Welcome to Good Grievances

Hello internet,
This blog is for anyone who is currently grieving due to loss of family, friends, enemies, estranged spouses and/or life partners, pets, etc.  I chose the name Good Grievances mainly because I liked Good Grief (so call me Charlie Brown), but it was already taken.   So, reluctantly I chose Good Grievances - however I do like the irony of the 2 words together.  I play with the term 'grievance' as it usually is something you file with your employer against a boss/co-worker. It has a negative connotation of a whining, disgruntled employee and isn't normally tied in with grief or grieving.  That's about to change here because these are grievances that are good.  For any of you that thought this was a grievance blog using the less-ironic, literal translation of grievance, I apologize in advance for wasting 30 seconds or more of your precious cyber surfing time. I don't want to hear about your boss or co-workers, or that someone keeps stealing the coffee creamer in the break room, etc.

Picture this blog as a virtual grief/grievance 'form' that you can use when you need to let out some grief, but want to watch someone else 'fill it out' first. For the most part, this space is intended to be a safe place to go for a new call-and-response style cyber-grieving which our predecessors weren't so lucky to have at their fingertips.  Since we humans don't come with manuals, I'm attempting to piece my own together in this format.  So please feel free to comment, share, grieve with me and hopefully we can create a dialogue together to grapple with this bewildering, sometimes debilitating emotion. 

I will be filing grievances, or grief journals, whenever they may strike. Mostly to help me organize them, add some cool photos (like the one above) and help me focus through the fog.  Ideally, this will be a forum for others like me who have grief in their lives and may have trouble sharing.

Here's a brief history of my loss (which I'll be expanding on as these posts continue).  I lost two mothers within 9 months of each other (biological mother, suicide, 2005 and adoptive mother, liver cancer, 2006).  I was very close with both of them. I was adopted at birth and at age 23 met my biological mother and knew her for 12 years after.  Directly after they both passed, I moved away from my hometown Los Angeles to Northern California to raise a family with my wife and pretty much never looked back.  I attended a few support groups, but I never saw anyone professionally for grief.  Five years later, I had a huge breakthrough releasing a huge portion of stored up grief and the following are my experiences with it.

I suppose I'm gonna jump right in.

Grievance #1
I recently started working with a great healer/naturopathic doctor using craniosacral therapy.  I specifically went to her because I had this crazy flu with a lot of chest congestion for two weeks.  It was getting better, then returned even stronger.  I would've normally ended up in the ER or urgent care facility, but luckily my neighborhood didn't have too many tolerable choices for the Western medicine route.  My wife's cousin referred me to her naturopathic doctor and due to her rave review, I thought it would be worth a shot.  Was it ever! 

In my first session with her, she probably intuitively knew I had more than just intense chest congestion.  I proceeded to lie on her table and told her the whole story of my two mothers and their deaths.  Throughout this session, I literally felt movement inside my chest.  I could feel my lungs open again.  Magic, I tell you.  I know this may all sound like "hippy-dippy", new age voodoo to some of you, but I swear I felt it!  She informed me after the session that grief rests in the lungs often.  About a month or so prior to meeting with her I had finally opened a chest of my mother's belongings that I'd been avoiding to open for the past 5 years.  Maybe my lungs were fed up with me avoiding grief for so long that they filled up with nasty phlegm and snot and were basically planning an intervention.  Better than a full-on mutiny, I guess.   Following my session, I did discover a pathway back into the vital, vulnerable parts of me that I was leaving out of my life.

I did sense that something would come out eventually, but the thought of it scared me a lot.  What if I just randomly exploded one day in uncontrollable gibberish in a crowded coffeehouse?  Or drowned my tears in the bottom of a whiskey glass every night?  Life of crime, lone rifleman in a clock tower, serial killer (too much TV as a child or what?)  OK so none of those REALLY fit me but the mind will find impossible scenarios to block proper channels for grieving all the frickin' time, people.  A great friend of mine reminded me that I had already gone through the hardest part - you know, the death part times two - so anything following that shouldn't be all that scary, right?  Duh! I so needed to hear that (thanks, Dyana V).

So, a few months of seeing my healer, mixed in with some other random events (like finally catching the nasty rat that took over my household for a week), I find myself driving down to the ocean at San Franicsco's Ocean Beach (pictured at the top of this post) while listening to a mix CD I just burned from my iTunes called Good Grief #1.  I remembered that this was the exact place where I had the most intense and intimate conversation with my natural mother about ten years ago.  As I sat at the water's edge in my car, what followed was so magical - pure release.  Tears I hadn't been able to shed for years came rushing and every song I chose for this mix CD was the perfect one for each wave of release.  Every fiber in my body felt relaxed and at peace, if only for about 1.3 hours (the length of my mix).  I can't explain the exact feeling, but I guess it's relief.  Finally my deferred grief was tapped with the release valve I made for myself.  Turns out I was in control when grief found me and I had a truly beautiful experience.  Still recovering, but I feel like I let go of an entire planet of deeply immersed pain.  My gratitude can't be measured.  I feel renewed.

In conclusion, I'm not sure I'd recommend craniosacral or naturopathy to everyone, but it was the gateway to my current new state of 'Grieving Out Loud' - or, GOL for the tween texters out there (hasn't everyone had enough of LOL? I mean like OMG relax OK?).  I'm also not sure I'd recommend waiting as long as I did to get help, but all in good time, my friends, all in good time. Next time, maybe my post won't be this long, but who knows.  I'd like to add some fun stuff here, but I'll save it for next post because I'm exhausted! 

Here's where I remind everyone of the rules of grief - there are none.  Except the one that says there's no right or wrong way to grieve.  I'd add to that, if you can, try not to intentionally hurt anyone else you love in the process.  Keep exploring and I'll meet you here next time. 

Yours in Good Grief,
Charlie Brown