I have been experiencing a lot of grief lately, and I know so many of those around me have as well.  For me it started about two weeks ago when our 14.5 year old dog died.  I have written before about how I have trouble crying, and I'm pretty sure I've mentioned that for a big part of my life I didn't process my feelings at all and instead stuffed them deep down where they wouldn't be a bother.  Well, it seems that I have processed and released and learned enough that this time I was able to cry freely and move into grief.  And that opening to this grief seemed to create an invitation to process all of the other grief that I'd avoided and buried and told to wait because I really, really didn't have time for it at that moment.  It swept me up and we experienced life together for awhile.  I have set the intention in the last year that when a powerful emotion grabs ahold of me I make sure to let it out visually in some way- a drawing or painting or whatever else may come to mind.  I do this to both help myself process my emotions- and it has been immensely supportive of the process- and to give me the ability to use the image to communicate the feeling to others.  I started the art, and just about the time that it was finished I saw reasons for grief popping up all over my news feed.  And I was so grateful that I had the art to help me because the wave grabbed me even more powerfully, in a way that felt helpless because whereas my dog dying is my own grief, the grief prompted by events in the news is collective and incomplete.  Incomplete because I do not know the people who died personally so I have no personal narrative to aid in my processing,  and also because the endless arguing and finger pointing and bashing of one group or another and name calling and flinging of pain back and forth as if hurling it away will make it disappear. . . they make it hard to get down to the business of grief.  And so having a focal point in the form of artwork was helpful.

When i sat down to start my art, this time I saw the drawing first.  I saw myself sitting, seemingly still, alone in a boat while my heart and I wept.  And so I put pencil to paper and I started.  At first it felt that the boat and I were floating on a deep, dark well.  As I was drawing I could feel that my little boat and I were actually in my body, under my heart, sitting on the immobile void of my belly that seemed simultaneously to have the gravity of a shaft running deep into the earth and the near weightlessness of space. When the boat and I were on the paper and my heart was wet on the page another sensation started- one of unraveling.  Like the person in the boat was the reflection and I was actually under the water, slowly being lifted up and out of my experience and pulled down to the bottom of the well, but not all in one piece.  Like a slinky or a handful of string or cords.  Little pieces of me were pulling off and floating away but still staying connected.  I was becoming undone.  And I could see how this was a necessary part of grief.  There are a bunch of different definitions of grief, but grief seems to generally occur after the loss of someone or something, or a big change.  So an unraveling of life as we knew it, of our families or support systems or way of life, of our experience of the world, or of the vision we had held for ourselves, a loved one, a country.  An unraveling of a future that will never come to be.  An unraveling of what was so what is now can come to pass.  A falling apart so we can come back together.  The unraveling feeling alternated with pain and nausea when everything would clench back up, trying to shove all the pieces back together before they were ready.  Like trying to grab fireworks and stuff them back in the rocket as they were exploding.  Like a giant invisible hand was grabbing all of me as I fell out of the boat and trying desperately to mash me back together, shove me in the boat, and set it upright again.  But it couldn't happen.  And that invisible hand would realize the futility of its actions and let me fall again.  Until it could handle to feeling of coming apart no longer and it would try to fix it all again, and then let go.  Over and over.  Until there was no more to fall apart, until I had been stretched as far as I needed to go.  And then, somehow, things started coming together again and at some point I realized that I was whole, sitting under my heart once more.  Calmer but still raw, empty but with the beginning of solidity.  Supported by a solid-ish something, and knowing I was okay.

This process occurred multiple times, and I don't believe there is any limit to the number of times or the amount of time that it takes.  I am in no way saying this is how it feels and works for everyone, just that it is how it felt and worked for me this time when I was paying attention to it.  This first time that I have experienced grief in a long, long time.  As I was feeling and watching and drawing I could see how my unwillingness or inability to grieve in the past had held me at that place of starting to unravel but never moving beyond the pain that happens when everything is coming apart.  Stuck in pain.  Since I was unable to move through the pain, the only way I was able to express my grief was through tossing the pain out, hoping it would go away.  But it didn't.  I can see now how it is a process that cannot be cut short.  And it is not a process that can be done FOR anyone else in an attempt to stop their pain.  From the outside probably the only thing that can be done is to surround a person who is grieving with love, even if they can't really feel it.  And to provide for their daily needs while they are engrossed in the process of coming unraveled and coming together again over and over.

I did three pieces of art expressing the grief I was feeling.  The painting at the top of the page, the drawing in the middle, and the painting above.  I left the drawing black and white on purpose, so it could be colored in during other times of grief to assist with the process once again.  I have found that creating art is so therapeutic and supportive in times of intense emotions. Many times I resist just to give in later and wonder WHY was I resisting before?  It is that powerful.

If you are also grieving, if you know you need to grieve but are having trouble accessing the feelings, or if you just like to color, the drawing can be downloaded below for you to color in as many times as you want or need.  I hope that coloring it is a safe, supportive experience and that it helps you in your process.  Lots of gentle, loving hugs from me to you.