Into the River of Sorrow

Tonight I felt into it. Finishing work, looking into a free evening unfolding with light and bright summer sun… I felt stuck inside. All I could feel were the tears churning under the surface. My love and I asked each other what we needed and on the surface, I spoke of sadness. Sadness of the moment, sadness of missing my son, sadness of feeling so helpless, sadness. Just there. Like a stone sitting in my throat.

We held each other and dipped ourselves into the setting sun - a bike ride through the orchards as the sun draped its golden rays over the stretching lines of growing things. I felt air in my lungs (wow what privilege). I felt bright, sunny warmth, and the peace of my body. But returning home, I could still feel the cold stone in my throat. And I couldn’t speak it. I didn’t know how to say: I need to grieve. I just need to grieve. Instead, I said: I need to meditate. I need to meditate and dance. I brought up one of Jenny’s meditations on grief and pleasure. In the beginning, I resisted. I felt myself wanting to sleep. I felt myself feeling nothing—the cold numbness where I wanted to feel something. Until the moment she directed my attention toward my womb.

That’s when I broke open. The tears came through as if breaking through a heavy concrete dam. Hard, insistently pushing through so much to surface. My brow was tight and painful as if I were trying to hold them back, just at the same time I was trying to bring them out. I finally curled in a ball, both hands wrapped around my womb and let the tears flow. Heaving sobs that seemed to push out of me until it was too much to hold, and I stood. The music of the meditation guided me toward movement, and I bent my back to the pain of it. All of a sudden, I felt it sweeping through my body. My own movement joining the river, lining along the centuries of women who have bent their backs under unbearable pain and sorrow, walking together on the same path. I felt the slow, steady beat of their bodies all around me. The women on the trail of tears, the women racing under the heat of night to save their children from slavery, the women toiling long hours in the factories for no pay. I joined myself with them and felt the depths of the sobs grow. Now my tears weren’t flowing just for my own losses, but surging through me for the losses of generations of women before me.

I’m not here to sing my sorrow —but I am here to bring my power to the surging currents of women and men who’ve suffered before me. I’m not here to diminish or make light—but to sing my humanity into this canyon and hear echos reverberate out among the great washes of this land. I bring my self. I bring my whole self- broken as I may be. I am here. I will walk, surge, power, toil alongside you. Not to shove away the pain, but to dance into it with strong steps and resilient song.

After the tears, the pleasure of movement, the sensation of connection, I let it rip. I turned up the music, let my hair fall free around my shoulders, put on Florence and the Machine. I raged. I shook and stomped and stormed and leaped. My body took up more space than I originally thought it had a right to do. I threw my hair and body into movement so powerful and free. I exhaled. I inhaled. I tore off my shirt. I danced and moved and breathed freely.

Now that I’ve given myself in, that I’ve felt and sorrowed and grieved and moved into the body of the darkening sky, I’m ready again to be here. I’m ready to join the work. I am here. I am alive and powerful and right here. I’m listening.