This Moment in Grief: The Poetry of Being Present for What Is

Dear friends,

In recently offering This Moment in Grief: The Poetry of Being Present for What Is, a 3-session workshop series through OLLI, participants explored how to engage with grief in meaningful, genuine ways with themselves and with each other. It showed me the gifts I’ve cultivated have found a voice in service of honoring aging, grief, loss, and all that changes in an instant and over time.

One participant recognized she could be kinder and compassionate to herself as a response to grief and loneliness instead of expecting herself to just get over it. Another found that sharing her journey of caregiving through her husband’s dementia lessened the sense of it being a heavy burden she had to carry alone.

It’s a privilege to share these tender times in support of growth and love.

Then I was skimming through an interview with Elizabeth Allison, professor of Ecology and Religion at the California Institute of Integral Studies. She commented that when asked, students learning about the climate crisis were overwhelmed not particularly about the climate crisis, but all the change that is going on, especially politically.

There’s much to process each day.

As we live together on this Earth, we experience heartbreaking reality and the bond of common humanity. Our common humanity has inherent in it, I believe, kindness and compassion. Even though those qualities seem to be latent in some of us more than others, they have nonetheless been planted in our DNA, nurtured over millennia, and they sprout into new life when we might least expect it.

They definitely grow stronger when nourished.

My gifts are in creating smaller-scale groups. Before the holidays, I’ll offer a series of grief workshops locally to respect the incredible angst of being alone and missing a beloved one.

In the late fall, I’ll guide an online writing place to glean beauty from suffering and allow what is ready to transform to transform without sugarcoating anything or making it harder than it is.

Perhaps an online group on grief that would include poetry as a way to reflect on themes common to us all, writing about what speaks to you, and sharing in openness with others.

Hope you keep in touch.

Lastly, several people have loved the word braiding. Braiding what was with what is. What will be. What has been without end. What is known, what is unknown, what is possible still, what needs to die in order for something else to be born. What is being born.

May we get good at braiding ourselves stronger than ever,

Charlotte