Grief is a Language
Three Tips to Help You Live with Grief
“The one emotion that has touched everyone is grief” - Francis Weller
You don’t have to look for grief, it’s going to find you. Word on the street is Grief is being Amazon Primed to your doorstep right now. After 16 years of pastoring people through their hardest times, and 8 years of grieving the death of my brother, I’ve spent the last 18 months turning some of feelings into words. For the past year and a half, really with the release of my most recent books, I’ve been grieving out loud. Once I started, I quickly realized that my grief didn’t start 8 years ago with the loss of Sam. I’d been grieving losses my whole life, I just didn’t have the words to describe it.
I didn’t have the language.
Most of us don’t.
And it’s because we misunderstand grief. We think of it as an event that we have to get past, so we’re thrown off when we keep finding it in the most unexpected places. We’re upset when we learn it doesn’t have a finish line and we have just to live with it.
Forever.
That picture of the future seems horrible. Until you realize that, sometimes, the beauty of picture can be improved if it’s re-framed.
This is the single most important reframing of grief that has helped me learn to live at the intersection of grief & hope.
Grief is a language
I was recently put on to a book The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief. I get book recommendations often and can’t read them all, but this one came to me by my friend Mehrsa Baradaran who herself is an author and has written a book that I’ve referred to almost as much as any other over the past few years. So I bought it right way and started reading.
The opening chapters of the book reframe grief as a the one emotion that has touched everyone. In this sense grief is our common bond. And commonality is often the basis of communication. In this way, it’s helpful for us to think of grief as a language. A way of relating deeply to another.
Francis Waller says it like this “re-visioning of grief, not as an event in our lives—period of mourning—but as an ongoing conversation that accompanies us throughout life.”
In this way, grief becomes a conversation starter and a conversation partner. Grief is a language that must learn to be spoken.
Grief is humanity’s common language
If grief is a language it’s the most common language spoken on earth. The official language of humanity.
I’m reminded of the fact that English is the Official language of Nigeria. English isn’t the country’s native tongue, but it is the most common language shared by the various tribes. If you’re ever going to conduct business or build genuine, deep, and meaningful relationships across tribal lines, you’re going to have to be conversant in the most common language.
When it comes to humanity, grief is that common language. If we’re ever going to form meaningful, deep relationships with others (that last a lifetime) we’re going to have to learn to be conversant.
It’s helpful to think of grief as a language because we then are reminded that grief doesn’t have to be an unwanted tenant, but a welcome houseguest. One that will be a long-term tenant in all of our homes. And this commonality connects in rich, unexpected ways.
One way is that we open ourselves up to the final lesson that helps us learn how to speak Grief.
Immersion is the best way to learn any language
This is both good and bad news.
You won’t learn to converse in grief by sitting in counseling classrooms or even reading daily newsletters. There’s helpful stuff you’ll get along the way, but immersion in grief (being dropped off in grief and realizing there’s nowhere to go except inward) is the best way to learn this (and every other) language.
I know that may seem like a bad weather report and you may be asking, where’s the good news? The fact you know it’s coming IS the good news.
A bad weather report is good news if you get it on time.
I’m in South Africa right now and it’s pretty cold compared to Atlanta. I’m not a fan of cold mornings. However, I checked the weather before I came so I knew how to pack.
I’m writing to you this morning, as you step into a cold and dangerous world full of unexpected griefs, so that you’d know how to pack. Don’t get caught in cold without a coat.
Peace.
Day 3 of 30 Days of Hope.