My experience of and response to profound loss has many dimensions. The complex emotions around the loss of my child have been overwhelming at times and always significantly present and yet an account of these does not tell the whole story. I have also experienced this loss through my body, my thoughts, my relationships and through my sense of connection to “what is” beyond the everyday. I thought I would explore a bit about each of these and today I am going to look at the physicality of my grief process in this blog post.
The body remembers
I believe that whatever I experience in life, even from the very first, is held in my body. In the words of Babette Rothschild (and in the title of her classic book): “The body remembers”. My hands once held a new-born baby who weighed 7lb 11oz and they still recall with a gentle poignancy how they held him. As I cradled him for the first time a tender charge of love suffused my body. My hands later held a box containing ash. That box weighed around the same amount and as I picked it up the charge of pain and shock that shot through my body was electrifying.
Hands supporting the weight
My hands still know how to hold a new-born baby, how to safely support the weight of that little body and how to sway gently to lull and comfort. Later, much later, the work of my hands was to support the weight of my head in my two palms with fingers spread as gulping sobs escaped my body. This is the hard work of grief and my body became physically exhausted. The body’s extreme weariness was exacerbated by the trauma that was held in its cells and travelling along its neural pathways. The trauma that continually warned of approaching threat from the most innocuous of stimuli such as a phone’s ring or an image or a word.
Sleeping and waking
My sleep pattern in grief mirrored that of those early weeks and months with my little boy. The small hours of the night became familiar territory as I fed him, rocked him, sang to him and pleaded with him to let me rest. He slept through the night for the first time at seven months. I was so elated and relieved. Later, much later, his loss kept me awake into those same small hours —filling my mind with thoughts that were so hard to think—until finally some respite as I slept and then instant awakening, just as with the baby lustily crying, as loss called my name loudly half a moment after waking.
Caring for the grief
It felt as if the grief required all of my attention, all of the time. The body wanting and needing rest and sleep but the grief allowing no respite. Even when it allowed a brief island of calm, that calm was loaded with the knowledge that it was coming back. I was called upon to care for the grief as with that little baby that refused to sleep. To take the grief for a walk in the sunshine—to rock and comfort my own body. To speak calming words to myself as with a lullaby to my baby. To feed my body with nutrients in order that it could better manage the onslaught of demands on it. To seek solace and companioning from other parents who really understood that was happening.
The therapist I worked with for the longest after the loss of my son worked with all aspects of my experience and I learned how I hold that experience in my body and how to directly care for it. The physical loss pain in my solar plexus would call for my attention continually, especially with any additional stressors to deal with. I learned to breathe into that pain, to give it space just to be what it was and to apply a gentle attitude of kindness and care towards it. I move my hand instinctively now to offer that gesture of support and care by placing it over that painful place and allowing the warmth and intention of the touch to penetrate.
We don’t have to do this alone
Just as I learned when my children were small that being a parent was not best done alone, the care for the body we need to engage in, as bereaved parents, is something we might need some help with. At one point I took my grief to a cranio-sacral practitioner and that was just amazing. Her gentle touch released a great reservoir of pain that I was still carrying and the sense of care and kindness in that was profound.
Over the years since my son died I have taken better care of my body so that it can carry my experience more effectively and so that I can engage with joy and connect with the people I love. I walk now and rarely drive. I take care of my diet and what I put into my body. My body still remembers the welcome and the unwelcome in my experience and it is still learning that I am safe and supported now.
How are you supporting your body with what it remembers?