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.

Lost in the Darkness

 

(a post from four years ago)

 

            Robin Williams died on August 11, 2014 from suicide. It’s hard to believe that it’s been that long.

 

Williams was dealing with Lewy body dementia that progresses quickly and is marked by depression, anxiety, paranoia, and hallucinations. His death brought light to a difficult subject, and the discussions I heard afterward spoke of the mental illness aspect of suicide. Recent studies have taken the blame off those who kill themselves, and removed the guilt from family and friends who felt there was something more they could have done to save them.

 

Listening For Cranes

 

Whether it’s someone we love who died or we’re looking for our birth parents, we are searching for something lost and hoping to find.

 

We are trying to give form to our shadows.

 

            With adoption, you’ve already lost growing up with your birth parents. Even if you have wonderful, considerate, and loving adoptive parents, you will wonder what this other life would have been like, and if who your birth parents are has influence your life in some unseen way. 

 

Leavings

 

            Few of us look forward to change. We like routine and comfort. Yet over the course of our life, we will leave many places and people, and they will leave us. The reasons will be varied—new jobs, marriage, wanderlust, and sometimes what drew us together was one mutual interest, and when that had run its course, we drifted apart. Sometimes we simply sense that there is more waiting for us.

Valentine for Grief

 (When a partner dies, we begin an unwanted relationship with grief. My article was first published on Rebelle Society. ‪http://ow.ly/38xznn )

 

            *

 

I admit it’s unexpected, but I find Grief romantic. 

 

She gives me her undivided attention, but she’s badass. A tiger-woman. Wounded-little-bird woman. Wild, frontier woman with soft doe eyes and fishnet stockings. I never know what she’s going to do next.

 

Grief whispers in my ear, entices me to dig deeper into emotions than I want to go. Asks what I loved best about Evelyn, and when I tell her, she twists the knife. “You don’t have that anymore, do you!” Then she slams me to the floor and walks out the door.

 

Lost to Suicide

Laughter in the Darkness

Robin Williams died on August 11, 2014 from suicide. 

He was dealing with Lewy body dementia that progresses quickly and is marked by depression, anxiety, paranoia, and hallucinations. His death brought light to a difficult subject, and the discussions I heard afterward spoke of the mental illness aspect of suicide. They took the blame off those who kill themselves, and removed the guilt from family and friends who felt there was something more they could have done the night before that would have saved them.

The Worst Grief

Sometimes when we’re feeling bitten hard by grief, or just snarky, we try to prove that we are hurting the most, and that our grief is the worst that anyone has ever experienced. In the entire world. Ever.

I’ve lost a wife in her 40s, three beloved pets (well, one not so beloved), both parents (one to dementia), all my grandparents, a pair of in-laws, a friend to AIDS, two to murder, several to cancer, one to suicide, and a number of young friends to car accidents. As I walk among the tombstones in my personal cemetery, it would be hard to put them on a scale of the worst because they each hit me hard in different ways.