Big girls don't cry

‘Big girls don’t cry!’ I remember the confusion and the shock of the moment. I’ve just properly started sobbing over the phone because I am being homesick when my caretaker tells me this. Apparently being sad was a bad thing. Or at least not something I should express or share about. I instantly stopped crying but in that very moment my grief doubled in weight. Now there was no longer just the loss that made me sad in the first place but also the loss of being witnessed and held while grieving.

I had learned my lesson. Adults didn’t like it when you cried so I wouldn’t bother them with my tears when I was sad. One day I was playing with my friends during playtime at school. We were skipping up and down some stairs increasing the challenge as we were going. At some point, when skipping down the stairs backwards, I missed a step and twisted my ankle badly. It hurt like hell but I decided to stick to the no crying anyway and calmly told my teacher what had happened. She didn’t really take me very seriously, as a result of which I was limping up and down the stairs to my classroom on the third floor the rest of the day. After school at the doctor’s I found out my ankle was broken and next day I arrived at school with crutches and a plaster cask around my foot. Later that day my teacher came to my house to apologize.

Somehow this episode stuck with me as a proof that something was off with my new strategy of not showing grief. But even though the plaster came off after a few weeks it took me many years into my adult life to dismantle the message of having to be strong. Over the years I’ve learned I am not the only one who got to hear this message. When we share before opening a grief ritual about what we have been told by our families and society at large about grief the majority of them are in line with what I got to hear in that fragile moment. ‘Don’t exaggerate’, ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’, ‘don’t be a sissy’, …

We’ve all gotten so well at taking in these messages that as a result we have created a culture that is severely grief-phobic. We don’t know what to do when death or illness enter the door, which they will in spite of being told that the sky is the limit and we just have to do it. We are good at beginnings, youthfulness and dreams but collectively flunk at endings and loss. And we pay the price for it with depression, addictions, destructive behaviour and loss of meaning. We have exiled grief and it is about time to call it back.

In one of my favourite stories, the Norwegian fairy tale of the Lindwyrm, the oldest child of the king and the queen has been thrown into the forest at birth– it didn’t quite come out as a baby, rather as a snake but that’s not the point here. When the royals get reminded of their scaly offspring after many years they make a courageous decision: to prepare a room for him in the castle and to fold him back into the arms of the family. The way they bring him back in is where my tears tend to come (I am really good at crying by now). They gather all the best poets, musicians, dancers and send this collective of beauty makers out in the forest. It is a time consuming process and only the first step towards restoration but gently they manage to bring him back in.

When we are creating a ritual space to grieve together that is exactly what we are doing. With all the beauty we can come up with we make space in our collective castle for grief. So it can take its rightful royal place once more and shake us all back into life.

ldco

Upcoming grief ritual: Tears of Amber & Gold, February 22nd-25th 2024

On January 7th at 7pm there is a free info call for which you can register here.