Birthing the Grief

If you have anxiety, you know the feeling (maybe): the muscles tense, the chest tight, shoulders stiff, jaw rigid. A sense, maybe, of energy running too fast along your meridians, spinning out of control.  Of not being fully in your body, perhaps not even anchored by gravity to the earth. As if you might go hurtling through the air like a balloon that’s slipped its knot, careening madly around the room before collapsing in an exhausted heap.

Perhaps you do as I do, slow your breath, feel yourself motionlessly pushing the energy down like trying to hold a beachball under water. Down, down. Breathe….maybe counting your breaths, in-two-three-four, hold-two-three-four, out-two-three-four, hold-two-three-four. Feeling your heartbeat, counting the beats, willing them to slow down, too.

Does it work? Do you feel the racing, spinning energy calming? Sometimes, maybe.

Perhaps you picture sending the energy out through the soles of your feet, like roots digging into the earth, grabbing onto Mama as if you could amp up the pull of gravity to anchor yourself. Pulling up the earth-energy into yourself for grounding to make yourself heavier, stronger, more rooted. Reaching down for earth-wisdom to come up with the energy: help, help, help….

And perhaps that’s when the energy shifts: the ragged-feeling breaths hook into a deeper feeling and haul it up: the feeling that doesn’t want to be exposed to light and consciousness, the one that wants to lie buried, trying to sleep: pure grief, so deep that it has no memories or thoughts associated with it. You know that to try to find its source would be to make up stories. This grief is purely itself, dredged from the unconscious where it connects to all the world’s griefs.

And now that it sees the light of day through your leaking eyes, it wants out. Wants to be released like a birth in full-throated sobs, groans, screams maybe, it’s been hidden, squelched, pushed down too long. LET ME OUT! The groan starts somewhere around your navel and blasts its way up like a humpback whale rocketing to the surface.

And there it is: the storm of tears that you thought you could never access or release, that resisted all your stories because it arises beyond all stories. The storm you feared because if you once allowed it, you feared it would never end.

Let it take the form it takes. Keening. Bellowing. Sobbing till you choke, cough, and sob again. Wrap your arms around yourself, rock back and forth, birth the grief. It won’t last forever, it will end. When it does, you may be exhausted, but you will be clearer, the anxiety dissipated.

And in that stillness, you may find space for peace to begin.