Grief & Gratitude
Duality, resilience and Autumn breezes
The dualistic sensation of warm sunlight and crisp breeze on my cheeks is one of the most pleasurable feelings as the season of Autumn finally reveals herself in the Bay Area. Being with these sensations evokes feelings of awe, joy, and contentment.
The sounds of crunching leaves beneath my boots is a satisfying, delightful kind of tune, especially for my inner child, who once tried to make printer paper crunch like a dried autumn leaf through a self-designed experiment of wetting paper, crumpling it, and drying it in the sun (to no avail).
And at the same time, this season of death is not only evident in the poetic cycles of nature, but mirrored abhorrently in our common humanity. Various faces of grief have been screaming as deep sadness, unmotivating hopelessness, boiling rage, desperate yearning, determined denial, and debilitating fear of the relentless violence against people and children of Palestine, of Ukraine, and of our river and forest ecosystems.
This past Sunday, I facilitated a workshop with ArTogether for a graceful, multi-generational group of Afghani women- some of whom just arrived here in the U.S. as refugees or immigrants less than two years ago, themselves displaced by war, persecution, torture and genocide.
The topic of the workshop was Self-Compassion. We discussed in Farsi and English how compassion with themselves is so important, even and especially with a war ongoing on their Muslim brothers and sisters in Gaza.
As some women expressed how they see what’s happening to the children in Gaza and feel such deep grief as they see their own children, other women expressed how they’re utterly overwhelmed by all that’s happening in their own lives that they can only turn away from what’s going on in the Middle East.
Feelings of fear, despair, anxiety, numbness, anger and dread filled the room. It was important for folks to safely name where they were at and practice being with the different and valid perspectives in our circle without judging, fixing or shaming.
This discussion made way for another important part of our gathering: a grounding mindfulness practice with our hands…
Together, we gave our full and present attention without judgment to the textures, colors, traits and sensations of our hands.
We acknowledged so much of what our hands are doing for us on a daily basis.
We recognized our hands’ capacity to heal and create, to harm and destruct.
We felt the connection of our hands to our hearts- the seat of our compassion, where our unconditional love and common humanity is Known.
This was an important and soothing practice to get us into the energy of presence, gratitude and resilience, alongside the grief and despair.
Women came out of that practice recognizing their own perseverance; how she’s raised four children, how she’s taken care of herself and her family through migration, how she’s begun a new life at age 73 in a foreign land and culture, how she’s cooked, cleaned, prayed, worked and contributed to her community here and still in Afghanistan. Some women expressed that when they are remembering their own strength, they feel more able to turn toward what's happening, and relate to it differently.
The energy in the room felt buoyant with gratitude, awe, calmness and connection. I felt tenderized and teary by the gentle and fierce power exuding from these women, emboldened by the recognition of what they’re capable of.
While the war tragically goes on and the despair, anger and grief have their necessary place at the table, the resilience, calmness, connection and awe became present too, breathing life into us like a crisp Autumn breeze.
With this invigorated sense of resilience and inspiration, I wonder with hopefulness how these women will keeping showing up in their personal and interpersonal activism.
Upcoming gathering spaces:
~ There is currently ONE opening for the 1:1 Creative Alchemy journey
~ Alchemy Circle: Wednesday, 11/15 @ 12pm PST
A communal space for paid subscribers and clients to alchemize and transform a limiting belief related to the theme. We do this in collective contemplation, discussion and embodied release.
