Living with Grief: Broken Open Hearts and Shared Humanity

This time of year is particularly tender for me as Isabelle’s birthday is December 6th.  She would be 23.  She loved winter, snow, twinkle lights, candlelight, firelight, cookies, family, friends, and presents.  It is in her honor that I carry on these traditions.  I am her boots on Earth.   Maybe, in some way, she gets to experience these joys through me.

When Isabelle passed, I turned to a small, local writing group for solace, largely at a friend’s insistence.  I’d kept a journal since I was 13, so in many ways, the writing group was an extension of a practice I’d had for decades.  I continue to write regularly, and not just books. I recently returned from Grief as a Sacred Invitation:  A Poetry Experience with Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer at Kripalu.  To sit in a group of about 40 men and women, there to face their deep loss, be it the loss of a child, a parent, a sibling, a part of self, a cancer diagnosis, was among the most deeply moving experiences I’ve had.

Here is a poem I wrote at the end of the program:

Broken Open Heart

When I share my broken open heart with you,

you share your broken open heart with me,

and I feel normal.

My depth is met.

This reciprocity transcends everyday interaction.

Because I have details,

and you have details.

Because listening to your shocking details

reminds me I am not alone with my shocking details.

I live the unimaginable,

and you live the unimaginable.

Doesn’t that just give us common ground to talk about?

Because I have words for some of my experience,

and no words for other aspects of my experience.

You have words for your experience,

and sometimes your words help me put words to mine.

Because it didn’t occur to me to feel sad about the invitation to write a letter to my daughter that I can never send

until you said you were unable to write a letter that you can never send.

I felt the sadness of this truth in my chest.

When we share our broken open hearts, we get to:

      learn more,

      say more,

      see more,

      feel more,

      love more,

      dance more,

      and breathe more.

When we share our broken open hearts, we get to live more

and live those we love more.

Because the sharing animates our beloveds

in the presence of their absent bodies.

Deep loss can feel lonely and requires a moment-to-moment practice of meeting exactly what shows up, however it shows up, and affords me tremendous compassion to feel it all, letting it run through me as if I am a sieve. 

Rosemerry invites this moment through the practice of filling in the blank with “today, grief is _________.”

At the closing ceremony of the program, a fellow participant passed me a rock on which she wrote “still Mom.”  My heart broke open again.

So much of the work I do in the clinic involves meeting women and their broken hearts, even when it is irritable bowel syndrome that drives them in.  I am grateful for the sacredness of sharing.

Here’s to broken open hearts, the tenderness of being human, and sharing it when we can.

With love and light,

Carrie