Sticks, Grief and Graveyards
I've sat on this blog post for a while. Somehow it didn't feel like the right time to share it. Now that Autumn has gone, the leaves have fallen away, nature has entered a period of restfulness for the winter months and we've had the full moon which I learned today another name for it (amongst others) is the mourning moon it seems fitting to hit the publish button. In the process of writing it I had to also some of my own that had been lurking beneath the surface. Funny how that happens isn’t it? You write something to put out into the world and then it lands into your life. The Law of Attraction in motion. This blog is a kind of summary of a strong undercurrent of the last 6-8 months pandemic life where we’ve all borne witnesses to the rise and fall of many things not only in our own personal life but in the wider happenings to the world and it's okay to feel the loss of them and grieve.
From the off I want to state that this post is not about dealing with the loss of a loved one. Obviously grief is primarily associated with that but I want to look a little closer at what it has to do with children, young people, nature and forest schools. Let me start by saying that it feels to me that life and death has become a subject that is more abstract for us to understand rather than part and parcel of the highs and lows of life and living. Death and loss happens in nature every year, all the time, in autumn and winter, in life cycles, if we see it all the time we learn to walk alongside it a bit more fluidly and comfortably. NOT that it becomes comfortable, we simply become familiar with emotions that stir up in us.
David Kessler a well known author on grief define it as this;
“Grief is the internal part of loss, how we feel. The internal work of grief is a process, a journey. It does not end on a certain day or date. It is as individual as each of us. Grief is real because loss is real. Each grief has its own imprint, as distinctive and as unique as the person we lost. The pain of loss is so intense, so heartbreaking, because in loving we deeply connect with another human being, and grief is the reflection of the connection that has been lost.”
The sense of loss and grief that I watched my older kids go through in lockdown helped me to realise that this cycle described below is far more entwined in life that I realised. Becoming familiar with the 5 steps of grief has helped me to have patience, capacity and kindness towards my kids when they’re struggling with the loss of something and when I don’t have as much capacity as needed to support them. These five steps apply to so many areas in our life, not just death. Off the top of my head here are some I can think of immediately broken friendships, snapped sticks, pets, dashed hopes, shattered dreams, crushed plans, expectations not meeting reality… the list goes on.
Here are the grief cycle 5 stages;
denial
anger
bargaining
depression
acceptance
As parents we want to take away the discomfort of our children, we don’t enjoy seeing them suffer or hurt. With little kids especially we want it to go away especially when they choose to display their big feelings in a loud, at the wrong time, aggressive, annoying, disruptive, embarrassing and interrupts everything going on around us manner. I don't know how many times I’ve pulled a magic item (treat, toy, random object) from my bag that I’ve reserved for such occasions. Lately I’ve tried to stop doing this all the time. Granted my kids are a little older now (as in past the toddler stage) so these volcanic explosions happen less frequently and please hear me, I’m not saying pulling magic items from the bottom of your bag like Mary Poppins is a bad strategy - its not at all, just, I’ve discovered another option along the way of parenting that I think is really important.
That other option I’m talking about is to allow your kids to go through the above stages of denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. What better place than childhood to learn how to allow ourselves to go through these stages and encourage our kids to develop depth and resources for themselves to carry them forward into all the rest of their years on the planet.
Here’s how I’ve seen it work in my life… I was having a discussion about this very topic when right then and there the whole thing played itself out. It was one of those beautiful, symbiotic moment of life where everything aligned and I looked like the most amazing parent, like ever!! Unbeknown to me there was even a picture that captured the exact moment. (Thanks for making me look good Lorna!) By the way, a little side note here. Despite what you think about yourself, how you parent or what others say about you, you are the most amazing parent on the planet for your kids. You are the best parent for your kids. There is no one better, not one. Let that sink into your head from a minute. Anyway, back to the story.
My littlest had found THE most perfect stick. It met all his needs of; chopping grass, sword fighting, the right amount of menace, large enough to represent threat, but not too large to be too heavy to carry, it was thin enough to be able to roast marshmallows and it even had a double roasting marshmallow capacity. Mid demonstration of his stick’s prowess in ‘whacking things’, the unimaginable happened… the stick snapped.
Immediately we were in the denial phase - 'can you fix it so it's the same again?' Glue, tape, rope, wattle and daub, spit, feathers (okay I digress here, but you get the point )you name it, it was suggested. As best I could I had to let him know that we could try all those things but that it wouldn’t have the same capacity for incredible feats of prowess like it did before. Cue the next phase of grief; anger. The red character from Inside Out, immediate tears, wailing, weeping and full on ‘this is a disaster of’ epic proportions, big feelings, I am inconsolable and everything you offer right now I am going to reject and be angry and take it all out on you. The good things about little kids is that they just own what’s going on for them right now in the moment without any suppression of feelings or filtering. We could learn alot from them! The bad thing is we have to soak it up. They have no capacity to hold and they just let the world now right then and there. It's an admirable quality really just highly inconvenient in the adult world at times.
At this point, what can you do? Usually I would go full on distract mode, full of suggestions, let’s go here, let’s do this, here have this and go for the Mary Poppins bag and tactic of how can I distract you from your pain. ... But in my zen moment of magic I decided all I could offer was comfort. Now, I find that because I’ve tried this other way a few times I have some capacity to muster up the strength to have enough emotional capacity to let this work itself through.
In this instance it was a, “oh buddy I’m so sorry your stick is broken. I can see how sad you are about it, would you like a cuddle or some time? I have a few ideas about what we can do but we can talk about them when you’re ready.”
Like clockwork, we were back to the next step of the process; bargaining- "can you do this? I’ll get this and you can do that?"
My response; “We can do all of those things but it won’t make the stick like how it was before."
Then the real depression set in. He didn’t want to engage in any conversation with any of his friends, other adults, the world, me. Nothing. He just hid.
“I'm so sorry your stick is broken, it’s awful, you let me know when you’re ready. Take your time’
Thankfully, it didn't last too long, because let’s be honest, it's hard to allow your little people to be down when you can think of so many solutions for them, it’s hard to have capacity and patience for it and it’s just hard to pause in the day to do stuff like this. Anyhow, we waited and he got there, the outcome was accepted and we moved on. It felt amazing. As part of that process we took the broken sticks and put them into a plant pot beside us and called it the stick graveyard a place where broken sticks can go and remind us that sometimes things happen and we don’t like it but that’s okay too.
The key I learned is to resist the temptation to distract from the pain or make it better immediately. This is a solid option but in these circumstances it's the convenient option and longer term I've found that it doesn’t serve me or them well. Allowing my kids to feel their emotions and go through the cycle of them in a supportive, safe nurturing environment is such a great gift. Imagine them as an adult having a pathway to process your feelings, even the crying, snotty, loud annoying ones and having a familiar route to move down with them in tow. An understanding of what’s normal for this, even though as we grow older we may choose to cope in different ways we have the neurological pathways established in our brains to return to.
What I’m trying to say is, we can’t just continually take the pain away from our kids, we
can’t always make it better. What we can do though is walk with them as they process their upset and hurts rather than magically making it go away. Sometimes the only way to deal with things is to go through them the hard, messy route. Brene Brown puts it like this 'normalising discomfort- learning how to stay standing in the midst of feelings unsure and uncertain is the foundation of courage.'
I'd love to hear your thoughts and experiences with this. Hit reply and tell me them or just say hey, either way I love hearing from you.
Rachel x
