Surviving Grief-- And Remembering How to Live

Recently, I have had a number of women contact me who are in the midst of deep grief, asking how I survived divorce and infertility—and a deeper well of pain which transformed my life several years ago.Here’s the short(ish) story—and shamanic perspective on grief and pain.-Three years ago, my then husband I were struggling in our marriage. No matter how much work we seemed to do, we continued to trigger one another’s deepest pain and wounds. In the midst of that continual crisis, we discovered that we weren’t able to have children (not that we should have been having children… but that’s another part of this story). We were told our only possible option would be through IVF. We began the process.Two months later, my sister got married. I’ll never forget watching her on her wedding day, reading aloud the letter that her husband had written her. I could feel deep within my soul the level at which they loved one another, and I knew that I didn’t love my husband that way. I spent most of the weekend reading a novel in the bedroom upstairs. Alone. I couldn’t consciously process what was stirring beneath the surface of the life I had built.A week later, my maternal grandmother died. Her death affected me more deeply than I ever anticipated—so much so that I found it hard to breathe and walk—and certainly teach school each day. I intuitively knew that the line of motherhood in my family had been forever changed, and I grieved on a level I didn’t know was possible.Two months after that, my then husband and I discovered that our IVF treatment had completely failed—the statistical abnormality was astronomical given my age. I’ll never forget turning on the phone after our flight landed in Alabama for Christmas and hearing the voicemail from our fertility doctor. My entire life changed in that moment.-I fell into a well of grief so deep that I couldn’t see up from down. The events of the previous four months, coupled with the idea that I might never have children, threatened to change the course of my entire life. I’ll never forget being home at Christmas, crying incessantly from a black hole in my belly that seemed never ending.The grief had leveled me. I was at ground zero of the life I had planned. I had no idea where to go or what to do.Something began to bubble through the darkness: truth began to show its gnarled and inconvenient face in my life.After the failed IVF, my husband and I visited another specialist and began to make plans for a second round of IVF. I’ll never forget driving home from that doctor, because Spirit began to speak to me so clearly that I could no longer close my ears.I knew I wasn’t supposed to be having children with my husband. I just knew. And for the first time, I couldn't ignore it.Two and a half months later, my husband moved out—and we decided to get divorced.In six short months, I had faced infertility, death, a failed IVF and divorce. To say that I was shell-shocked and bowled over by grief would have been a gross understatement.-So when people come to me, deep in grief, and unsure of how to continue living, I understand.The thing about grief (because of death, a divorce, infertility, disease, addiction or any number of other forms of pain) is that it comes, unplanned, forcing us to give up the life that we have been quietly and, usually, unconsciously, living.Grief sneaks in sideways, stealing the world we know and demanding that we surrender to a new one—one with which we’re not familiar, and one we certainly aren’t eager to inhabit.Grief demands that we shed skin. Grief demands that we let go of the parts of us that are no longer true—even when it hurts like hell.Grief is death—for the living.-Several years ago, almost every part of me was dying: the part of me that was a wife, the part of me that was a mother, the part of me that was a granddaughter. Several parts of my identity were dying at the same time—all without my conscious consent.In shamanic and other mystical traditions, death and rebirth are an accepted and revered part of human life. Indigenous cultures aren’t afraid of death in the way Westerners are—and their lack of fear of death means that they don’t struggle so much with death of identity, with letting go, with the regular transformation and transmutation that is part of the human experience.The snake is going to shed its skin, no matter whether it wants to or not. The truth is, the snake no longer needs that skin. The butterfly no longer needs that cocoon. And the baby bird? It doesn’t need that shell. Nature knows how to let go.Humans struggle. We forget that death means new life. We forget that every time something dies, its because (I know this is hard to hear), it is no longer in alignment with the direction our lives are moving.So, when we find ourselves in grief, in a kind of death, have two options: we can fight it, struggling against the pieces that are dissolving, or we can join the dissolution.Death is healthy-- it is in service of new life.-Did I know that then? No.What I knew is that I couldn’t fight against the grief—every time I tried to fight, I fell deeper and deeper into the well of pain. The grief was quicksand, and I needed a way through.I needed help contextualizing what was happening to me. So, I sought help from alternative practitioners: hypnotherapists, breathwork healers, shamans. I sought guidance from people who weren’t afraid of my pain.I needed help re-wiring my beliefs about who I was and what was happening. I needed help letting go of the continual pain story, and grasping onto a new one—a true story about my life taking away everything that wasn’t true for my soul.And that is how I got through the grief. I went through it. I dove in—deep in. And I sought all the help I needed as I took the wild ride down into its seemingly never-ending well.I sobbed. I screamed. I wrote. There were days that I honestly thought I was going to dissolve into nothingness (I have a poetry to prove it). There were days that I really, really wanted to die. There were days I was sure that the crying and the grief would really never end.But here’s the truth, two and a half years later (as hard as it may be to hear). Everything in my life that was taken away needed to be taken away. My grief made me the woman I am today. It leveled me into a place where only the truth could live.It ripped off the skin that was suffocating me, took away the life I had planned and spun me around onto a new path—a path that was actually in alignment with my soul.My grief gave me my life.-And so, when women ask me how to navigate grief, my best guidance is this: make best friends with your pain. Trust that it has come to level you. It has come to take away everything that isn’t in alignment with your soul. It is your best friend, your lover, your teacher. I promise.And when you can consciously work with it—helping it help you, rather than kicking and screaming and wishing it away—it will be much less frightening.Seek help from people who have been through a death of the life they were living. Find companions who are unafraid of the deep, dark pain. And whatever you do, don’t run away. You will be running away from your greatest teacher.Trust, dear ones. Trust your soul. It knows what it’s doing. Your pain is the pathway to your soul, to your truth, to the life you were always mean to live.Welcome your grief. It is here to help you remember how to live.And I promise, if you dive straight in, a life you never imagined is waiting on the other side.