When you were asked in January to submit questions and concerns regarding grief, this was proposed:
What’s another word for Loss?
Taking this question into meditation, feeling it through Listening Touch in the bodies of my clients and witnessing it last night in Grief Rites Gathering,
I have these words and phrases to offer:
Separation, Left Behind, Shattering, Rupture
Please read my brief rationale and then cast your VOTE and or propose another word that we as a community may offer in place of the word Loss.
Separation as used in the Course in Miracles gatherings is the human condition of cutting one’s self off from God-Source. It is misguided thinking that we are individual, but not connected, creations of God.
When meditating on ‘another word for loss’, separation emerged front and center in my mind’s eye. That cutting off. The missing.
The longing for what once was. I remember feeling so separate and alone in my grief.
When I think of the various kinds of grief offered last night the “being robbed of an article that belonged in the family” felt most represented by separation. The cherished nativity scene had gone to dad after the divorce causing the daughter heart wrenching grief upon returning from college to her mother’s home to find it missing that first Christmas.
The grief of being born black, separated by the color of one’s skin was deeply and profoundly translated from the stage by another author. Judged and treated differently, this created loss at the level of this person’s DNA.
Losing a job or retiring leaves us separated from a work community or work family, income stream and sense of identity.
We no longer know who we are now. The once familiar role is gone and with it our identity and purpose. How often the grief of retirement transforms into depression and stagnant grief in a hip
that is ‘up in the air’ or a foot flopping to the side instead of pointing forward to ‘move ahead’. The body tells the truth about grief when we have no words to recognize or describe it.
Left Behind conveys the detachment and dissociation often felt by moving or seeing family or friends move. That starting anew for one, sometimes without a familiar or limited support system and a gapping loss for those left behind. When someone dies my brother, Alan, always says, “We on the earth plane say ‘There he goes’ and those in heaven say ‘Here he comes.’”
The woman who’s infant nieces were still born wore white to honor her angels. The mother of miscarried twins wore the black of her grief. Bereft, they exhaled left behind as each of their readings concluded.
Knowing personally there are many facets of loss…. Loss of home, business and livelihood, it was death of my son, Reed, that was shattering. My world was blown to smithereens when that shotgun trigger was pulled. All sense of safety and security were gone. In studying the grief literature, Karen Wallace writes, “We can either deny the reality of the death or consciously find a way through.”
Picking up the pieces, as many of us in this community, my clients and those at Grief Rites last night have done is an opportunity to dive deep, release patterns that have become our prisons and emerge lighter and brighter a the pieces of our ‘now’ come together.
As I focused last summer with my branding coach, Patrice Rhoades Baum, of Colorado, she dug deep with her questions.
“Why would someone choose to work with you, Georgena?”
I remember the time on the face of the kitchen clock, the angle of the light streaming in and the barely blue hydrangeas at the edge of my gaze as I answered her.
“Because I know what it feels like to be shattered and return to radiant living.” were the words that came rushing through me.
Then there is the phrase from our therapy training… rupture and repair, an upset that occurs between client and therapist. I see it as welcome opportunity for the client to project the anger of their inner child onto their parent/me the therapist. This is called a confrontational rupture. A rupture may occur when human communication from the therapist feels intimidating, harsh or cruel to the client. In this confrontation a break occurs in therapeutic relationship. Withdrawal is another from of rupture in which the client’s engagement decreases, they miss or cancel appointments or stop coming.
Lately, I have been involved in an organization that has undergone a rupture, a type of death, a devastating abandonment resulting in grief. There has been no repair.
So I offer these four words for your consideration a an alternative to the word Loss:
Separation
Left Behind
Shattering
Rupture
____________
Please mark the word that most resonates with you or add your own.
YOUR VOICE matters.
P.S. My brother, Alan, was finally able to talk on the phone yesterday and is beginning to eat! Thanks so much for ALL your emails and prayers.
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