When my husband died four years ago, unexpectedly, I went back to work the day after his funeral. Not because I had to, but because I really didn’t know what else to do. Ours had been a strange marriage of forty-three years. I was saddened by his sudden loss, and yet, I think I was surprised at what I was feeling because we had not been that close. So I did what I typically did with unresolved emotions: I went to work. I carried on. I really wasn’t trying to suppress my feelings. I just didn’t know what they were, exactly. And I didn’t feel I could press pause long enough to actually process what was going on inside me.
Over time, I have come to grieve a hundred tiny and large things that surrounded my marriage and its abrupt end. Going through this process, along with sitting with women who have lost so much through the disease of addiction and sexual trauma, I am coming to realize how valuable the grief process is. I am also understanding how our losses - particularly those that aren’t viewed culturally as “major” – slink by and leave an aroma of longing imprinted on our souls. In their absence, over time and with accumulated deficits, there lives within us this sense of discomfort and nameless void. For some, this void is replaced with anger, resentment. For others, a low-grade depression sets in. However loss affects us, most of us just keep moving day after day, hoping or pretending that that’s just the way it has to be. Often, we can’t even name what is wrong.
So, what are we supposed to do with loss? How do we recognize it for what it is without being undone by it? Where is the balance between naming it and engaging it, and letting it become the focus of our life?
Beth Slevcove has written a helpful book entitled Broken Hallelujahs that is based on the loss of her brother; but she doesn’t just deal with death as loss. She gives so much space to recognizing what appear to be smaller, more insignificant losses and how they each have something to give us if we give them room and attention. It’s as if she has stumbled upon a way to engage grief at any level in a way that invites God into that sacred space.
My long-time friend and spiritual director, Jeannie Cheuvront, and I have both been deeply moved by this book and believe there is so much healing to be had by discussing these topics in community. We have seen that some of her prayer practices are richly restorative and bring out the redemptive quality of holy grief. Both of us have felt the value of the creative process in enhancing our healing.
So, together, we want to offer a virtual community experience we are calling “Finding Beauty in Life’s Losses” based on the concepts from Beth’s book. For anyone who knows deep within them that there are some fragments of shrapnel left behind from the wounds of living in this world, we invite you to come together with us to rest awhile, take an honest look at your life’s losses (great or small), and apply some creative and soul-deep healing.