Grief, Sadness, and Homage

Years ago, my best friend’s mother, a wise older hippy woman, told me about there being grief stored in my knees. I experienced a difficult episode in 2007 during a psychotic break where my legs just collapsed beneath me. I literally physically broke down. She came over a while later, and expressed to me the phenomena of storing our grief particularly in the knees. At the time, I was in massage school, and I had learned about the storing of our trauma in our most recent injuries, and I experienced this on a massive scale around the time I dropped out of massage school in 2007. I was lying in bed, and I could feel every ounce of trauma stored in every physical injury that I had had in my entire life: my broken wrist, my broken leg, my lower back, my mid back that I slammed on the ice over and over after trying to land jumps in the park on my snowboard as a teenager, my injured knee I had had surgery on in 1998, sprained ankles, and the lot. It all came alive at once in my body as I broke from reality, fast. I remember telling Steve I could not go to class, and he gravely encouraged me to go, but I just couldn’t. I was falling, and I was falling fast.

During my years of recovery on Lopez Island after moving here in 2007, I remembered Lana’s words, and tried to address the grief that I have stored in my knees. In massage school, I was studying psychosomatic massage, and this was where I would help my client process the trauma that they had stored in their bodies through healing touch. But somehow, being a sensitive, this triggered the awakening of my own trauma, and I soon realized that I was not equipped to do this kind of work on others unless I addressed my very own trauma. I spent years here on Lopez studying yoga, receiving healing massage when possible, and meditating while sitting on the earth in nature. The best way for me to address this physical trauma and grief, is to be still and quiet, and slowly process all that I am feeling mentally, emotionally, and physically. Because of my sensitivity and propensity to be an absorber, both of other’s burdens, hence my codependency issues, and as an absorber of information, this is how I learn… alone time in nature and subtle forms of alternative therapy is needed. I cannot dive too deeply into receiving healing work such as acupuncture or massage when it comes to healing. Even yoga, I have to take very slowly. I just have so much grief and trauma to address, and because of my delicate brain chemistry as a schizoaffective and my nature to be an intensely sensitive person, I must take it very slowly and delicately. I have learned over the years, due to sensory issues and from being on the spectrum with ASD for example, that I do well with isolation and being alone.

It is very strange to have Steve gone. Essentially, since the pandemic and him becoming immunocompromised around this time, I was never really alone. I loved this about my marriage, we needed each other and savored each other’s presence every moment of every day. And now he is gone. But, I am finding that new pathways to healing are at my fingertips as I learn to live alone. I can be ever more in touch with my body, my grief, and my trauma, as I am no longer resonating with another human frequency at all times. I have contact with others, and this connection is important, but I am finding that being alone is and can be very good for me. I am not lonely, and I know there are friends and family just a phone call or a text away at all times. I am slowly opening to the reality that I live alone in this house, and I just suspect, that I may be able to enter into a phase of healing that before was not really possible with Steve in my life. He is here with me in spirit. I feel his ghost all around me every step of the way. Every step I take through the field walking my dog in the morning. Lying next to me in our bed. Helping me with difficult decisions and stress. I know he is here, and this is another reason why I prefer to be alone right now. I can listen for his soft kind voice, as he was and is a very gentle spirit.

I am grateful for learning about grief when I was 28, and the fact that I have worked through so much of it these last eighteen years. It has prepared me for the inordinate amount of grief and sadness that I feel losing the love of my life. Yesterday was his 64th birthday, and five of us, his closest family, gathered around a fire with good food and good music, and shared what we knew about this very special, beautiful, and loving man. It was a super sweet evening. After everyone left, I sat by the fire alone and gave homage to all of the spirits out there. Many have moved on; many dear ones that I have loved in this life, some that died sadly before their time. But they are at peace. And right now, as the veil is thin around Halloween or Samhain, it is a sacred time where we can reach out our hearts to the dead and those who have passed from our realm. I believe this connection with the dead brings peace to both heaven and earth.