GRIEF IS THE GOLDEN ROAD: LOSS AS A PATH TO SPIRITUAL GROWTH

“I learned that every mortal will taste death, but only some will taste life.”
— Rumi

Death can lay waste to our plans and dreams, hollow out our world, and drain us of mirth. But is this where the story ends? Our culture makes little room for mourning and bereavement. This unwelcoming cultural mood toward death has stultified our ability to harvest the wisdom, growth and joy that can arise when we engage our hearts, minds and bodies fully in our grief.

We are literally born to grieve. It’s one of our basic human capacities and it works in us, as do all good innate qualities, as a benefit and a boon. Grief nourishes the soul by, humbles the ego and sets us down in the real world with a new vision of what is and is not important. We access the golden riches of grief through suffering, sadness, and pain. To avoid this essential spiritual work is to miss the full taste of life. There is no work-around. As we learn to sit lovingly and patiently in our grief, we learn how to live compassionately in this world with all its attendant losses, insults and injustices.

ABANDONED SORROW: HOW WE GRIEVE IN A SADNESS SEDATING SOCIETY

Next to love, grief is perhaps the most powerful, pervasive and transformative human experiences. It is also increasingly the most misunderstood and misrepresented by our society. As death and disease are increasingly medicalized and corporatized, we are swiftly becoming a culture that abandons and sedates sorrow. Dying is no longer a rite-of-passage, it’s just organ failure. The dying are going to their graves playing solitaire on their cell-phones in hospital rooms with “Family Only” notices scotch-taped to the doors. Death is becoming increasingly privatized and secreted away. Families are forgoing funerals, burials, and the ancient rituals that have been a part of our mourning practices for eons. More and more dying people are insisting that there be no ceremony, no fuss, and no tears — just “get on getting on.” After their six days of bereavement leave, grievers are taking antidepressants in order to function at work and home. 

How did we get here? How are we to help our children know what death and dying is? How can we as communities and individuals reclaim the birthright and wisdom which is mourning? Where do we begin?

OUT OF THE ORDINARY: EVERYDAY LIFE AS A GUIDE FOR HUMAN GROWTH

We humans suffer with a gnawing sense that we have not reached our potential. Or, when we have reached our dreams we find the experience a huge let down. During the height of her fame, singer Alanis Morrisette’s life was so invaded by fans that she developed PTSD and reports that she didn’t smile for 2 years. Comedian Jim Carrey has suffered from a lifelong depression and the great author Virginia Woolf became so full of sadness about her existence that she filled her pockets with stones and walked into a river. Every single person, great or small, experiences insecurity, self-doubt, unhappiness, and disappointment. It’s the human condition.

Life is series of days, of successes and failures, hopes and tragedy, and it is out of the ordinariness of life that we fashion our depth and character. In this talk, I overview the science and art of being in the day-to-dayness of life with humility and grace. Becoming ourselves does not rule out success and pinnacle experiences, but they are no guarantee of peace, happiness or joy. Given this fact, what then is of ultimate value? What makes for a good life? And how can we begin to move in our lives with a sense of purpose, love and energy?

The Soul of Suicide

Suicide (meaning self-murder) was turned into a crime in 18th century England. Killing oneself transgressed ecclesiastical and secular law first by the deceased soul rushing into God’s presence uninvited, and secondly by depriving the King of a subject. The consequences were dire: all property and belongings were seized (leaving families destitute), the body was refused burial on consecrated ground and the soul was condemned to hell. As time went on society struggled to rid the act of its moral stigma and reduce the impact on innocent families. Soon enough, suicide became the province of medicine and psychiatry. We still live with the powerful messages that people who end their own lives are “not thinking right” or “insane.”

Understanding suicide is difficult business and not one to approach incautiously. We are educated on all sides about what it means, why it happens, and what to do about it. Rarely are we invited to be curious about our many other self-damaging propensities---the slow death of addictions, over-eating, health neglect and high danger sports. We are creatures that live on the edge of death. Why then does suicide strike us as so wrong? Why do we split it off from other forms of self-immolation and even medically assisted dying? Is there ever a time that suicide could be understood as a decent ethical choice?

This lecture examines this very difficult topic from many angles, offering new views and and starting points for conversation, a clear discussion on the heavy emotional impacts on families and friends, the epidemic levels with teens, and provides a more compassionate attitude toward those who end their own lives.

maimed: how workplace death and trauma causes permanent injury to families

Research and policy on occupational health have focused on workers as the direct victims of workplace hazards. Less attention has been directed to the extensive impact of occupational death and injury on family, friends and communities. Recent findings in bereavement research indicates that exposure to sudden, traumatic death can leave people vulnerable to adverse mental and physical health outcomes such as depression, post-traumatic stress, complicated grief and cancer.

Drawing from his extensive conversations with grieving families and injured workers, Roy brings the world of bereaved families into clear focus, helping us understand the short and long-term consequences of death and injury on children, spouses, family and community.

Roy also considers the sociological underpinnings of workplace death---examining the way the words we use to discuss workplace death reveal much about our desire to underestimate and disavow the impact of the losses. By supplanting the phrase “killed at work” for “jobsite accident” we get closer to the real picture of the event and the loss.

Roy concludes his talk with practical advice for managers and owners seeking to mitigate and diminish the impact of workplace death and tragedy on families. Although the subject matter is grim, Roy has a light human touch, which draws his listeners in without guilt, blame or shame. His goal is to educate and enlighten toward safer, healthier work communities.

Suffer the children: how kids grieve and how to help

Children and teens grieve. This we know, and yet there remains in our society an ongoing debate over how they grieve and what is healthy for them to experience.

At the dying bedside, parents and family grapple with questions: should children and teens witness suffering and death up close? Will it traumatize them? How much information about disease, prognosis and the dying process ought we share with our kids? And what will a typical grief process look like in children, adolescents and teens---what should we expect and how can we help?

Sadly, many of the modern debates and myths about adolescent grief serve to obscure the needs of children and teens as they mourn important losses in their lives. What we do know is that children’s levels of anxiety about death and grief are related to whether they are told about the illness and to the quality of the communication with their parents. What children do not know about a loved-one’s death, they will make-up in their minds. Children are saavy, observant and highly curious about dying and death. They are in the circle whether we like it or not.

This presentation offers keen insight into child and teen grief, offering research, anecdote and a broad ranging discussion on socio-cultural factors that both impede and promote healthy responses to death and grief in our kids.