Who I am.

I write about the landscape of grief, nature, and the wisdom of fools. The author of four books, my essays, poems, and reviews have been published in over 50 journals, including in the Huffington Post and Colorado Review. I’ve won the River Teeth Nonfiction Book Award, the Chautauqua and Literal Latte’s essay prizes, and my work has been nominated for four Pushcart Prizes and named a notable by Best American Essays. My account of hiking in Yosemite to deal with my wife’s death, Mountains of Light, was published by the University of Nebraska Press. http://www.markliebenow.com.

Wednesday, January 24, 2018

Courage In the Wilderness

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.”
                                   
For me, the wilderness of grief was paired with the wilderness of Yosemite because I went there after my wife died. There, in the solitude of nature, as the noise and rush of city life faded away, and I listened to the sounds of nature, I could hear what grief was trying to tell me.

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?

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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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