Listen to Gayle reading the blog aloud.
Hello my friend,
Until recently, I didn’t know there was such a thing as saltwater grief. But Patty Lennon, my friend, mentor, and colleague, shared her experience of it, and my body response with full on spontaneous tears told me it was true.
Salt is an essential mineral for healthy living. Water, also essential for survival, moves through our somatic systems sustaining life in our body.
Saltwater grief is the merging of these precious resources as tears – the salt-and-water saline in our eyes — expressing a particular emotion or intuitive knowing that lets us know we are releasing a loss, ready to go.
Saltwater grief is a healing elixir, bestowed on us to help us become who we are meant to be.
Like Patty, I am an ocean girl. I feel a kinship with the fluid open caring space of liquid dark — the blue, green, teal. But you can be a mountain maven, a desert dancer, or a forest forager to experience saltwater grief. There are no exceptions or boundaries for grieving.
We think of grief as a response to the death of a loved one. Yet, our normal, extraordinary life presents many opportunities for grief, as this beautiful graphic illustrates.
Expanding the definition of grief this way assists us in kindly and generously feeling it.
All of us in this world are grieving something since the beginning of Covid, if not prior. Life gives us these opportunities for grieving what has been, and what is, so that we might make ready for what is to come.
Saltwater grief exists in service to what we are to become together.
And becoming is our constant present situation – alive, paying full attention, without any expectation of results.
Take a moment or two and reflect on the changes you are living through. Changes in friendships, communities, choices, traditions, who you are. Everything is changing.
Let me add a few reflections closer to the topic of finances. What has changed with your job, housing, bank balances, health care, and insurance protection?
Are you changing and adapting with it? Or are you grasping tight – holding on for dear life?
Saltwater grief is the gift assisting us through these myriad changes and transitions. Join me in saltwater grieving. Let’s feel our losses, release our pain, and practice the potentials – right here in the salty brine.
Honoring my saltwater grief,
Tiny Body Practice
Yes! More SoulSpacing
I’m on a mission to make soul-spacing a regular, popular daily activity. Hey, can you see it as an Olympic event? No? Me neither. But what a great idea…
Your tiny practice is simply this:
Click on the Walk with Me video.
Take three breaths.
Walk with me.
Then, engage 15 minutes of soulspacing… YOUR nourishing space.
Notice your vitality during and after your soulspacing.
Deepening Practice
Walk With Me
by Gayle | Aug 26, 2021
Hello my friend,
Our summer weather seems to mirror grieving at times. In Maine, the fog holds us for hours on end. This past weekend we were visited by Henri, the hurricane turned tropical storm, running up the east coast. Rich and I typically walk in early mornings before the downpours begin, reliably checking our weather app before donning our shoes.
If you are feeling the tenderness of grief, particularly the saltwater kind, come walk with me. Below is a reminder from our illustration from earlier this month.
Walking with me is a gentle nudge for you to engage SoulSpacing, your way. Gift yourself this skillful practice and keen choice for tending to whatever is moving through you or holds you stuck in place.
Tiny Body Practice
Soul Spacing with Saltwater Grief
Tiny Practice Audio
Practice Preparation
Consider the list of losses above – beyond death, or another alive for you, or worldwide collective losses, or losses for our planet. Let your heart open to these realities. Take your losses into SoulSpacing.
Pre-reflection:
As you enter your soulspace, consider:
What losses are ready for my attention, right now?
What losses might I be avoiding?
Say a prayer: may I be open to receiving losses ready to be experienced.
Practice
Pause before walking and take three gentle breaths.
Pay close attention to your heart space.
With each step, bring to mind your saltwater loss – ready for attention.
If nothing specific arises, continue walking with a kind heart giving and receiving gentle attention.
Let your body expand into nature feeling and sensing the vegetation, the earth, the air, the sounds, the temperature – becoming a part of the space, soulspacing.
Slow your pace as you drink in the space around you.
If or when, feelings of grief arise, you will know by body responses. You might feel a throb in your throat, or tears pooling in your eyes, or tightness in your chest, or some other sensation or pressure. Allow these sensations to arrive uninhibited. Allow the space in nature to experience the grief with you.
Just flow. Let it go.
Repeat this mantra for support.
Just flow. Let it go.
Just flow. Let it go.
Just flow. Let it go.
Notice how your grief shifts with attention.
Notice how soulspacing in nature supports feeling your grief.
Notice how your body feels.
Notice the state of your mind.
Post Practice
Ask yourself, (or write in your journal about) these questions:
- What truths are making themselves known through soulspacing?
- How does experiencing my saltwater grief benefit me? Benefit others?
- What am I learning, or relearning, about grief and my soulspaces?