Dark Night 2 of 4: Weaving the Shadows Together
Brené Brown, in her book Braving the Wilderness, writes: “The
wilderness is an untamed, unpredictable place of solitude and searching. It is
a place as dangerous as it is breathtaking, a place as sought after as it is
feared. But it turns out to be the place of true belonging, and it’s the
bravest and most sacred place you will ever stand.”
As I hiked alone, I knew that
I was in a place I didn’t control, and even though I prepared as well as I
could to deal with accidents, changes in the weather, mountain lions and bears,
nature had its own set of rules. Every time a stick cracked, I was on edge, not
knowing what creature might just passing by or getting ready to attack. I figured that if an
animal was heavy enough to break a stick, then it certainly had big teeth and
was enormously hungry. Yet the stunning landscape around me left me in awe. I wasn’t going to give
this up just because of my fears, irrational or prudent.
I hiked alone not because I
felt isolated in my grief, which I did, but because I couldn’t find
anyone who wanted to hike 12 hours a day. Then I discovered that I liked the
solitude of the trail. I could move at my own pace, spend as much time as I
wanted sitting and watching the land and its creatures go about their daily
lives. There were no human conversations to distract me from listening to nature. As
the Ahwahnechees and John Muir discovered before me, the wilderness was a
sacred place, and it felt like home.
When grief sets us down in a
wilderness we don’t know, we’re neither aware of the dangers nor of the beauty we might encounter. Yet we fear the unknown because we’ve read too many tragic stories
of those who lost their way on this path, and our imaginations go into
overdrive. It is hard to stand in the wilderness and let ourselves be
vulnerable to its reality.
When we face our fears and head
into the wilderness, whether this is nature’s wilderness, returning to
school at age 50 to study for what we’ve always wanted to do, or standing up to
a boss who is making a morally wrong decision, we find resources and
strengths we weren’t sure we had.
Grief leaves us in a dark
wilderness we don’t know. We cannot see where we are. Mystics would use this time of darkness to move closer
to God. The rest of us try to take this raw material and form new lives. When we
are creative with grief and express our experiences in words, music, or art,
then we take control of the narrative.
I am at home when I’m sitting on the side of a mountain and looking at
a hundred miles of wilderness. I feel the Presence that holds the wonder and
chaos of this world together. As I explore the wilderness inside me, I discover
hard truths about myself and learn to trust my heart more, and learn how to soften the rough edges for others.
It takes courage to face our
fears and hike into grief’s wilderness. It takes bravery to set out each day in
a new direction not knowing what dangers we might face or what will happen to
us. The trails through grief’s wilderness are indistinct, sometimes, I think, on
purpose, because they force us to take risks, step outside our comfort zone,
and follow an unknown path.
When we stand next to each
other in grief, and help each other not drift into oblivion, we find kinship
and create hope. The wilderness around us reveals the beauty of what it means
to be alive.
What is the wilderness that you fear?
What is the wilderness that you fear?
*
Links
Dark Night One – Tim Farrington. Shattered Illusions
Dark Night Two – Brené Brown. Weaving the Shadows
Together
Dark Night Three – Kathleen Norris. Losing Our Sandals
Dark Night Four – Mirabai Starr. Integrating Our Loss
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