Two weekends ago, I spent four days in a Grief and Loss Recovery Training where I did 40 hours of professional development and a heap of my own personal work too. In my role as a mental health chaplain in Vallejo, in my encounters with many of you here at Grace, in my experience living on planet earth as a human in 2025, I find that under all of the anxiety, the fear, the anger, the defensive humor (my personal choice to avoid feeling), the numbing behaviors, the blame and the judgment…is grief. It’s all just grief.
Just a few weeks ago I sat in front of a 20 something young man in the hospital in Vallejo who told me, with his head hung and his story directed at the floor, about his disappointment, his anger…his separation from his family as a result of his inability to control himself. When I said, “it sounds like it has been very hard to not be heard, not have anywhere to put small emotions that become too big for anyone…” he looked up at me, with surprise on his face, and his eyes welled up with restrained tears. I said, “It seems like you aren’t angry as much as you are just…really sad. Is that right?” and he let the tears begin to fall. I asked him if he wanted a hug and he said yes…and then he openly sobbed for many minutes what felt to me like a lifetime of broken heartedness, enormous shame and dishonored grief. I don’t think I have ever had the experience of an adult man, a stranger, emptying that much pain onto my literal shoulders, neck and back and I will never forget it. It was a sacrament; a way for him to become Whole, perhaps Holy. It was sanctifying for me as well. A grace I could not have predicted or engineered because I will never be as creative or cool or generous as God is.
You know what I see? Far too many of us are walking around with a broken heart.
Grief is a natural reaction to change or loss of any kind and is often just the response to a change in, or end of, any familiar pattern of behavior. When we hear the word “grief” we often associate it with loss through death of a loved one, but it can also be the loss that comes from divorce, moving, job loss, loss of a pet, or even something like a loss of trust, loss of security, of dreams or even identity. In our culture, we aren’t really taught how to deal with our grief in very healing or useful ways, and we all carry it around with us as a result, oftentimes unaware of the weight of it. This is all pretty normal. My experience in my recent training is that there are profound tools to honor, move and resolve all kinds of grief.
Some of the myths and misinformation we all receive about grief fall under these statements:
- “Don’t feel bad”
- “Replace the loss”
- “Grieve alone (don’t burden others)”
- “Be strong”
- “Keep busy”
- “It just takes time (time heals all wounds)”
We all say these things to each other! I know I’ve said them to people, even said them to myself. We ask, “How are you?” to someone we know is “going through it” because we want to care for them and acknowledge their pain, and what do most people say? “Oh, thanks for asking, I’m FINE.” Fine? What, like, 5 out of 10, middle of the road, no big deal, I got this? Or is it something more like: I don’t want to be a burden, I’m strong, I’ve been keeping busy (see above list). F.I.N.E. may not be much more than “Feelings Inside, Not Expressed” and it’s how most of us were socialized from a very young age to respond, to deal with pain and grief.
“But Sarah!” you may now be saying, “we can’t all just walk around and start telling the truth about grief to each other in the street! We have to have manners, we have to behave, we have to get on with it!” Ah…yes. I understand. And may I gently ask in reply: how is that working for all of us? How is it building our families, our intimate partnerships, our churches, our school boards, our town, our nation? Are we just suppressing what longs to be validated and named, and separating ourselves from one another with anger and jokes? Practically speaking, of course, we cannot all just verbalize our grief in the middle of a Tuesday on Main Street to an acquaintance – I know this. But what about paying attention differently to the ways in which we ask, answer and show up for this question in our lives? What about the heart’s longing to heal, to be present, to live a full and joyful life in the midst of loss and change?
We all encounter challenges to our belief systems, no more so than these days it seems: challenges to our beliefs about our political systems, our economy, our healthcare systems, our faith, even about the goodness of humankind. These challenges and changes can nudge our grief forward and make it so that we cannot pretend anymore. There are concrete ways to relieve the grief we carry, and I would love to what I have learned with this community.
Ultimately, the heart needs a witness. Feelings beg to be named, people long to voice things left unsaid and to have these things lovingly heard by another.
On Sunday, we will hear Jesus say, “Listen, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you” (Luke 6: 27). How shall we do this, and I mean really do this? In order to have hearts that can give and receive this kind of radical, culture shifting love, I believe we have to let ourselves grieve and be made Whole again. Trust that the deep work of our hearts in a time of change will make us Holy. Let the work of grief become gratitude, and watch it bloom into profound freedom in our own hearts. The kind of freedom that lets us turn the other cheek, give away our coat and our shirt in the same challenging, vulnerable moment (Luke 6: 29) and allows us to “love our enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return” (Luke 6: 35).
See you on Sunday.
Sarah
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