Identifying our shared humanity: Spirit & Place Festival 2022 by Rita Kohn

November 9, I joined a group with whom I could share moving forward while grieving deaths.

Pathways from sorrow to healing were shared by panelists at the front of the room and by people who came to sit in the audience to learn and to affirm what it takes to move forward following the death of a family member and a friend. 

Author Diana J. Ensign guided us along the journey of “Navigating a New Identity After the Loss of a Loved One.” Four speakers whose stories appear in Ensign’s book, Heart Guide: True Stories of Grief and Healing, came to show how a death need not diminish the capacity to go on living. Still, sometimes it takes refocusing on personal worthiness to see the light at the end of a dark time. Layering on personal guilt can be as much of the process as is peeling away the feelings of loss. Becoming unmoored is OK despite the “advice” of well-intentioned [but clueless] people who will blurt out hurtful ‘get on with it, etc.’  This injected levity. Yes, it is OK to laugh while grieving. 

How best to honor the life of a loved one can simultaneously be highly personal and can go public. Reframing one’s life after a death takes a huge leap forward. If one listens to the heart, death can, and does, inspire those who live to undertake positive action asserts Ensign. We learn this from the bountiful Greek mythology; it is to Persephone and Demeter that we can look to understand the seasons of grief and growth. Grief can be harvested as nourishment to power positive action. How can death help others live? Being shamed by society is not a positive value, yet people who claim to love us have a penchant for pointing fingers at what you could have should have…

Justin Phillips, M.A., White House Champion of Change for Advocacy, Prevention, and Treatment, is the founder and executive director of Overdose Lifeline, Inc. (ODL), a non-profit organization dedicated to reducing the stigma of substance use disorder and preventing deaths resulting from an opioid overdose. [contact@overdoselifeline.org; phone +1 (844) 554-3354]

Jeanine Hoffman, M.A., LMHCA, shares how her world totally changed on May 11, 2014, when her son Sam died at age 16. The nonprofit Sam’s Watch grew from her need to do something positive. Eight years forward from this trauma, she still “wonders what Sam’s pursuits could have been,” while she takes joy in watching her son Nick pursue his early career path. 

Who do we become after tragedy strikes us down at home?

How did David Traylor absorb three simultaneous deaths: his father, his partner of thirty years, and his mother, each after the other within a short time? Keeping their memories alive by sharing with others a reason to enjoy each day has grown from his own sense of valuing the gifts he receives and gives each day by interacting with others in need of caring.

The gathering of personal insights that informs Diana Ensign’s book came to us live on the full moon evening of November 9, at the Indiana Interchurch Center. As an extension from the program, panelist Franklin Oliver shared an email of two memories  connected with his maternal grandfather, who continues to provide the life-zest that marks Oliver’s community contributions as an educator and poet:

Kitchen

I walked from the kitchen

Slowly stopped and turned around

The gentle bubble of pots on the stove

Sounded warm and beautiful

Inviting, so I went back in

Watching the lid dance over my soup

I noticed the dry, hot smell

Of cumin drowning in the sweet

Black juice of the beans

I felt the smile on my face

And wondered how many times

My granddad stood smiling in his kitchen

With the cornbread beginning to brown

© Gayle Force Press 2002 [Franklin Oliver]

1302

The big old house

Is gone now

Just like the neighborhood

It helped anchor

The first place I knew 

How to call home

Now just dust, cinder

Smoke charred ash

And the memories made in it

But shouldn’t that be enough

Since walls don’t hear

Floors can’t talk

And you and I always

And you and I always

Always will

When we think about

The house on the corner

Of yesterday

And tomorrow

© Gayle Force Press 2003 [Franklin Oliver]

Learn more here: https://whodeannypod.org/books-from-franklin-oliver/

From the website: www.dianaensign.com:

Heart Guide: True Stories of Grief and Healing reveals the inspirational, true accounts of people who have traversed the heart-wrenching journey of losing someone they love. In the time-honored tradition of Wisdom Circles, 12-Step meetings, and Dharma discussions, we learn through personal narratives to listen with compassion to those who are suffering — without trying to fix, solve, or placate grief.  Told with raw honesty, these narratives come from the deep recesses of the heart.

Sharing our personal stories is one path toward individual and collective healing. By offering up our innermost places of hurt, we no longer carry these heavy burdens alone. When we courageously speak our truth or listen quietly with compassion, we are no longer strangers. We are friends. Perhaps that is the greatest gift of all— learning to connect and care for one another in an authentic manner that transcends ordinary daily interactions.

In the time-honored tradition of Wisdom Circles, 12-Step meetings, and Dharma discussions, we learn through personal narratives to listen with compassion to those who are suffering — without trying to fix, solve, or placate grief.  Told with raw honesty, these narratives come from the deep recesses of the heart.