6 Months of Grief Project: Day 89

Tough Grieving Mermaid

This is Day 89 of my #6MonthsOfGrief Project. To learn more about this practice, feel free to visit Day One, where I explain this project in more detail.

Today I am a tough mermaid. My grief slithers around my body like seaweed. The sharks fear me. 

I am the Queen of Sorrow. I am the High Priestess of the Ocean of Tears. I am the starfish that lost all her limbs and is slowly growing them back.

The kelp hides me from the predators that find me on online dating sites and want to send me pictures of their penises. The sand grinds into my vagina to make the sweetest pearls. The salt of my tears drips off my breasts and feeds all the tiny fishes that swim through my mind. 

I have lost my merman. I have lost my Neptune. I must carry my own trident now. Poseidon is gone and now my own temper causes the tidal waves that destroy your village. I stand on the conch shell and scream your name, but you can't hear me because you are gone. I slice at my wrists with the clam shells that once lined our happy home. I let the blood drip down my limbs and the sea horses come to feed.

Today I am a tough mermaid, swirling in my grief.

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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:

• Filmmaker Gemma Green Hope made a short animation in memory of her grandmother 
• 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
• The Rules of Grief are for Other People by Shawn Doyle on The Good Men Project
• 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.