Embodying The Practice Of Grief With Sara Chizek

What does it mean to make love to grief? To welcome it into your body instead of casting it out like garbage? I’m speaking to Sara Chizek about the sensuality and creativity that arrives when we practice the art of grief embodiment. After shutting herself off to the four-year-old girl who lost a father, her exploration of grief in her body opened her up to feeling whole and at home. What would it look like if we tried to practice grieving as much as we practiced resisting grief?

Transcript

Grief growers, I am really delighted to introduce you to Sarah Chizik on coming back today because I have never seen work like hers before, And this is always kind of revolutionary being in the grief space for, I mean, Only four years or so officially. But to see people put new words and new vocabulary to grief or match words with grief that I've never seen before is always kind of its own revolution, And Sarah is going to be talking to us a lot about grief and sensuality, And even on her website the phrase turned on was a part of a bit of her copy, And so I'm really excited to see how these two go together. So Sarah, Welcome to the show, And if you could share your lost story with us. Yeah, Absolutely. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. My last story started at the age of four when my dad passed away from cancer, And my mom and I were, You know, Left to ourselves for a while, And my mom quickly got remarried to an amazing man who is my dad now, And I gained a sister in the process, And yet I still felt this gaping hole in my heart even though my life had seemingly been patched up back together. I still felt this real gaping hole in my heart, And I went through the motions of life, And there's my schooling, College, And I was really operating from a place of being really numb and really shut off to my grief around my dad's loss. Of course, When you're four years old and you don't have, You know, All of the cognitive function, It's quite different to relate to that four-year-old, Especially as I was growing up. Sometimes I didn't even remember that my dad had died at certain days. Hours would go by, And I wouldn't think of him, And it really pained me. There was guilt wrapped up in my grief, And all of it was just kind of like shoved under the rug, Shoved under the carpet, And I felt disconnected from who he was as a person. I felt disconnected from who I was as a person, And it wasn't until my late 20s when I began to work in an embodiment way of really feeling my grief in my body, And this opened up such creative fuel and creative power for me. It allowed me to actually be able to talk about my dad's death without going into tears immediately. Tears are fine, And I love tears, But there was definitely like in my own personal perspective, There was a triggered response coming up anytime I spoke about my dad, And to me I knew that I wanted to work through that trigger, And so yeah, It wasn't until I really sat with my grief, And I started to welcome it, And I started to invite it in. I would even schedule on my calendar every week a couple hours to grieve, And I would go and look at photos of my dad or read things about him and just give myself that space to cry, That space to feel, That space to like totally unwind and totally unravel and let that be okay, And then that brought me into the work that I'm doing today, Which is grief embodiment work and women's empowerment work, And the sensuality piece comes into play there. Yeah, That's kind of the cycle of my grief journey. I love that you even referred to it as a cycle because it's saying that there's almost a sense of returning to the self as opposed to progress linear up and to the right. It's very much, Ah, And I have re-arrived. It's like I have arrived again, And I love this. I need you to define I think at first like what the heck is grief embodiment for me and for other grief growers who are hearing this term for the first time? Yeah, So it's really the expression of grief in the body, And that's different from like if you think about the layers of the brain, Like the prefrontal cortex as it experiences grief is often like the thinking brain, So it's the thoughts that we have, But as we move into the deeper layers of the brain, The limbic system, The primal brain, And deep into the body, Those parts of us experience grief in a way that is totally different than the outer parts of our brain, And our body can't understand grief the way that our prefrontal cortex can, And our prefrontal cortex cannot understand grief the way that the body can. So, Thinking about the body as this expression of grief, Turning it into a movement, And really tactically what that might look like is pounding a pillow, Hissing, Screaming, Howling, Sobbing, Like really embodying whatever your body wants to do in relation to the pain and the upset and the heartbreak that you know is striking you, And so that might look like having a full-on temper tantrum hissy fit, And often if you're new to embodiment work, For me having a temper tantrum, You know that's something that I can relate to you because as a child there were many, I'm sure a lot of people can relate to that, But giving yourself permission to throw that fit sometimes is the gateway into like this deeper feeling of expression or this deeper expression, This deeper embodiment of the grief, Like what's below the temper tantrum is really the truth and the masterpiece of the grief, The lesson of the grief deep within. So, It looks kind of wild and that's why this work is so interesting to me because we were literally trained against this type of work. We were trained to be composed, We were trained to shove our feelings down, We were trained to shy away from any dark emotions, But this work is just like a welcome sign to all of it which is really, Really empowering and beautiful around the topic of grief because there is so much underneath the surface there. I love that you said we were trained to be composed because the word that I just wrote down immediately after that is decomposition, The process of becoming uncomposed and it reminds me strangely of this song that was played often in the church that I grew up in called Undignified and it was about, You know, Praising God and worshipping Jesus and blah, Blah, Blah, But the chorus of the song was I'll become even more undignified than this, Some may say it's foolishness and it's like I will dance, I will sing, To be mad for my king and like granted take the whole religious aspect out of it, But when you think about embodying grief it's like I will dance, I will sing, I will yell, I will wail, I'll tear my hair out, I'll pound a pillow, I'll break things, I will throw hands because of the pain of this loss. That resonates so deeply with me as a person who is very much trained to be composed. Absolutely, Yeah and I'm so glad you used that word decompose because that really reminds me of what happens out in nature and you know that we can take so many cues from that as well like with grief, With the death of anything, Whether it's a person, A desire, A job, You know, A relationship, Any type of grief, There is this necessary shedding process and decomposition that is required on the path of letting go what needs to be let go of so that something else will be reversed and so the work that I do in a lot of ways is like a death ritual of the body, It's like what needs to be shed, What needs to die off today, What needs to die off in order for you know the next layer, The next learning, The next desire to be born from and to be planted, That next seed of desire, That next seed of hope. I think the first real block that's coming up in my mind around this is how do you walk people through the experience or the story of no this just means I'm crazy or no I'm not allowed to be unhinged or no I'm not allowed to show anger because I can sense especially with a lot of the grieving people that I worked with, We're trained not to express emotions, We're not trained to express emotions through the body like this because it's impolite or it's primitive or it's childish or it's inappropriate and so how do you approach grief embodiment when all these other stories are in the way? Yeah, Yeah you really have to give someone permission to rupture, Permission to unravel, Permission to fall apart and put themselves back together in a new way and the way that I have done this is through these grief workshops and I take a lot of my work from my teacher Regina Thomas-Shower around this body of work it's called swamping that she invented and it's a tool where you draw forth all your dark emotions, Anything that's stuffed down and you move it to music and so we'll move from really angry rageful songs into some really sad grief-ridden melodies and then we'll move into the joy and the turn on and sensuality at the end and in these workshops where we're doing this grief embodiment work there's really the sense of community and I host them for women right now in particular there's the sense of community around creating a really safe place for these emotions to live because you're right that like everything around us has trained us against this work and so taking a minute to remind people that we've been rewarded for suppressing our feelings, We've been often judged, Shamed, Called too much, Made to feel wrong and even like posing that question to yourself what have you been taught about sharing and expressing your emotions and beneath the answers to that question is often a lot of rage and grief when you actually think through like the influences that were suppressing a very real part of you and a part of you that does deserve a seat at the table it's like the society that that names that quote-unquote bad emotions shame guilt grief rage frustration all of those things we've been told to hide but the like paradigm this like paradigm this like switch of the paradigm is that if we welcome them to the table and like make love to them bring them in indulge them then we become so much more whole like there's this sense of shutting ourselves off because we feel like we're too much but when you bring it all together it's home these emotions make you feel even more at home to be so in touch with yourself that way yeah we really create a sense of safety in these groups to be able to go there and there's group sharing that goes on and what people are grieving and as i'm sure you know just like the power of hearing someone's story is a real point of connection to just realize that you're not alone and there's a sense of community that feels similarly and is willing to go here with you well and i just picked up on you using the phrase uh making love when describing what to do with negative emotion shame guilt blame rage pain agony and i want to bring in the work that you do around sensuality in your work because there's something to be said for grief and experience in the body and i think when most people think of that they think of pain they don't think of sensuality or sexiness or love or embracing or tenderness so i'm kind of wondering how those two phrases got married for you and how they express themselves whether it's through grief embodiment or swamping or any of the other practices that you teach and practice yeah well in my own personal journey when when i mentioned you know in my earlier 20s and even well into my mid-20s i was pretty numb and what happened when i was numb to my grief not embodying any of my emotions was that i also was shut down to all of my creative power all of my sensuality sensuality i was shut down to the divine like feminine essence of uh of creative life force and so i came to really understand the connectedness between the degree to which you can be in touch with your grief be in touch with your rage be in touch with everything that society has told us is bad is the degree to which you can be in touch with your sense of bliss your sense of ecstasy your sense of joy sensuality sexuality um there's like this um direct kind of parallel between how much you own your dark emotions to how much you can own those lighter emotions and when i talk about yeah and so when i talk about making love to your grief it's like what if we treated these emotions as divine what if we treated them as holy what if we treated them as masterpieces as art and as you're moving to you know a really sad song letting your tears flow with such like artful movement let your grief be your connection to mother earth to source energy to life force to really the fuel of your life and this is the opportunity to take that grief and to turn it into fuel turn it into energy for your passions for your creativity um grief can get so stuck and can get so heavy i mean it feels like five thousand five thousand rocks and a backpack on your back but if you move it and bring hip circles into it and put on some music that's like sad but sultry and a little bit sexy and keep moving that grief through the through the body like giving it its spotlight its moment in the sun celebrating it it brings a different energy into grief well and i kind of immediately think of grace response is like oh look at that and being acknowledged as opposed to what we generally do to grief which is choke it out like weeds in the backyard exactly exactly yeah acknowledging it and honoring it um yeah giving it its spotlight it just you're meeting that emotion in such a different way you're meeting it with acceptance and um compassion and it definitely has a different effect as it lands in the body when you're meeting something with so much acceptance um than something that like you said you want to take out with the trash yeah and i think it really encourages something about wholeness to include the experience of grief in the body because i think sometimes there's this perception that no grief is about the head and the heart grief is about sharing talking circles and maybe therapy but grief doesn't belong in bodily expression and yet if we go back hundreds of years or even thousands of years people grieved through the body through dances through the art of keening like tearing their hair out throwing their bodies on caskets um literally wearing things or even doing things to their body to show that they were grieving in society and it's as if all of those things for so many reasons have disappeared exactly exactly there's so much wisdom in our grief and so much wisdom in our rage and just expressing both of those emotions in a safe container is so nourishing to like those deep parts of our body the deep parts of us that remember the wisdom of our ancestors and the way that they engaged with these emotions before our world culture you know told them they were wrong and shut it down and suppressed it absolutely can you share some of the things that grief has taught you ah yes my grief has given me so much confidence to move through life previously i was in a grief situation previously my loss made me really uncomfortable in my own skin but being able to name my grief being able to get comfortable talking about my loss has allowed me to really embrace all the parts of myself the dark parts the unaccepted parts the things that society had been rejecting and the things that i had been rejecting great, This great acceptance that has come into my life from my work with grief. And I think at the most exalted form, There's gratitude, Right? There's gratitude and purpose in my grief. And I didn't always look at it this way. Before my dad died when he was in the hospital, He had a few last words to share with me, Which were captured and I have framed above my bed. And they say, Dear Sarah, I love you to the end of the universe and back. Soon the world will look up to you for the answers. And this prophecy almost of like, Soon the world will look up to you for the answers. It hung really heavy on my shoulders. Most of my life, I moved through thinking like, What do I have to offer? Like, What is that that anyone would look up to me for? And I was really struggling to find my purpose. My purpose is a woman. My purpose is a human on this planet. And as soon as I started to take a look at my grief to open the door, Just a crack to it, My purpose came flooding through the cracks. And in the depth of my tears and my, You know, Just my full embodiment and expression of grief, I was like, Oh, Man, I know what this means. This means that this is what I'm meant to do here. And there was moments and I was like, No, Like, This is such hard work, Right. And now I've, Of course, Moved to feeling really aligned. But when those pings first started to happen, I was like, Oh, This is a heavy, Heavy pour. And now I just feel so aligned to my purpose of being able to actually have people look to me for the answers. And that is a gift and a blessing. And that came at the hands of a really, Really awful, Awful tragedy and trauma for that little girl. But it did. And I embrace that now. I find it so fascinating that your father's last words were captured somewhere. Because I mean, For what it's worth, I don't remember my mother's last words. And I think a lot of people listening do not recall a family member's last words or friends last words or a spouse's last words or a child's last words, Or maybe they weren't even there. So this experience of hearing them having them recorded, Knowing what they are having them follow you throughout your life. The phrase that's coming to me right now is like a divine haunting. Yes, Absolutely. It did feel that way for a little while. I was like, Oh, What am I supposed to do with this heavy, Heavy prophecy? Or whatever you want. And I wonder and you told me if this is a question that feels answerable or not, But where does your dad live in your body now? He has always been in my solar plexus. And I think that's because the solar plexus holds a lot of confidence, Which is interesting. And it holds how you relate with the outside world. And for much of my life, I felt like I was kind of hiding in the shadows, Not wanting to be seen, Not wanting to be, You know, Definitely not the center of attention, If not any attention. And as I move more in the direction of this work, I feel, As I mentioned before, This sense of self confidence has really come through. And I do feel that connection in my, In my solar plexus. And you know, My dad, He died of a really rare type of lung cancer. He never smoked, But he had a sarcoma in his lung. And there is also this connection there with that region with him. And in some of the Reiki work that I've done, It's also come up of feeling like the energy of my dad and my lungs and solar plexus. And you know, The other day I was I was doing the work that that I do now, Which is really about the mind body connection. And one of my peers was coaching me. I had a session where I was I was receiving and I felt this armor of protection around my heart. And it was almost like that four year old girl had created a coat of armor around my heart, Like a guard dog protecting my heart from pain from abandonment from all the feelings that I felt at that time. And so really working with that energy to tune into its purpose to understand its purpose of why it's here, What it feels it's doing to protect me or to keep me safe in my life. And then to identify that, You know, I actually don't need that coat of armor on my heart right now. Like I am safe and to utilize that energy somewhere where it would be more productive. And so I redirected that energy into my boundaries as I as I move further into this business. This has been a really strong theme. And so, You know, That guard dog of a little girl who is protecting me like, I still want a purpose for her. I don't want to reject her. I don't want to remove her from my energy body, But just moving her to a place where she can actually support me and protect me in a way that feels more aligned to what I truly mean. That was a really beautiful opening. And so I feel like there's a piece of me also that carries that, Of course, In my heart. And as I started this session with, You know, There was this gaping hole in my heart and there will always be, Right? I think that it's just how we interact with that energy and how we meet that pain that is really critical to the grieving process. Well, And I like this visual too of the guard dog, My four year old created a guard dog, Because I think when our losses happen, We're trained consciously or unconsciously by ourselves, By society, By pain itself, To put up some kind of defensive barrier and grief. I know that listeners of this podcast who've read my book, Permission to Grief will remember the visualization of the wolf in the basement, Where the wolf was my grief. And then my brain created a cage that it lived in and kept it trapped in the basement of my heart or of my life. And so it had no voice. And so this idea of trapping animals or using animals to protect us is something that hits really close to home for me. And I think it speaks to this idea of expressing grief through the body is not allowed or dignified. It's something only animals do. But to embrace even those parts of ourselves, The ones that are trying to protect us, The ones that are trying to say something is really, Really powerful. So I love that visualization and just saying hello to your dad too, In your solar plexus. Yeah. I challenge grief growers to consider where your loved one lives in your body. My mom lives in my left arm. And like on my left shoulder, And I think it's because she's left handed in life. So whenever I get chills on the left side, I'm like, Oh, Hello, Mom. And there's some symbolism there. Yeah, Too. I really appreciate symbolism. I think that especially when you've lost someone, To be able to call something like a tingling in your left shoulder, Like that connection to your mom, Or for me, It's when I see butterflies that it reminds me of my dad. And I know that's a common one. It's just such a beautiful, Very intimate connection with the person that has passed. And there's a real beauty in honoring that and the connection that comes from that. Yeah, So gorgeous. I agree with that, Too. And I think, You know, There may be some people listening who are like, Grief in the body is really woo woo, Or it doesn't make a lot of sense or connecting to the deeper source, The divine universe, Like that's not really something that resonates with me. But I think symbolism at its root is something that almost all of us can believe in, Because it's like the thing that we choose to hold on to in the aftermath of losses, We really ultimately decide what meaning we make from the losses that happen to us. But symbolism is one way that our brains and our bodies, For lack of better phrasing, Can lay down some kind of pattern or create some kind of story around what happened. So like, Maybe nothing really is happening when I get chills on my website, Maybe it's just cold out and the breeze is coming from the west. But in choosing to believe that I also am choosing to continue to believe that the lines of communication are still open. And that's something that's helpful to me. So I think, No matter whether or not you actually believe in what we're talking about today, I think that the symbolism of it, Should you choose to apply it in your own life can be helpful if that's a story that you want to tell yourself. Yeah, I completely agree. So I'm kind of wondering, In embodying grief in your 20s, When you first started this work, How did it change or even did it change your grief relationships to other people? I'm thinking immediately your mom, But also this family that was born from the loss of your dad. And so having a different dad step into the picture and a sister as well is like, Okay, Now that grief lives in my body, And I'm welcoming it here, How is it changing my relationships to the other people in my life? Yeah, It definitely opened a doorway of conversation that hadn't always been there in the past. I think that one thing that I will say is, It's really beautiful how my new dad, His dad Paul, He always embraced our conversations around Jules and felt it was really important to stay connected to Jules' family. And my mom and I have a really, I should mention, So Paul, My new dad, He was widowed before as well. And so my mom met him, They were both widowed with a daughter. And so my mom and I have a really close connection with his first wife's family who passed away from cancer as well. And so we always had this real sense of reverence for the loss and for a sense of honoring for the person that had passed. But as time goes on and life goes on, Life happens, You're not always talking about this at the kitchen table. And so just being able to take a look at my emotions more really opened up the conversation and the tears to flow that needed to flow in my more immediate family. I think that I really opened some doors just by talking about this to be able to enable both of my parents to connect about the immense grief that they both carried of losing their loved one of not just the primary loss of their partner, But the secondary loss of that whole life plan that they had with their daughter and just the plan that shattered and that was not flipped through their fingertips. And so I really, Really want to honor and take time to reflect on how brave both of my parents were to look ahead and to find each other and to embrace one another the way that they did and bring a family, Two families together that had been really shattered and just struck with tragedy. Yeah, And there's something to be said too for gravers finding each other and building new relationships out of that because oftentimes, Or so I hear, This has not been an experience really that I've had yet. Knock on wood. But people who have lost somebody getting into a relationship with somebody who has also lost somebody as opposed to getting into a relationship with somebody who doesn't know what the experience of grief is like, I kind of have a rule now where I'm like, If you've never experienced a great loss, I don't know that you can be a friend or partner of mine. Because there's a depth and knowing that you can't possibly understand about me and about my life until you've lived through this. And so for both of your parents, Your mom and your new dad to create this reality for you together and for you doing this grief embodiment work to kind of reopen those doors or reopen those conversations for them is really powerful. Yeah, Absolutely. And I'd say the other relationships that grew over time were with my birth dad's family, Like being able to have conversations with them about who he was, What was important to him. My dad was an adventurer. He drove from New York to Colorado and lived in his van in the 70s. And just that was a big move for anyone in his family at the time. And here I am on my 32nd birthday also driving out to Colorado for an adventure. And so having his family there to be able to draw those parallels and to be able to point out that I am similar to him because I certainly don't remember all of those stories from when he passed. That's been really beautiful as well. And I cherish those relationships deeply. I wonder if there are grief growers who are listening right now who want to start taking grief from this place of numbness to actually being in the body with it. What's a really good, Maybe very small place to start? Yeah, So I recommend putting on a couple pieces of music. And there is one song in particular that I will recommend. It's called This Woman's Work by Kate Bush. This Woman's Work by Kate Bush. And it's this really beautiful piece. And just allow the music to take you for a ride. And you can start by just breathing really deeply, Feeling the breath in your body, Welcoming it in, And moving in any way that feels good to move. It might end up with you being just in a pile on the floor, And that's OK. It might end up with you circling your hips and feeling your grief in a different way in your body, But just really tuning in to the message of how your body wants to move in relation to your grief. And there might be some little whispers and little downloads that come in of what feels good, How your body can make your grief right through its movement, Through its flow, Just letting any tears flow, Letting anything that comes up be OK. And so moving into just the art of dancing with your grief. And after you play a sad song, I recommend putting on a song that turns you on, That you love, That brings you joy. I recommend this amazing song called Woman by Amber Lilly. It's called Woman Remix, And it's a gorgeous, Passion-filled song. And on the other side of grief is passion. They are directly connected. There is this direct correlation to the depth that you can feel your grief in your body. It's also the depth that you can feel your passion, Your creativity, And your sensuality. So maybe just playing with those two songs, And again, If you sit in a pile on the floor for both of them, You're doing it right. It's OK. And just to welcome and accept whatever comes up in that moment. I think the overarching theme is acceptance for what comes up and just giving yourself the space to be a researcher of your grief, Be a researcher of your turn on, And do it with so much compassion and love for yourself. Yeah. I love this permission slip too, That if you're just in a pile on the floor, You're also doing it right instead of it needs to turn into some lyrical dance masterpiece that you're going to put on stage next week. Because I think, Gosh, And I do this to myself too, But so often in grief, We put pressure on ourselves to be productive with it, To generate something from it beyond just the experience that we're having. With listening to these two songs and moving around the room or even laying in a lump on the floor, It's like, No, That's the exercise. That's it. Nothing more is required of you. And that can be really powerful in the aftermath of loss. And what's funny, I've never heard of these two songs before, So as soon as we get off this interview, I'm going to go listen to them. But what's funny is I just wrote another book about grief called Your Grief, Your Way. And one of the tips that I included in the book was searching Spotify or YouTube for playlists about grief because they exist. People have actually made playlists about dancing through or moving through grief. And some are really sad and some are really ragey and some are really tormented and others are just classical pieces that are very, Very emotional. And they've been enormously helpful to me when I'm like, There aren't words for this. And music is like, You're right, There's not words for this. So why don't we do something else? And so it's very affirming that other things like that exist in the world. So thank you for recommending those two songs. We've got This Woman's Work by Kate Bush and Woman Remix by Amber Lily. And I love that both of them include women too, Because there's something about the divine feminine. We've talked about this on previous episodes of coming back, That knows something about grief and has a lot to teach us, I think. And this has to do too with the very first question I asked, Which has to do with the cyclical thing that you mentioned of re-returning or re-arriving to ourselves, Which is a very feminine concept in grief. Yeah, Absolutely. And just remembering that grief is like an iceberg. Like it takes a long time to saw through the walls. And sometimes you might just scratch the tip of the iceberg. And we put our walls up from going deeper because our society doesn't encourage it. And it's literally been a survival tactic for you to be numb to your grief, Be numb to your body. You've been trained against this your whole life. So it is a practice. And so if you indulge in a couple of songs and you don't have this giant awakening, Like you said, Ready for this stage, That's exactly the point. That's why we practice and just acknowledge that it can be really scary to thaw out this iceberg. Scary to think about rupturing the solid foundation that we've created to keep it all together all the time. Like that's exhausting work. And we've practiced at it probably more than we've practiced at our grief. So just having that compassion and the openness to stay at it. And to practice grieving as much as we practice trying not to grieve. I think that's really beautiful.