Coyote

Laurie Fitz, Rick Bernardo, and I were talking on their Connections Radio show recently about how the symbolism and ways of Coyote are helpful when we’re coping with loss and grief.

The coyote has long been an important image for me. I enjoy watching them in Yosemite because they always seem to be alert to what is going on around them, although they can be hard to see, like in this photo. Sometimes I notice a coyote staring at me from the meadow, and it’s comforting because it feels like she is watching over me.

My friend Molly believed that Coyote was my spirit guide. I first thought this was because she thought I was witty like a coyote, but in the months after my wife Evelyn’s death, I think that Molly saw I had become too serious and I needed to play again. Playing, laughing, and dancing are hard after a death, because our hearts just don’t feel like doing them. It took me long time to warm up to the notion that it was okay to enjoy life again.

The coyote is a central animal in Native American mythologies, often appearing as a trickster that is associated with creativity and inventiveness. (This isn’t how we normally approach grief, but I think we should consider it.) The coyote represents survival, tenacity, and resourcefulness, and has the ability to adapt to new situations. When animal food was scarce in Yosemite, the coyote was willing to eat vegetation in order to survive. Wolves were not willing to do this and are no longer found there. This ability to adapt to new situations is important for those of us who are grieving because our lives have changed.

Coyote is good at seeing through illusions and getting to the truth of the matter. We quickly come to realize when people, who say they want to help, don’t want to listen to us share what is going on inside, but rather want to tell us how we need to grieve. We also see through the illusions of society that say we’ll be completely recovered in a month and then we need to be productive again. And we see through the illusions of religion that negate our emotions by saying that our loved one is in heaven so we shouldn’t grieve at all. They may be in heaven, but we are here on earth, and grieving their loss in our life is the right thing to do.

What coyote did was prepare me to take risks again. Coyote guided me safely across death’s barren wilderness and opened the way for joy and compassion to return.

Coyotes mate for life. One noontime, I was hiking through Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite when I heard a coyote howling and howling for its mate. It was a mournful sound, and it’s what I felt with my wife’s death. We mourn, we feel the depths of the loss, and we wonder how we are going to find the strength to go on and find a new vision to guide us.

Our life does not end with grief, even if it feels like it has. We need to figure out what we need to do to survive, and then do it. Sometimes we will have to be aggressive to get what we need, pushing people aside who don’t want us to change. Most of the time we can be gentle as we listen to our hearts and do what it tells us. 

Find the path that feels right to you, and ignore what others say you have to do if it doesn’t feel right. Be cunning with Grief. The conversation goes both ways.