HUG Corner: Thought for the Week 5/14/18

Healing After Loss (Martha Whitmore Hickman)

“She thought of the women at Chicken Little’s funeral…What she had regarded since as unbecoming behavior seemed fitting to her now; they were screaming at the neck of God, his giant nape, the vast back-of-the-head that he had turned on them in death. But it seemed to her now it was not a fist-shaking grief they were keening but rather a simple obligation to say something, do something, feel something about the dead. They could not let that heart0-smashing event pass unrecorded, unidentified.”

– Toni Morrison

Many of us have been slow to recognize the value of expressing the full force of anguish and despair. We may think displays of strong emotions are somehow unseemly.

Grief is not a test. There is no grading. No passing or failing. But if our tendency is to clamp down on our feelings because we think it’s better for us or less disturbing to others, we might try going somewhere we’re not likely to be heard – and let it all out. Scream. Yell. Berate. Wail. Pound on the wall.

Some hospitals have “screaming rooms” – places where the newly bereaved can go and scream and wail without fear of disturbing others and/or embarrassing themselves. 

Not a pretty sight or sound? A human sound.

I will take my cues from within, and not be afraid.