6 Months of Grief Project: Day 72

Staring Into the Emptiness

This is Day 72 of my #6MonthsOfGrief Project. To learn more about this practice, feel free to visit Day One, where I explain this project in more detail.

I'm finally remembering my dreams again. I've been "dream traveling" through a spiral cave, much like the Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum in Malta, which is believed to be the oldest prehistoric underground temple in the world. I was lucky enough to visit the Hypogeum when I was a teenager, and there truly are no words to explain the energy, power and deep spiritual history of that place. It is the most ancient of Goddess sites, honoring the art and creativity of the death journey.

Every time I dream of my own spiral death cave, I visit a deeper layer and meet different people and entities. Some seem to be humans in grief, like myself - going through their personal spiral journey of sorrow. Some seem to live in this cave, either by force or by choice. Some seem to be more energetic, spirit entities, appearing and disappearing. It is dark, with only candles and oil lamps to light our way. Sometimes it is moist and wet and there is actual plant life growing, deep under the earth. Sometimes it is dry and dusty. I know it is an honor to be in this place, and I mostly walk wide-eyed and in awe of all I am seeing and feeling.

There are paintings and carvings on the walls, but I can't always see them because it is so dark or my tears are making my eyes blurry. It's quite crowded, which is interesting. You would think being in a spiral cave of sorrow would be a solitary journey, but I'm often jostled by the amount of people, entities and animals roaming about. I wake up from these dreams realizing that while in waking life, I feel the most alone I have ever felt in my life, in the dream world I am surrounded by presences whom are all participating in some aspect of the sorrow journey, be it as a helper, a sentinel, or a participant.

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I am very aware that this project can bring up a lot around yours or other's grief and loss, I will always follow every post with some online grief support resources that have helped me. Please feel free to let me know of online support that you have found healing in your grief, as well:

Art with Grief:

• Photographer [Sarah Treanor] Takes Moving Self-Portraits to Cope with Her Fiance's Death by Jillian Wong
• When the Fall Comes, a film about Grief by Adriana Marchione
• Self-Portraits: Expressing Emotion Through Art on What's Your Grief?
• The Hard Romance of Grief by Mark Liebenow
• The poetry of John O’Donohue

Resources for Widows:

• Widowed Village
• Camp Widow

• Soaring Spirits International

Living with Grief Resources:

• Modern Loss's excellent resource list
• Grief Bibliography on Grief Healing

• Teresa “TL” Bruce's What to Say When Someone Dies
• They Brought Cookies: For A New Widow, Empathy Eases Death's Pain by Ann Finkbeiner on NPR
• A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit

• Megan Devine’s Refuge in Grief

• The Geography of Sorrow: Francis Weller on Navigating Our Loses, interviewed by Tim McKee in Sun Magazine

• How to Be a Friend in Deed by Bruce Feiler in the New York Times

• 12 Things to Know About the First Year of Grieving Someone You Can’t Live Without by Laurie Costanza in Elephant Magazine

And remember, I am sharing this project on a variety of platforms, including my Instagram, Twitter, & Facebook feeds, as well as my Pinterest page on Grief. I use the hashtag #6MonthsOfGrief, so it can easily be found on any platform. Please share this project with anyone you think might need it.

Thank you, and see you tomorrow.