Grief, Joy & Fellowship
Western culture is quite narrow in its individualist and thus isolationist orientations and objectives. Although it has nobly popularized self-help, ‘retreat’ and various processes of self-development, this all too often takes the form of solo activity, whether in the therapist’s office or on the yoga mat in a tropical paradise. And so, while great personal healing, restoration and transformation may ensue, often this is at the cost of further widening the gulf between one another.
Moreover, as men, we are taught culturally to be independent problem solvers; that although we may be surrounded by relationships of one sort or another, we (should) only have ourselves to rely on for help – for to accept, welcome and even seek out support (especially from other men) is to admit weakness and even defeat. Indeed, cultured to constantly assert ourselves in the pecking order of other men and thus internalising the belief that other men are not our equals, it is rare that we come to view men as relational supports we can trust and rely upon, and for whom we can feel honoured and called to do the same.
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Meanwhile, life happens. And when life happens, grief happens.
Grief is not benign. Grief can completely change the way we look at the world and ourselves, even rewriting our very belief systems. Sometimes our grief is so immense, we flail, stumbling to gain a foothold. We crack and continue cracking in ways we never knew we could (or in ways we never knew we needed to). Our certainties and even our sense of identity can experience a shift of mammoth proportions.
All humans need to grieve. As men, we are not immune to grief, nor to the need to intentionally work through it, despite being taught to minimize our disappointments, regrets, lamentations, sorrows and even our traumas. While temporarily quite useful and necessary through war times or other crises, stoicism (often men’s default coping mechanism) does not offer a life-long sustainable benefit and can, along with spiritual/ altruistic bypassing, neglect, dismiss or pathologise our humanness. Nor is self-medicating through addictions a productive strategy in lieu of grieving. Regardless of how often we misuse alcohol, food, cocaine, meth, sex, porn, video gaming, gambling or work, we will not and cannot avoid having to honour ALL of our journeys, including our grief, sooner or later.
We need to work through the devastation of failed partnerships, major illnesses, departed loved ones, estranged children, aging, lost jobs, physical injuries we never recover from and social injustices that may indirectly or directly target us. We need to recognise our woundedness. We need to take seriously our pain and suffering, adequately moving through it in order to ‘whole’-istically integrate all aspects of ourselves, our lives and our histories. This allows not only for being fully human but also for being fully alive. For the depth of grief we allow ourselves to experience is precisely proportionate to the depth joy that life also has instore for us to experience.
Sometimes we feel broken by life, which is as much for our undoing as it is for our rebuilding - our reclamation - however. Reclaiming our humanness sometimes requires claiming our brokenness, often facilitated in proximity with others similarly opening into and out of their own sense of brokenness. By gathering as men, we subvert our inherited reflex to socially isolate and to alienate ourselves from the healing and transformational power of each others' fellowship. This is to say that accepting, acknowledging and validating our own pain is made easier when others are nearby to intentionally make space for it. This letting out can then allow for letting in - releasing our fears and sorrows certainly makes room for hopes and joys. For to be fully human is to simultaneously be able to hold dearly our sorrowfulness and joyfulness and to understand that to experience the gifts of one we must truly honour the other.
