A NOTE FROM OUR EDITOR-IN-CHIEF ON GRIEF & LOSS

Embracing Waves of Grief

The author at Devil’s Churn in Oregon 2016.

BY JENNIFER HARKNESS

Dear Women Who Sail, 

For our final issue of 2020, instead of answering a question for Dear Skipper Jenn, I am writing you a letter. I write to you in support and solidarity and to set the tone for this powerful issue. Each of the voices you will read are vulnerable, unique, and relatable touchpoints of shared humanity.

As Editor-in-Chief, I chose the topic of Grief and Loss for this issue for two main reasons. One is that traditionally the media focuses on the shiny aspects of this season—the joyful and cheerful parts. Folks who struggle during the holidays, which are many, often feel unseen in their experience. They struggle with society’s high expectations of needing to join into the holiday cheer. I wanted to give a platform to discuss the very real flip side of struggle to this season.

The second is that this year is unique as we are all experiencing grief in so many different ways with the global pandemic.  As of December 13, 2020, there are 70,461,926 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 1,599,704 deaths worldwide..The loss has been tremendous and many families are facing the holidays with loved ones absent either due to death or travel bans and the need to quarantine. My hope is that this issue brings connection through commonality and framework for how to grieve in a year when the volume has been turned up on stress and our lives made more complicated due to COVID.

Personally, the holidays have never been my favorite. Like many coming from a dysfunctional and abusive family, I carry sad and traumatic memories of this time of year both explicitly and implicitly in my body. As a mental health therapist, this is always my busiest time of year. In the Northern Hemisphere it is the dark night of the soul season as the sun continues to set earlier and won’t rise at all in some places. Seasonal depression ramps up. Addictions and suicidality increase. Starting in October and lasting through January, family tensions and issues flare as cabin fever sets in. Deadlines and final exams are due. Those with fewer resources can’t afford heat, or struggle finding shelter. The expectations of joy, togetherness, and abundance stir up shame and lack for those without. 

The holidays also often bring up the bittersweet memories of the people we love who are far away or who have died. The season reminds us that there is no right or wrong way to grieve, there is just your way. Long ago I learned that grief is not something to pathologize, it is an experience to be explored and supported in whatever way meets the person where they are at. Grief is something to attend to, not fix, and it has no official timeline. 

We find moments in the Kubler-Ross stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. We ride them out. There is no final destination of acceptance; grief comes in waves. Grief ebbs and flows like the tide. Even if quiet for a long time, it can be triggered by a smell, a memory, a time of year, or a song. Like a dam, the gates open and the waves come taking our breath for a time. All emotions, and especially grief are deeply somatic, they live in the body. Learning to integrate the mind and body together, to balance the explicit story with the felt-senses of our experience, is how intention, time, and repetition help us to heal. 

David Kessler added another stage to the process of grieving: meaning making. As we learn to surf the intense waves of emotion and experience, many of us find a way to build or adapt little boats to better navigate the terrain. Much like sailing, we become familiar with conditions and how our particular craft handles them. We know how to tweak the lines to make grief smoother, even when it’s hard. Many of us support others in learning how to build their own vessels for grief, or we invite them onto our own to learn. We offer a framework of understanding and model how to stay afloat and not drown in the experience of trauma, death, and loss. 

The beauty of engaging this process is we also learn how to feel joy and love like never before. All sailors know that weathering storms makes those bright perfect sailing days all the more precious. They also know that when you are in the storm the conditions are consuming and it’s hard to remember the sunny days. At this time, many folks are getting hit with huge grief waves for the first time and they are unsure if they can weather them. Hopefully the contributions to this issue will help them see that they can and they will, and they are not alone. 

May we all sail in peace.

FROM WOMEN WHO SAIL NEWSLETTER | ISSUE 5. | DECEMBER 2020.

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skipper jenn

Jenn Harkness is a human being, artist, coach, therapist, writer, friend, mermaid, student of life and lover of all shine and sparkle. She is also Editor-in-Chief of the WWS Newsletter. You can find more of my writing over at skipperjenn.com. While I am a mental health counselor and life coach, and have expertise on human behavior and social dynamics, this series is not intended to be mental health treatment. If you are struggling, please seek personal professional help. Everyone needs support sometimes, being human is weird, complicated and can be hard. May we all sail in peace.