6 Months of Grief Project: Day 73

My body is still alive.

This is Day 73 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 have a large body. I lift weights, so my muscles are dense and strong. My body is still in grief and I am so tired. Sometimes it feels like I barely survive these days of my life. My body is still alive, even though I often feel a numbing deadness inside of it. This numb emptiness frightens me in a deep, animal place. It is the numb emptiness of non-existence. In the old days, I would hurt my body in some way, just to feel it again. I would cut or burn or bruise myself, as a reminder that the numb emptiness is wrong. The deadness inside is lying to me. I am alive.

I remember talking to a friend once who was deep into the S/M scene in San Francisco. She first started going to bondage clubs while in deep grief and the sex play she willing participated in helped her return to her body. She was literally "beaten" back in to her body. I think my weightlifting practice serves a similar purpose for me - it forces me back into my body, whether I like it or not. It forces me to feel my muscles, my strength, my power, my energy. It forces me to remember that I am alive.

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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.