Autumn is a season of loss, especially evident now as woodland trees fringe gold and scarlet, sidewalks crunch with fallen leaves and acorns, and the verdant garden dies back. It is also a season of harvest as we gather in what will nourish us long after the garden is gone — pumpkins piled at roadside stands, farmers market tables laden with sweet potatoes and apples and winter squashes.
As a grief counselor I know the paradoxical truth that loss and harvest go hand in hand, whatever the season of the year. Whatever the season of life. There are times when loss rips through us right to the core of our being, leaving us shattered, exposed and vulnerable. Yet the devastation reveals, and can ultimately strengthen, our bedrock, our essence, our innate resilience of body and spirit. “When loss rips off the doors of the heart” as poet Danna Faulds says, we discover what is still there. Like a farmer gleaning the nearly empty fields, we search for and gather in what will sustain and nurture us through the long winter ahead.
In the midst of all that is gone, how do we discover what endures? We begin, paradoxically, by allowing ourselves to name and to grieve our losses. Loss teaches us, through the absence of something important, what is most important to us.
Writer Toko-pa Turner calls this painful process “the soul’s acknowledgement of what we value.” This suddenly clear, intense connection to what we value begins the harvest, our gathering of sustenance and nourishment for the new season that is upon us. In Turner’s words, “Grief is the honour we pay to that which is dear to us. And it is only through the connection to what we cherish that we can know how to move forward.”
As you carry your own personal losses while finding your way forward in a world radically altered by COVID-19, it may be helpful to name those losses — as well as to affirm what is NOT lost. To fully acknowledge what is gone, AND to allow yourself to glean what endures.
You may wish to write as you reflect on the following questions. Allow yourself to speak freely, without censoring or editing, naming whatever comes to mind: people, relationships, activities, beliefs/values, aspects of yourself. Big or small, it is all important.
In this moment, what is lost?
In this moment, what is not lost? What endures? What still matters?
In this moment, what might grow, is growing, or has grown from loss?
In this moment, what are you grateful for?
If you are writing, circle anything that you want to “harvest” — anything that speaks to you, that can nurture or sustain you in your loss. Set a timer for 5 minutes and write freely about whatever you have chosen.
Why is this kind of personal harvest so important? So that we can learn not merely to survive, but to live again.
Last week a deeply grieving mother shared with me Simon Lambert’s striking image of a severely injured tree finding a way to continue to live, bent and twisted yet growing into the radiant sunlight. The resilience of the tree resonated with her own resilience, a vivid affirmation of what endures as well as what is still possible. It called to mind Black Elk’s invocation for his suffering people, my own hope for you in this difficult time.
It may be that some little root of the sacred tree still lives.
Nourish it then
That it may leaf
And bloom
And fill with singing birds!
Danna Faulds quote from “Allow”, in Go In and In: Poems from the Heart of Yoga
Toko-pa Turner quote from her book Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home
Black Elk’s Earth Prayer: https://www.indigenouspeople.net/blackelk.htm