Grief is alchemical yet often lacks channels with which to flow.
In my advocacy work I've found it rare to see space created for feeling, processing, or transmuting the deep anger and grief inherent in seeing/feeling/experiencing the scale and scope of intertwined ecological and human violence up close.
Herbalist and author Stephen Buhner describes what he calls "earth grief" as something necessary to experience all the way through to the other side.
“Earth grief is our feeling response to a communication from the heart of Earth, urging us to take a path, and engage in a work, that is quite different than the one our species has taken/engaged in the past two thousand years. We are being called, individually and collectively, to reinhabit our interbeing with the world….Regrettably, the only way to make that journey is to travel into and through the grief that is being felt.”
Transmuting our feelings, collectively, can be a great source of power, healing, and also happens to be a core purpose of collective ritual.
Malidoma Patrice Somé, who shared much on Dagara ritual practice with the West, has noted that you can’t experience true joy if you haven’t touched and released the depth of your sorrow:
“People celebrate because they have paid their dues to the dead. The other side of real grief is real joy. Unfinished grief translates into petty joy and silly amusement…without ritual, humans live in nostalgia.”
As the inner alchemical process begins with tears, our very bodies emerge from the watery, amniotic fluid of the womb. We are literally ‘bodies of water.’
Below is a piece I wrote as I attempted to metabolize my own grief the day after hearing about the landing of Hurricane Helene and amidst the ongoing violence in Gaza and Lebanon.
Helene Sent Me Tear Drops All the Way from North Carolina
I’ve heard about hurricanes before, but today I felt Hurricane Helene. She hit me hard, twisted my gut, constricted my throat, delivered salty tears to my eyes — all the way from North Carolina to my home in Oakland, California.
Our species’ signal, our radar, is broken. We offloaded it to inanimate minerally-cooked technologies–with no heart-wave. And our waters warm apace.
It’s possible Helene reached me all the way from North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida because I had visited her lands earlier this summer… for the full article posted on Medium, see here.
—> Listen: Be Like Water by Lo Wolf
—> Referenced: Stephen Buhner's book Earth Grief
—> Referenced: Patrice Somé's book Ritual: Power, Healing, and Community
—> Share: If you feel so moved, here are a few trusted mutual aid sites for the recent hurricanes: BeLoved Asheville; Union of Southern Service Workers; Appalachian Voices; Georgia Mutual Aid Group ; Mutual Aid Disaster Relief; Florida Grassroots Hurricane Community Recovery Fund .
—> Share: If you feel so moved, here are a few mutual aid sites for Gaza and Lebanon courtesy of Layla K. Feghali who wrote, "The Land In Our Bones.” Gaza Mutual Aid Solidarity; Lebanon Solidarity Collective; Gaza Mutual Aid Support Network.