Trigger warning: discussion of processing grief/loss. I am processing recent loss, in addition to all of the pandemic losses I’ve grieved. At the moment, I am sad, I am firmly in my body and alive, and I am present to a firm sense of internal truth. I have been practicing “feeling and discerning”, as I can easily escape into the land of discernment aka land of dissociation when just doing the discerning.
My initial experience of hearing of the loss was one of shock, then of convulsive crying (particularly in my belly, there was a lot of shaking), and then softer crying throughout the days. At the moments of most intense shock and grief, my brain went to (and goes back and forth to) some well-known places that can be summarized by — “the world is a tragic place, a corrupt place, an unfair place, a place of greed, evil, hatred”. When these feelings initially arose, I told myself that it takes me a few days to recover from an initial shock – an initial stressor or shutdown, so those feelings will subside (-ish) as I return to my body’s sense of safety.
And they did – -ish. With each unexpected loss I’ve experienced during this pandemic (including Floyd), that initial shock to my system sends my brain into a “dark” place, that emphasizes or believes in hatred, evil, harm as “the way the world works”. I realized this happening again within myself – and having experienced this several times already, I knew what there was to do to bring in some balance.
What had happened was that I had become disconnected from my body, and that disconnection from my body and the rationalizations of my mind about this loss led me construct the hate-filled, corrupted, vile world that must be true for this to happen. But, time and time again, I have come to my own internal knowing that for me, evil does not exist. Saying this in my mind did nothing for me, since my body had not yet come back online. I was still disconnecting myself from the world – from these amorphous people and these amorphous systems – that had caused this. I decided during the time of the Floyd murder that I cannot allow my heart to be hardened, that I cannot allow anger and hatred to subsume me – because my soul cannot exist in a world of hatred. I decided to tune into my compassion for and love for those I’ve lost. I decided to tune into my compassion for the suffering of all people, including the amorphous people who many of us call “evil”, vile, greedy, corrupt. No, it doesn’t make the painful feelings, sadness, anger, rage go away – but it does provide a window, a balance, a remembering, a discernment to hold me. I remembered that there has never been anyone who has suffered that I have not had compassion for. I remembered that my soul must survive this pandemic. I am deciding to feel my anger and grief, and to channel that into the way in which I will make a difference in this world. It is difficult. It is difficult.
This is a nuanced enterprise – this enterprise of remaining in this world – remaining deeply connected to all beings, to this whole physical world while also remaining in reality about the harm that is present and what we must do about it. It remains a constant inquiry: how do we retain our souls, our love, our presence, our discernment, our deep connection to this world – even as we observe our own and others’ harm and suffering, respond to harm and suffering, set boundaries, and create that which we must create?
– justina kamiel