On the Concept of Grief

I used to see dead birds pretty regularly. Not figuratively speaking, or in my dreams, but in real life. I saw dead crows in front of the courthouse where I worked as a legal advocate for survivors of domestic and sexual violence. I came across a blue jay, beautiful and lifeless, laying in the middle of a hiking path I frequented. There was a sparrow with a broken wing on my front porch who, despite my and my neighbor’s efforts to help the suffering little creature, eventually succumbed to its injuries. One day after work as I walked towards the parking lot, I took in a particularly grisly scene of what seemed to be an exploded bird scattered across my car’s roof and windows. Even though these encounters happened fairly consistently over the course of decades, each time I came across another lost life I was shocked, saddened and confused.

After the third or fourth dead bird, I started to feel pretty weird about this pattern. How should I interpret it all? Was there some meaning I wasn’t getting? Was it a bad omen? Surely it meant something. My brain wanted to make sense of what I was experiencing so I started to speculate and create theories. My best hypothesis was that I was being nudged to act as some sort of usher or witness as their soul moved into the next realm. Once this idea rooted in my mind, I felt I needed to honor the bird. I would stop and offer an acknowledgement of the loss and say a prayer of sorts for a peaceful transition.

Looking back now in my post dead bird era (fingers crossed), the birds were pivotal in encouraging me to think more deeply about death. They sparked thoughts and feelings that led me to conceptualize grief in ways that were outside what I learned from my family and culture. The birds were also a catalyst in helping me manage my grief, and in connecting me with loved ones who died.

It took time, more loss and an abundance of guidance to come to these realizations.

In 2018 my aunt, my mom’s sister and someone I love dearly, died after a brief illness. My family went through many of the conventional grief rituals of Western society—a funeral, burial, reception and then the frustration of trying to figure out how to cope with the loss while the rest of the world moved on.

My family members and I struggled to find ways to cope with her death. Then, some months after my aunt died, my mom brought up an idea that to me, at that time, was an unconventional one: visiting with a medium to connect with my aunt. We were both somewhat skeptical and hadn’t ever been to a medium, but my mom had a friend who connected with a deceased loved one in this way and recommended it to my mom.

I think we were both eager and, frankly, desperate, to see if this kind of connection was possible. So, we decided to attend a small group reading with Anna* (Name was changed to protect confidentiality), the medium my mom’s friend recommended. I sat there amazed as Anna channeled my aunt, naming her favorite TV show and sharing details of her death that no one knew except close family members. This experience alone was incredibly awe-inducing, but there was more to come. At the end of the reading Anna asked if we had any questions for her. My mom looked over at me and suggested I ask about the dead birds. I balked at first, thinking, what does that have to do with why we’re here? But in the end, I shared my strange experience and asked what it could mean. Anna took in what I was saying and then asked if I struggle with anxiety. In my head, I got defensive and a little angry.

Who is this lady to call out my anxiety in front of a group of people I don't know? And what the heck does this have to do with the birds? I took a breath and realized I was curious where this would lead so I reluctantly confirmed that I do struggle with anxiety. Anna then shared that she felt a female relative, one that lived and died before I was born, trying to communicate with me. This relative was sending the birds as a wake up call, Anna said. The birds weren’t being sacrificed in any way, but their death and my life were coinciding with the help of my relative. They were placed in my path to shock me out of my overthinking and anxiety so that I would be fully present in the moment. Well, that is a freakin’ morbid mindfulness strategy if I ever heard one, I thought. But it did make sense in a way. As I thought about this relative– someone I never knew– protecting me, looking out for me, guiding and helping me, I started to feel differently about so many things.

I felt so loved.

I felt an expanded sense of connectedness.

I started to more strongly believe that our loved ones who die are still part of a higher, universal consciousness, a force beyond my understanding that binds and connects us all in our various states of being.

This insight was another significant steppingstone on my grief journey. My new ideas and feelings on life and death, alongside my background as a social worker and advocate for survivors of interpersonal trauma, had me feeling that my understanding of grief was now solid, holistic. I thought I knew grief.

I didn’t. I had made some significant strides in understanding grief. I had shifted so many of my beliefs about death and life and love. I let go of what no longer felt true to me. But I hadn’t entered into a more intimate relationship with grief. What I know now is that there is always something more to learn about grief; it’s always changing.

My more intimate journey with grief began in mid 2019 when I started working as a therapist. One of the first clients I saw had suffered tragic losses throughout her life and most recently, her daughter. Meeting her helped me realize my understanding of grief was still fairly shallow. I needed to understand grief in a deeper way if I was going to support and counsel her in meaningful ways.

Grief began creeping towards me again in my personal life too. My stepdad went through a long battle with cancer that intensified and eventually took his life. He died in October of 2019, about five months before the U.S. went into lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I realized I was woefully ill-equipped to understand and deal with the level of grief I felt.

A different kind of grief, different from what I knew anyway, was coming at me hard and fast–and it was much more than my own. I was being challenged to feel and relate to grief differently. I was trying to make sense of my own grief in the context of supporting grieving people.

My client deserved individualized and intentional support that acknowledged the chaotic and life-changing nature of her losses. Concurrently, I was holding space accompanying my mom as she began to navigate a devastating reality without my stepdad. She needed people around her who would say and do more than offer platitudes like, “Well, at least, he’s in a better place now.”

The collective grief of the pandemic exacerbated the grief I felt. My wellbeing, as well as that of many friends, family members, coworkers, and clients, suffered as we tried to manage the unpredictable nature of the pandemic, the lack of in-person connections, and the never-ending stream of news that reported more losses every day.

My partner, stepchildren and I also decided to move to a new city during the pandemic, and while it was a positive change, it was incredibly difficult to leave behind family, friends and a community that loved and supported me over the past 10 years.

It all felt incredibly, unsustainably heavy.

I still have much work to do in processing these losses, but I’ve begun. One of the best decisions I made was to return to therapy, which provided space for my emotions. As a social worker I’m familiar with emotional acceptance and regulation strategies, but I couldn’t counsel myself through these losses. It was also painful to accept that I didn’t have cultural practices that would help me understand, cope with and find meaning in the losses I was experiencing.

Throughout my life, death wasn’t discussed much, and I didn’t learn about rituals that would help me move with the continually changing face of grief. I didn’t know grief moved in such unpredictable and nonlinear ways. I didn’t know it was something you can work to integrate into your life, but that some losses change you forever. I am fortunate to have a few friends who truly understand and can sit with grief, but I started to wonder why I felt an unspoken pressure to keep my grief hidden away in isolation, and why it felt hard to find community and collective support around loss.

Moving with my grief raised a lot of questions. Wasn’t grief supposed to subside over time? Shouldn’t things feel better after the year anniversary of my stepdad’s death? Why was I getting so angry when I saw families laughing and having a good time, or even doing mundane things like going to the grocery store together? Why did I shut down when people said things like, everything happens for a reason in everyday conversation, even when they weren’t directly referring to me and my experiences with loss?

Therapy certainly helped me discover some answers to these questions. I also found myself revisiting the lessons I learned from my initial mentors in grief–the birds and Anna. They had helped me become more aware of and connected to my lost loved ones, and in doing so, I was more connected to a higher consciousness. I started thinking I needed a more direct connection to my stepdad and it felt right to start talking to him, out loud. It helped me so much that I started talking to my aunt and other loved ones I’d lost. I felt a little better when I connected with them; they were still there, across the veil. I was embarking on a new chapter of my relationships with them.

I also started reading and learning more about grief. I sought out books and trainings centered on grief counseling and tried new practices in moving with grief. I also read about other people’s experiences with and perspectives on grief, which helped immensely.

In her book, It’s Ok That You’re Not Ok, Megan Devine draws from her own experiences with grief as well as her training as a therapist. Her book was one of the first places I felt seen in my grief. I was validated in all of my grief-related feelings, even the uncomfortable, ugly feelings that made me feel like I was somehow failing at grief. She called out the well-intentioned but shallow responses others often give to grieving people, and I realized at times I too was one of those people, prior to my losses.

My ideas about and conceptions of grief expanded as I read Frances Weller’s The Wild Edge of Sorrow which shed light on the hidden realities and beauty of grief. Weller’s book also offered an important acknowledgement for me—that Western society is often at odds with the chaotic and wild nature of grief.

One passage in particular felt like something I had been subconsciously wishing to hear:

“Grief is subversive, undermining our society’s quiet agreement that we will behave and be in control of our emotions. It is an act of protest that declares our refusal to live numb and small. There is something feral about grief, something essentially outside the ordained and sanctioned behaviors of our culture. Because of that, grief is necessary to the vitality of the soul. Contrary to our fears, grief is suffused with life force. It is riddled with energy, an acknowledgement of the erotic coupling with another soul, whether human, animal, plant or ecosystem. It is not a state of deadness or emotional flatness. Grief is alive, wild, untamed; it cannot be domesticated. It resists the demands to remain passive and still. We move in jangled, unsettled and riotous ways when grief takes hold of us. It is truly an emotion that rises from the soul” (p. 9-10).

This description deeply resonated with my feelings about grief. In my experience, grief doesn’t steadily decrease in emotional intensity over time, leading to a point when you’ve “moved on.”

My grief rocks up and down, sometimes with no warning.

One minute I can be feeling calm and then something shifts, and I’m sobbing, shaking, and feeling an intense void.

When Weller said that “Grief is alive, wild, untamed…”, I could feel it in my bones.

As I gained new knowledge and felt a sense of validation about my grief-related emotions, I began to talk about grief more honestly. Being more authentic in my grief helped me find and connect with others who are grieving, or who are doing grief-informed work as counselors, social workers, grief doulas (a type of support that I didn’t realize existed until recently), and social justice activists. Many of them graciously shared their authentic feelings and uncensored experiences with grief too. As I listened to their experiences, I felt a sense of relief and reassurance that there are people in the world who do want to talk about the realities of grief and that we can support one another when we step into these heartbreaking and heart-opening conversations.

Through all of my learning and connecting, I was developing grief practices and rituals. One of the most important rituals I use to move with my grief happens at an altar, which I built to connect with my loved ones who have transitioned, and to honor the higher consciousness that I believe binds all life together. I had seen altars in some of my friends’ houses and they shared what the altar meant to them. I also read about altars as I learned about a variety of ways to move with grief. It felt right to me to keep my loved ones close and have a space for them in my home.

I discovered that my grief calmed when I made offerings at the altar. I use physical items as offerings, like crystals, art, candles, coins and other items infused with meaning, and also make offerings through conversation, movement and action. I talk to my loved ones about how I’m feeling. I ask them how they are. I ask how I can honor them. I acknowledge we’re still in relationship, and that our love for one another continues. I ask them to keep sending their signs and guideposts. I remember them and the joy and love they bring into my life when I’m not at the altar too, when I’m hiking in nature, dancing, or enjoying time with loved ones still on earth. The feelings of grief can be jarring, life altering and crushing.

Engaging in grief rituals and practices helps me feel and move with the chaos of grief on an ongoing basis. I learned that grief is an emotion and a skill, and that when I was ready, I could get to know my grief and work to integrate it in my life. My grief practices and support system help me wade through grief’s questions, like:

How do I navigate the world as a new grief-stricken version of myself?

What feels meaningful to me in my grief?

How do I continue loving and remembering the people I’ve lost?

Much of my grief work, thus far, has been a process of learning and trying to accept that death is a part of life and love; that grief is natural in any living being’s experience, even when it feels like more than any being should or could bear.

There are days when it’s extremely difficult to continue grieving. Nothing erases the pain of loss, especially when we lose our dearest loved ones.

In the past when I heard people say that love requires courage, I thought they meant taking a risk to be, to live, to walk, and to feel, alongside another being. I didn’t realize that the courage to love also means taking a risk to be, to live, to walk, and to feel without them by your side; to love beyond any human trapping, beyond our senses, beyond what we can comprehend. No one told me that love will continue in grief, and it will hurt. That it would test me. But through these lessons, I can see now that love is the bridge. Love is the bridge that connects me to my loved ones who have died and those who are still living.

Love is the bridge that connects me to the world around me on earth as well as the vast spiritual realm.

I am deeply grateful to fellow grievers, grief workers, my grief mentors and my loved ones who have helped bring me to this place in my grief journey.

Grief can be many things from moment to moment.

It is all valid.

It is all a continuation of love.

Jennifer Mudge serves as Public Policy Coordinator at the Texas Council on Family Violence She holds a master's degree in Social Work and is a Licensed Social Worker. This article originally appeared in the Winter 2022 edition of MappingOnward.