Life Grief vs. Death Grief

A theme that’s been whispering itself to me lately is the general lack of a framework for grieving things that are not a lost loved one.

When I talk with people about grief, it comes up over and over: Culturally, we don’t have much experience labeling grief as grief when it’s for anything other than someone who has died. Of course there are exceptions to this rule. We know how to grieve for pets, or go through a romantic break-up. But, how well versed are we in the griefs of the less material world, like loss of community after a life-changing event? Or loss of the path we thought we’d be on by now? What does grief look like if it’s for the house we loved but couldn’t afford when the rent went up or someone came in with a cash offer? For the car we miss that was always dependable until it wasn’t? For the foods we used to enjoy but which have betrayed us?

Let me tell you a story about a slice of bread going into a hole in the dirt, and the invitation it provided to feel the grief I was struggling with accepting.

I have been going through some minor health changes, the big one being that I have several food allergies—none serious but all annoying. The biggest ones are wheat, sesame, peanuts. A few other ones less severe, or less impactful on my everyday life. But I’d been struggling with giving these things up, even knowing what they were likely doing to my body. I love these foods, and I felt like there must be some other way to get on the path to feeling better than having to give them up.

Enter Grief. As part of the studies I am completing in the Nine Keys apprenticeship, I was assigned to do a small funeral for something that I needed to give up, and reflect on the experience. While talking to my nutritional therapist about how hard it had been up to then to stop letting wheat sneak back into my life, I had the idea to use wheat as the thing I would bury and just see what might happen.

I took time to prepare a simple white shroud (ok, a paper towel) for a slice of bread and a cookie baked by my daughter. I waited for a quiet moment to myself, I walked out into the woods with a trowel. I went to the place where I had a coyote laying in honor while the forest does work to return it’s flesh to the earth so that I can make art from the bones, hoping that the Spirit of Coyote might be grateful for a snack and in turn lend me some strength for the ceremony.

I dug a small hole. I laid in the bread and the cookie, in their shroud. And I just stared at it, for what felt like ages. And finally, tears started to roll down my cheeks. I was thinking of all the sandwiches I’ve eaten on this particular style of bread. The comfort I have felt when it nourished me and sustained me. Of all the various loaves of bread that came into my life to feed my family, and myself, and even the burnt pieces of toast and the forgotten sandwich crusts that have gone to the chickens to be turned into eggs.

I started to think about the grains that were used to make the bread, how they are the cousins of something ancient, coded in my bones and the lineage of my ancestors, feeding their families bread and their chickens the scraps. How was I supposed to give something up that is built into my DNA and links me to my past? And that cookie: I taught my daughter to bake, and she bakes often for the family. It’s a way we connected ourselves to each other since she was very small. Would I ever again get to enjoy the cookies my daughter bakes without having to ask her to modify them for me?

And even further: Wheat gave me a career when I felt like I had to salvage the shame of dropping out of Fancy Art School and moving back home. It became the thing I used to create art when art school was not what I thought it would be, and then became how I supported myself as I grew into an adult. I fed countless people with wheat, for all occasions. Strangers and close community alike, through the magic of humble grains of wheat turned into pastries and cakes, and as a key ingredient in so many of the foods that were staples on the menus my businesses served.

Now, I was turning my back on this thing, this food, this magical nourishing staple of life the world across because my body had betrayed me and it was no longer going to feel nourished when I ate this food. It was going to feel poisoned. Wheat had, in fact, already turned it’s back on me and yet wheat was still in the world, for other people. And similar to when someone loses a close loved one, but the people around them all still have “theirs” and can’t quite understand what it is like to be missing that person they still have access to, I had to somehow make peace with knowing that wheat was no longer in this world for me.

So what happened after the hole was filled in and the tears dried and ample time had been spent reflecting on all of these things? Was it somehow miraculously easier to give up bread and other wheat based foods when I was hungry, or craving comfort, or longing to build community through a humble meal? NO! Of course not!

Was I instantly less burdened by the continual and necessary choice, the absolute will power required to abstain from something I love, each and every time I make myself a meal? NO! It would be silly to think that at all.

But, did I feel the power of gratitude for having had this thing in my life for the time it was there? And did that gratitude give me hope that when my body heals, or if I come across the right type of grain to substitute for wheat in my beloved baking that doesn’t poison me I will feel joy? YES! A resounding, celebratory yes.

Grief gave me the power to remember what I loved most about this thing that I didn’t know I was supposed to grieve when I lost it. It gave me the strength to recall the moments of joy with this thing, when I was struggling with it being gone. And those tears gave me clear sight to see what wheat was doing to my body, knowing that I desperately needed to make this change for my health.

There are three types of tears that humans cry. One for moisture, to protect and lubricate. One for cleansing, to clear our delicate eyes of foreign bodies that would harm them. And one, to relieve. The chemical composition of each tear is different, and the tears we cry when we feel the strong, confusing and sometimes debilitating emotions associated with grief contain hormones like prolactin that are thought to do everything from helping us regulate our stress levels and ease those emotions, to helping us ease our pain through pain relieving hormones like oxytocin.

The tears I cried that day eased my pain in an emotional and literal sense. I was able to move on with a bit of relief, and find a path through the darkness of the pain of having to give up something I loved dearly, which played no small role in making me who I am today, and which other people still got to enjoy a relationship with. Grief helped me make sense of what came next.

Do I still grieve wheat in all it’s many incarnations? Absolutely. But by allowing myself to truly grieve this thing I was losing, I grew bigger in a way that allowed my grief to stay a part of me without taking up quite so much room in there.

So, let yourself label your grief as grief, no matter what is the cause. Let it wash over you when it’s present and comfort you when you need it. Let yourself cry tears of relief and gratitude at the memories of things lost, even the ones that you cannot name or touch. Grief doesn’t have to be over the death of someone you love in order for it to be valuable and valid. All of life’s griefs are necessary for us to grow into ourselves, fully human and alive still. Love your grief and it will love you back.