A New Mourning

Part II Discovering the Gifts in Fragile Grief Discovering The Gift of Body-Mind Wisdom: Ignore or Connect? July 28 and November 3, 1998 “The body tells the truth.” — Ilana Rubenfeld I arrived at Reed's grave late in the morning on July 28. The marble slab cradled a work of art. Above Reed’s artistic signature flew the pair of mallard ducks he had created to win the Nebraska Duck Stamp. Gracing each side were reeds, one bent in half. It was hot that morning, but not hot enough to melt the blue candle wax that had soaked into Reed’s headstone, porous and easy to mar. The night before, we’d had a backyard barbeque with all of Reed’s favorite foods. Teens chomped on yellow ears of corn and mouth-watering ribs. We celebrated Reed’s sixteenth birthday with hilarious stories. Everyone had gone up to his room one last time to take an article of clothing, a piece of art or other treasure. It would soon be redecorated and turned into Edward's office. Later the kids visited the cemetery and sang a blazing Happy Birthday – obvious from the stubs of blue candles now littering the ground. I had noticed then how wax was encasing the porous granite. If left, Reed’s artistic headstone was to be permanently discolored. What would Mother have done? Then I knew. I went home, boiled water, and was now returning an hour later to scrape wax from the headstone with a paring knife. As I knelt to begin the restoration process, I was stunned by pain that gripped my left shoulder. I clamped it hard with my right hand, trying to alleviate the sharp stabs that drew air from my lungs like a syringe. Suddenly I was sobbing. My body was gripped in vice-like torture that came out of nowhere. The water spilled, the wax melted and I bent over in shock. Where had this pain come from? ************** Fast forward to my Rubenfeld Synergy training, the first week of November. We were working in pairs, and I partnered with Jane Whittaker, an insightful talk therapist from the east coast. She sat to my left, facing my shoulder. She cupped her hands gently on each side of my shoulder and softly inquired, “What are you noticing, Georgena?” With that invitation to authentically listen to my body, the sharp, stabbing pain emerged like lava from an exploding volcano. “Pain,” I told her. “Pain as if a saber-toothed tiger is gripping my shoulder ready to rip my arm off.” For a split second, I was embarrassed by my outburst. I returned my attention to the excruciating feelings within my left shoulder. Shock waves of agony were moving through the bone of my left clavicle. “Pain,” Jane repeated. This repetition allowed me to hear my experience in my own words. This technique increased my awareness as a trainee that the body tells the truth. It was up to me to listen. How often do we fail to hear the wisdom of our own words? “Pain like a saber-toothed tiger,” she continued. Her hands began to move down my arm and with them the pain. My eyes flew open. “Jane. It's gone. The pain is gone.” Jane’s touch had released the pain and began to re-wire my heart. Just like that, the pain had been released by this method of gentle Listening Touch. I later learned from Noel Wight, of the Rubenfeld Training Institute, that it was my heart chakra that exuded this grief. The chakras are energy spots in the body. Each is described as a cone emerging from the body at specific points. The heart chakra extends from the top of the sternum to the bottom of the rib cage and this is what encased my left clavicle. The trauma of Reed’s departure had not only been trapped in my diaphragm, but also in my heart. I had just experienced the first principle of the Grief Relief workshop that I would develop a decade later: “Grief lives in one's body.” This principle is obvious to health care practitioners who care for grieving patients. Grief is revealed as a chronic cough. The lungs, in Chinese medicine, are considered to be the holding place for grief. Another indicator of stuck grief is a sinus blockage of the sixth chakra, the third eye, in the middle of the forehead. As I began this training, I myself was stuck in Fragile Grief. Truly, unprocessed grief is the hidden source of many of our body's issues. It can cause us to lose sleep, lack focus, get sick, age quickly and lose motivation. Grief can keep on unwanted weight or diminish our health and vitality. It causes problems in our friendships, partnerships and family. Yet people do not know that the root cause is unheard grief. The second principle of the Grief Relief workshop naturally followed: “You've got to feel it to heal it.” Scraping that candle wax from Reed’s headstone was the first time I had felt my “embodied grief” in my left shoulder. I had felt the initial pain in my heart in those first ninety days after his death. But the excruciating stabbing in my shoulder was foreign until that day at the cemetery. I finally began to listen to my body. ************* When Reed was born, he had colic. At six months, he developed ear infections. Although I nursed him and loved holding him, I was sleep deprived. Even though tubes were put in his ears at nine months, I still felt out of control. That spring, a lump was discovered in my breast, but thankfully, it was just a plugged milk gland. Even so, my stress mounted. I simply did not get things done. I could not even make the bed each day. The stress of what was NOT happening nagged at me. And then, in the fall of that year, a lump was discovered in my thyroid. The deep truth was that I had lost my ability to speak up — but this was not a truth I understood at the time. I did not even tell my parents about my surgery. I simply scheduled it, and told no one except Edward and the babysitter. I was in and out of the hospital and back to work in a few days. My vocal quality as a speech-pathologist was hoarse. I wore a scarf around my neck. I pushed through the fatigue of anesthesia lingering in my body. Even though the lump was gone, my inability to speak up remained. No wonder a thick rope-like scar formed. Something had to remind me of the danger of my Type A behavior as this driven thirty-something. Now I believe that even in the womb, Reed’s sensitive soul absorbed our family trance of shame. Further, all my doubts and pressures that year passed through my milk into Reed. I continued to drive myself, oblivious, unattuned to the body-mind connection. It was the “aha's” of Synergy training that allowed me to look back at my medical history and begin to understand what had been happening. My body tried to defend itself from my numbing pace by developing sacks filled with toxins. I would not listen. Discovering my connection to my mind-body wisdom I begin to ask: Is there a place in my body that consistently calls for attention, an ache, a pain? I rub my hands together and bring them apart until I can’t feel the heat or energy between them. It feels like I am pulling taffy. I bring them back together and rub them again until the heat/energy returns. Now I float one or more hands onto that place or those places in my body calling for attention. My left shoulder is usually aching because this is where grief is living. I simply notice what is happening beneath my hands. I am present to myself. There is no right or wrong answer. I suspend self-judgment, one of the benefits of this gentle, miraculous process of Listening Touch.