me has to go somewhere. This is not about transferring love from the original loved one/situation…love has no timing or limit! But it is about understanding that with every ending there will naturally be a new beginning, a new chapter and I always feel immense gratitude when the shoots of the ‘fertile void’ begin to surface. It is the inevitable circle of life: with every death comes a new birth.  

  
  

I asked Sue Walter for her thoughts on grief and gratitude: ‘It is the heart’s limitless ability to continue to love, despite the grief of loss. Human beings live in the full knowledge of the inevitability of experiencing the grief of losing people we love - but we still choose to love. Isn’t this an extraordinary testament to the human spirit and capacity to love - despite knowing we will certainly lose that love one day?’

‘The extraordinary testament to the human spirit and capacity to love’: I love this. I’ve often been called naïve and ridiculed that I care so deeply and it’s something I used to feel very ashamed about. But Sue is right, it’s not naivety but a conscious honouring of our beautiful heart and spirit.

And in the face of the relentless force of cynicism, gratitude has to be intentionally and consciously practised. Here is my ritual for Thanksgiving and also for whenever I need to reconnect to my inner equilibrium:  

I create a quiet space and then I write a litany in my journal:

I am thankful for…

I am thankful for…

I am thankful for…

I start with baby steps: small and obvious things, but as I get into the rhythm of naming what I’m thankful for, my list deepens and each time an extraordinary thing happens. As I begin to let go of all that is wrong in my life, everything I feel anxious or hurt about, and focus on all that is good in my life, I experience an energetic, visceral shift: my heart opens, and I feel a warmth and peace flowing through me.

From this place of gentle gratitude, I go into my ‘Stillness’ and tune into my inner voice, my intuitive intelligence…something I am hugely thankful for!... and from this place, I gain a sense of perspective: is this a real crisis, relative crisis…or no crisis? Understanding which one it is, gives me a sense of how I can respond going forwards. As Victor Frankl taught us: ‘Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.’ We cannot always stop external events from happening, but we can create a pause in how we choose to react. This is what we can control. We can focus on what is going to bring us inner strength and equilibrium in that ‘space between’, i.e. what will stabilise us.’

I am finishing this article on Thanksgiving Day, sitting in the Crypt café at St. Paul’s Cathedral. I have just been to the beautiful American Thanksgiving Service, another ritual I do every year when I’m in London. Thanksgiving has sustained because it is exclusive to no religion and is inclusive to all people: it embraces everyone. It reminds us to be thankful for all that is good in our lives and to let go of all that is harmful.

So, in the spirit of Thanksgiving and wherever you are in the world, how about taking a moment to pause and give thanks for the fullness and rich depths of your life?

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Hannah Elizabeth Greenwood