what is your language for Grief?

portals for Wound care

Nov 09, 2024

autumn’s arrival. leaves and limbs shedding from Oak out my window. what am i shedding? what are you shedding? photo by anne richardson

dear sojourners,

though the Celtic calendar announced we crossed the threshold into winter last week, clear Skies allow the low hanging Sun to warm my abode naturally. i am lingering in the harvest feel of the season where tomatoes and leafy greens are still available at the farmers’ market. it seems late but i am appreciative. root vegetables will be the star attraction soon enough. root vegetables, those below-the-ground reminders that what ripens beneath our vision is as nurturing and nourishing as the fruits of late summer we pick off greening vines and limbs. that the grit of soil and loam holds an ancient story our bodies yearn to receive in the stews and soups shared round the community table or alone by the hearth.

these few days of Sun are sandwiched between our seasonally normative days of Rain and drear. i don’t mind the drear. i think it is in my bones having been born to english parents, though my father found the long, dark of Winter of his adopted home was his season of “discontent.” born in the season of dark, he seemed to always be looking for light. one of my last memories of him was our walking together in downtown portland in december. an East Wind, singing a siren’s song, swept in from the Gorge having collected the frosty exhales of Basalt Rock faces and the white-capping cries off the columbia River. Wind seeped between the seams of our coats. he stopped several times to try and catch the breath Wind squeezed out of his lungs, his heart struggling to keep pace. a heart letting us know that soon it wouldn’t be able to keep up. for 24 years since his first heart attack, that heart had outlasted Winter and emerged each Spring like the scarred and aged Apple Trees that were part of our orchard—Wounded from seasons of storms and cold, but still able to bear fruit. but this year Winter would have the last word. my father died in January, a month after his 63rd birthday. i was 26.

Grief was an unknown language in my family. we operated under the “stiff upper lip” paradigm. my brother and i took care to attend to my mother, but we were all soon back to work and “moving forward.” it was my mother’s death in 2018 that awoke my sleeping Grief for my father. a Wound i didn’t even know was lingering and needed attending. Grief, i have come to understand, is the invitation to attend to our Wounds.

when i was younger i wanted to rush through Winter (perhaps an unconscious response to my father’s death.) older, and hopefully wiser, it has become the season i am drawn to, as i wrote about in my previous post: slow down. listen. the veil is thin. in Winter where i live, our hands and lips are raw and chapped. we hide our Wounds under sweaters, stockings, scarves, mittens. we ugly cry with our windows closed and buried under blankets. no one will hear. the tender Wounds of our hearts not exposed to the world. and yet Wounds can be our portals (borrowing this idea from Corporeal Writing and Becoming Monster). our gateways to something deeper…

Wounds: how we define, treat, avoid, live and dance with them…that has been nudging at me for a while now. in Oct i read an article in the New York Times wellness section, Her Face was Unrecognizable After an Explosion. A Placenta Restored It. fascinating about how the human placenta, specifically the “amniotic membrane, the innermost layer of the placenta that faces the fetus, is peeled off and sterilized” can be used to heal certain Wounds.

the article is an interesting read from a medical-healing-our-physical-bodies standpoint, but what has drawn my attention concerning Wounds as portal is that a Wound is created to obtain the placenta. see, only placentas obtained by planned cesarean sections are used (has to do with less risk of bacterial contamination, because vaginal childbirth is so messy. and yes, i am being snarky.) but back to my point, the use of a created Wound to draw out the amniotic sac along with the baby. the sacred birth fluids. this complex conversation between mother and child (which can itself become a Wound even in utero) brought out of the dark womb space into glaring surgery lights. there is so much about this that gives me pause.

what is this a portal into? as we slice through the Mother’s body and extract the amniotic sac along with the child what do we see? taste? feel? hear? smell? what is left behind? we are quick to suture up our Wounds, but metaphorically do we need to leave this one open? or as we turn to commodifying this natural part of the gestation and birthing process, what does this say about how we approach being with each other in the Wounded spaces? how comfortable are we with the open gashes? the burned flesh? the sightless eye? (and don’t hear me as saying i am against the healing properties of the placenta. i haven’t looked, but my hunch is the wise women of yore used the placenta to heal.) i am just recognizing in myself how quickly i want the outside of something/someone to “look” ascetically appealing according to societal norms. how i struggle to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.

i live in a country that is, in my opinion, existing as an open Wound. has built a foundation on Wounds. yet collectively we place small bandages across huge gashes and hope for “healing,” however you want to define that. Báyò Akómoláfé has talked about a new way of looking at care and wellness to shift thinking away from binaries we have about healing and our current wellness industries. i appreciated what he posted on Facebook november 5th,in response to the US election, this final thought particularly resonating: “we need new forms of care now. may we be found anew.”

the image that keeps coming up over and over, especially as i participated in Becoming Monster last week, was the Earth as Mother and wondering where her amniotic fluids, her placenta, are resting these days as she gestates what is next. i thought of underground rivers and caves where walls could have a layer similar to the one used for healing the physical bodies found in human placentas. waiting to heal the Wounds humans have inflicted on her. or the deepest depths of Oceans that have yet to be extracted, uhm, explored, that are rich with life and story. these don’t need to be torn open, but to be birth naturally in time. in time. in time.

the non-human beings of this planet have Wounds too. it is part of existing. i learn so much from being among Trees. noticing their scars, their Wounds. listening. (i wrote about my relationship with “The Sisters” and my Grief after an ice storm downed three of them on this blog post.)

we are quick to “clean up” downed Trees after a storm. and yes, i appreciate having roads and trails cleared. but how much would we learn if we could lean into being with the Wound of cracked and downed Trees that were not “blocking” our way. to witness the life-death-life cycle. to allow the “dead” Snags to stand, for they are life giving for so many beings, critical to the life-death-life cycle. for when we risk going head long into Wound portals, we risk death. the death of some part of ourselves. whether that be a belief. a relationship. our place in society. and more

one of my beloved “Sisters” before she came down in an ice storm. her body held many Wounds. photo by anne richardson

and then there were these words from lidia yuknavitch on Facebook 10/11 that gave me pause:

“like so many of you i navigate daily heart contortions. if we live to love with others, we can't live our lives as usual, we know, and we cannot NOT live our lives, so we keep on living in the dumbest puny human ways almost as a buffer against atrocity and despair. there is no moral high ground to genocide. in any epoch. there is only brutality in the viewpoint oh, hey, this genocide over here was horrific, but this other one in a different epoch over here is fine. carry on. for me dead children are dead children. nations and nationalisms are built from the logic that slaughter is not just justifiable, it's valuable, and that creating the enemy other is endlessly righteous. that's not moral clarity. that's blood lust. from the get-go. always a stain, a gash, an unsuturable wound on the possibility of a better world. i can't change anyone else's life, but i can give myself a calling: do not turn away from the wound. the wound is a mouth. a portal. the wound is screaming. as is the eye of the hurricane. The heart of a solar flair. Love isn’t just comfort.”

there are not enough placentas to heal the Wounds of genocides. we need to go into the Wound. i am learning to not turn away, thanks to engaging with Becoming Monster, Báyò, Lidia, and Corporeal Writing.

Thanks for reading following dandelion seeds! This post is public so feel free to share it.

i am still journaling to offer some container for last week’s Becoming Monster. but like Monstrous Wounds, it is difficult to contain in words. this post feels like a Wound. open. porous. uncharted territory. i often feel my heart will pound right out of my chest. was that what my father’s heart was doing that day the Siren Wind wrap her song around us?

and yet the openness to the gash, the blood, the muck, the mess…that portal also allows in wonder and awe. i know. sounds strange. but being with the Wound means being alive. noticing two House Finches stopped by the birdbath for the first time in ages. hello Beauties! lovely to see you again. and last night Moon shone bright while Stars patterned the still dark Sky this morning before i swam, before Sun rose and filled the day.

and then to close, there is this. the midnight before the election, trickster Coyote stopped by. yes, i have heard them in my urban neighborhood since moving here a year ago (and used to see them in my old neighborhood,) so Coyotes are not unusual. but what was unusual was the length of time the yip-howling lasted. after the pack (likely only two or three, but sounded like more) moved on, one lone Coyote sang an aria for well over half-an-hour. a penetrating few notes that sounded, well, Wounded. no other sounds in the neighborhood. no dogs yapping in reply. no people grumbling. just Coyote reminding us to pay attention to to the Trickster. what we “see” is not always real. remember to lean into Mystery.

and a few reflection questions for you to ponder, if you wish:

what is your relationship with your Wounds? what is your response to being with them as portals?
what is the language of Grief in your world?
how have you seen the Trickster show up in your life?
what resonated in what i wrote and what feels uncomfortable?
other thoughts?

following dandelion seeds

what is your language for Grief?

portals for Wound care

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