Where Does Your Grief Feel Safe?
On learning how to create safe space for the soft animal of your body & no longer being afraid of grief.
I was on the phone with my mom recently, and we were discussing the latest (and worst!) of the many relational ruptures I’ve experienced this year when she asked me, “What are you going to do if it stays like this? What happens if this doesn’t get fixed?”
“I’m just gonna keep being sad,” I said. “I’m not scared of grieving. I’ve actually gotten really good at it.”
My dear siblings in Christ, I was as surprised as anyone to hear the words coming out of my mouth.
I’m not saying I like it. I’m not saying it’s fun or enjoyable. I’m not saying I am not on me knees, keening and sobbing. I’m just saying, that shit doesn’t scare me anymore. Because I’ve learned that the more I make space for my grief to be felt and to flow, the more I increase my capacity to experience joy and receive pleasure. Also—and this is the most important part—because I trust that the more I befriend my own grief, the more I can make space for the grief of my fellow kin.
And if there’s one thing I know about the world these days, it’s that we’re absolutely overwhelmed with earth-shattering grief, and that grief needs some safe, soft space.
The heart is a muscle, and grieving is like weightlifting: through cycles of repetitions and rest, through thoughtful loading and stretching, and with the appropriate resources and support, we can learn to carry much, much, much heavier loads than we thought possible.
The alternative to grieving is numbness & dissociation. It’s desensitization and dehumanization. And THAT is the shit that truly terrifies me. This historical moment is showing us plainly the horrors we will visit upon each other’s bodies, upon the earth, when our untended grief wounds are left to fester.
But grief when it shows up is usually pretty fucking scary, and for good reason. So how do we go about befriending it?
Imagine your grief as a feral cat that crawled under your porch. It’s scared, hurt, hungry, and cold. It desperately needs your love & care, but it’s so scared to be seen. It’s been badly hurt before, and is deathly afraid it will get hurt again. It can’t survive on its own, and yet risking to trust you while in such a vulnerable state feels impossible. How would you approach a soft animal such as that? Whatever the answer is, that’s what your grief needs from you.
The reason that grief makes us feel like we’re gonna die is that, in our earliest experiences with sadness & loss, we were left alone, with no safe caregiver to offer us the witness, support, and resource we needed. And because we could not regulate our own nervous system, nor did we have the agency to seek out the support we needed, being left alone with our grief was an actual, biological threat to our survival.
The good news there is that our nervous system can grow and change: when we have new experiences with grief that include the necessary support and resources, we can learn to feel our grief without setting off the internal alarm.1
In order to have new experiences with grief, we need to practice two skills that were not accessible to us in those early experiences with grief: attunement and agency.
Attunement is an attitude of curiosity towards someone’s experience, either ours our our kin’s. Thinking back to the image of a feral cat under your porch, attunement is the voice that asks, What’s up little buddy? What’s going on with you? Where did you come from? What happened? And, crucially, What do you need in order to feel better?
Agency is the ability to make new choices, and to create change that aligns with our values. In the feral cat scenario, agency means being able to connect to the resources and support our feline friend needs. It means choosing to spend the time befriending this little beast, it means going to the store to get her food and blankets. It means creating the conditions in which kitty can learn that she is safe, that she is home, that it’s ok to let down her guard and let herself be held.
A magic and/or creative practice is a great place to experiment with attunement and agency, and my own magic practice is what made it possible for me no longer be scared of grieving. I’ve learned to create space and conditions that can support me as I grieve; I’ve learned to allow myself to be held by the earth, by the elements, by the more-than-human world.
Here’s a snapshot of what my grief magic practice has looked like recently: put on my Peter Gabriel playlist, sit at my altar, light the candles, burn a stem of juniper, settle into my body, connect to a larger container, and then, with a hand on my heart, I open Instagram, and bear witness to the horrors, the devastation, the raw, rending grief of the people in Palestine.
It feels like a sacred, urgent responsibility to bear witness to the genocide that is unfolding before the eyes of the world. As a witch, a somatic practitioner, a grief worker, this is exactly the work I’ve been preparing for: to bear witness to, and expand my capacity to feel, the horrors and grief of the dying empire, while keeping the dream of connection, embodiment, and joy alive for my children and, here’s hoping, my children’s children.
I couldn’t do this work without my altar, without my tools, my familiars, the more-than-human allies that support, soothe, and nurture me as I allow my heart to break open to hold the anguish and despair of my human kin in Palestine, along with my own personal heartbreak and losses.
We need to get fucking good at grieving if we’re gonna make it. We cannot build the safe & just world we want without fully acknowledging & tending to the horrors of this world that is dying.
If you’ll allow me to urgently plead with you for something, I would implore you to find and create a soft, safe sensory space for your grief. For me it’s an altar, my journals, trees, the smell of the forest, music, sitting in darkness. For you, it will probably be something else, something unique to the soft animal of your body.
Whatever it might be: find it, make it, furnish it with all the resources and sensory joy you need, and build a relationship with it. Go to it, spend time with it, learn to let that space hold you. Soften into it. And, from that grounded, resourced place, reach out to community, organize and protest. Fight for the living.
Grieving is a skill, and we learn skills better in community. Because I am a huge trauma nerd, with an Autistic brain that thinks in patterns and systems, I’ve created a whole structure for this Grief Magic work, and I would love to share it with you.
Join me this Saturday, December 30th, and let’s make safe space for the soft animal of our body together. Sliding scale spots, as well as full scholarships, are available. A replay will be made available the next day if you can’t attend live.
I love you. I see you. You’re doing great, I promise. xo
Seen + Held: A Year-End Grief Magic Ritual
Saturday, December 30th 4pm-6pm Central
When grief grows heavy and hard to hold, we know it's time to expand our containers. It's time to make even more safe, tender, cozy space for our grief, and it's time to do it together. Which is exactly what I'm proposing we do together: some nervous system magic to close out this dumpster fire of a fucking year.
I will be offering some guided relaxation & visualization, journaling & reflection prompts, a tarot pull, as well as (optional, always) some opportunities for giving & receiving witness for our grief.
This event is going to involve much more practice & embodiment, and much less teaching than I normally do, so I'm also including my super-popular Grief Magic workshop from March 2022, for those of you nerds (you know who you are!) who might want more content to sink their teeth into. The Grief Magic content is ready for you as soon as you register.
Sliding scale options: $22-$44-$66*
✨ Live on Zoom.
✨ Captions enabled & replay available within 24 hours.
✨ 10% of funds will be redistributed to Gaza relief efforts.
*If you would like to participate and don't have funds available, please email me at hello@thetraumawitch.com with subject line GRIEF MAGIC and I will give you access for free, no questions asked.
Trauma, in some ways, is a resistance to grief. Genuine grieving is the opposite of trauma.
-Gabor Maté
Props to Britt Frank for this elegant and evocative phrasing.
Beautiful 🫶🏼🌕💖💫✨