This is Jacob Watson.
At first,
And for many months after my wife died,
I felt brutalized.
Grief is brutal,
A word I used often when my grief was fresh.
Then,
Slowly,
Way too slowly for impatient me,
A transformation began to happen.
I remembered a class I took in my doctoral program taught by Clarissa Pinkola Estes,
The feminist author of Women Who Run With the Wolves.
She had been teaching about 50 of us for the morning,
And as the class ended for the lunch break,
She invited,
Which from her was more of a command,
The men in the class,
About 20 of us,
To join her for the lunch hour.
She asked us to meet her in what was called the cave,
A dimly lit meditation space at the University.
When we had gathered there,
She told us that during the class she had noticed signs of our individual and collective grief,
And no signs that we were either aware of it or knew how to express it.
She said now was the time,
And this is the place.
With her deep compassion and skill,
She facilitated the expressions of long-held in grief.
Suddenly,
We had not only her permission,
But that of the universe,
For she spoke her invitation to us with the compassion and skill of an older,
Wise woman of the universe.
Encouraged individually and as a group of men,
We accessed and expressed our sadness and pain.
We didn't have to find the words,
Only the sounds,
And they poured out,
Embraced both by Clarissa and her compassion,
And by each other.
There was no male image to uphold,
No competition to join.
We men experienced no barriers,
Only resounding encouragement.
Our cries,
Wails,
And screams filled the space between us and bonded us as brothers.
I no longer felt alone.
I learned from Elizabeth Kubler-Ross that grief is a natural emotion,
So when my wife died,
I allowed myself to express my grief any way I knew how.
After months,
I knew I would never fully express it,
Yet I began to feel the beginnings of relief.
I felt a new freedom begin to take hold,
Organic and very much my own.
My sense of openness flew in the face of the cultural norms and political correctness.
What was the source of pain became the source of delight.
It was as if the expression of grief cleaned out the pathways to the spiritual realm,
Where I was never alone.
My natural emotions became my guide to a deeper self.
Then,
One day,
I was distracted from my grieving by a minor legal problem about my house.
I asked for help from a neighbor who was a lawyer.
She sat on the couch and listened to me begin to explain my legal problem.
I had not finished when she leaned forward,
Looked directly into my eyes,
And said,
You don't have to worry about it.
I'll take care of it.
This was an immediate gift.
I knew my work was now to let her take care of it.
I was relieved,
But days later,
I still worried about it.
Then,
In a flash,
I got it.
Sitting there on the couch,
She was embodying the Divine Feminine.
It was she herself who was speaking to me and reassuring me.
The lawyer's words were divine words.
I only had to accept them.
The Divine Feminine was telling me she would take care of it.
Not just of it,
But of me.
This was the greatest gift of grief I could imagine.
