Actively Engaging Grief
Everyone grieves in their own way, but even though I am fundamentally impatient, there is a method to my madness.
“How are you doing?”
If you’re a griever, you know this one. It’s not the casual howzit going? But the darkish howdy wrapped in a cloud of concern.
Seven months ago, if I answered, “Oh, I’m speed-grieving,” my Henny-Youngman snark should have signaled the ridiculous — like speed dating, speed reading, or a good ole fashioned quickie. But instead of wink-wink grin-grin, I could have been singing “The Pope Smokes Dope” in church.
My quick retort: “Of course, I’m just joking.” But I wasn’t.
The EKR Kops (Elisabeth Kübler-Ross) expected me to swallow my grief pills — the entire 12-month course before I could be happy, social, and creative. I don’t disagree with their prescription because the grieving process is a mystery — but so is the living process, the creative process, and the loving process. Why do we get stuck in life? How do we get unstuck? It’s all a mystery.
I switched to: “I’m actively engaging my grief.”
No one knew what it meant, and everyone imagined I was taking the pills — my entire regimen of Grievirax!
Well, it almost worked. Two hours ago, a close friend warned me of the “widowhood effect” — the 66% increased mortality risk in the months following the loss of a spouse from physiological impact of grief.
Whoa! And in today’s mail from Hospice Atlanta:
“At six months since your loss, you may be surprised — and perhaps disappointed — to not be further along in the healing process…”
Jeez! Let’s mention the unmentionable: I’m actively engaging my grief which is SPEED GRIEVING!
Look what I found in this morning’s Washington Post:
My husband of 20 years died seven months ago. He had been sick, but his death was unexpected.
We had a decent marriage. We were not head-over-heels in love, and that wasn’t our goal. We were good partners in life. I want to say I loved him, but maybe I don’t even know what that means. I have not grieved for him. I am sad for him that he lost the chance to fulfill his dreams. But I have at most had 10 seconds of a sob.
I discovered right away that I really like living alone. I like experiencing the world through my own eyes with no thought of a partner. I like myself better single than in a relationship.
But still, I feel something is really wrong that I haven’t grieved. I am not a cold or unfeeling person. What in God’s name is wrong here?
~ Not Grieving
Wow. Twenty years and “ten seconds of sob?” Is this speed-grieving or a grief-bypass operation?
If “actively engaging grief” is “speed grieving,” let’s explore them in reverse order:
GRIEVING — Grief is real.
We may feel grief as the straightforward pain of loss or a life-consuming restructuring of being. Either way, the body instinctively shudders and shakes off the weight of sorrow.
Frances Weller, the author of The Wild Edge of Sorrow, explained how the ancients released this body of loss — and did not get sick in 12-18 months! He explained to Sun Magazine:
The Pueblo people of the Southwest, for example, have “crying songs” to help move grief along. The Mohawk traditions have the “condolence ritual,” where they tend to the bereaved with an elegant series of gestures, such as wiping tears from the eyes with the soft skin of a fawn. The healers in those traditions know it is not good to carry grief in the body for a long time. [Sun Mag]
I’m no Pueblo (and maybe a Brujo), but my crying song, Malcolm Middleton’s The Ballad of Fuck All, suddenly feels prescient.
Switching metaphors, Michael Frame, in the Geometry of Grief, explains how grief opens the door to transcendence:
Grief is a response to an irreversible loss… To generate grief rather than sadness, the thing lost must carry great emotional weight, and it must pull back the veil that covers a transcendent aspect of the world.
Yep. My Henny Youngman self might explain how the old dies and the transcendent emerges differently: “Me and my wife, we both died, but I got to keep my body.”
Last night, at a cocktail party, I shared how I inherited Karen’s role as the “intimacy-sniffing dog.”
By being unzipped (that veil pulling back), I now lean heart-first into personal encounters. Just yesterday, laying on my yoga mat before class, I turned to the young African American girl beside me, “You always unroll your mat next to mine. What’s your name?”
She turned and smiled, “Tiffany.”
“Hi, I’m Bruce.” Tiffany was thrilled to be recognized. I realized it was something Karen would do. In my imagination, Karen was smiling because grief and love are inseparable.
Singer Nick Cave, who lost his son after a fall from a cliff, goes straight to this point:
It seems to me, that if we love, we grieve. That’s the deal. That’s the pact.
Grief and love are forever intertwined. Grief is the terrible reminder of the depths of our love and, like love, grief is non-negotiable.
ENGAGING
Nine years ago, when Karen collapsed in my arms as the elevator doors opened, my first thought was, “This is really happening.”
A silly thought, but if you slow down the words: this… is… really… happening, it becomes a soul alarm: “All hands on deck; prepare to snap out of the dream!”
When the wind picks up, and the sky turns dark, we engage with what’s… really… happening… “Cover the windows, fill the sandbags, turn on the radio, seek shelter!” Extreme low pressure produces a storm.
An irreversible drop in emotional pressure generates grief. “This is really happening” is a wake-up call. Instead of filling sandbags, I engaged my grief – emptying Karen’s closets, painting rooms, and playing The Ballad of Fuck All.
Take my hand
Dragging me down
Through the ground
Darker and down
Down down down
All the way down
ACTIVELY
Action verbs guided my seven-month journey: Circulating, painting, dog-walking, hosting, cooking, molting, metamorphosing, dancing, and resonating. Let’s not forget the shamanic figure skater who divorced his friends to conserve his angular momentum. “Brujo!”
Activation and mobilization help us move through the grieving process. Author therapist Deb Dana, a leading practitioner of polyvagal theory, focuses on the nervous system’s role in healing emotional trauma. The vagus nerve wanders through the body from the brain stem to the colon to stimulate bodily functions, including digestion, heart rate, and breathing. According to polyvagal theory, the vagus nerve governs how our nervous system responds to the stresses of living — and loss — to maintain an emotional equilibrium.
Deb Dana’s Hierarchy of Response describes three energetic states:
1. Safety and Connection (Ventral Vagal)
2. Engagement through Action (Sympathetic Response)
3. Shutting Down (Dorsal Vagal)
The earliest evolutionary circuit, the gut-centered Dorsal Vagal, describes feeling withdrawn, foggy, numb, and disconnected from self and others. This is the immobilized despair of deep grief.
The newest evolutionary circuit of the nervous system is Ventral Vagal. It connects us eye-to-eye and heart-to-heart with others. Synonymous with Bondo, this state is infused with curiosity, compassion, and co-regulation. If the grief journey takes us from Dorsal to Ventral (and from brokenness to Bondo), how do we move from one world to another?
Taking action (the sympathetic response) kick-starts the movement between two states. Even getting off the couch, walking in the park, dancing to wild music, practicing yoga, or bumping into a friend can up-regulate your state from Dorsal to Ventral. Sometimes called fight or flight, the sympathetic nervous system was designed to activate survival actions — Snake on the path!
Deb Dana also describes a vagal brake that allows us to mobilize the sympathetic response without triggering cortisol and a racing heart. Mobilization described my manic phase — music blaring in my headphones while serenely repairing walls, painting rooms, emptying filing cabinets, and tossing clothes until 1:00 am. I mobilized my nervous system to paint my way into the next chapter of my life.
Transformation through the Octave
Polyvagal theory looks at how the nervous system responds to grief. The Octave looks at transformation as rising vibration. My lifelong inquiry into the Octave informed my journey from shock and despair to restoration and uplift.
Karen warned me, “The world doesn’t need another intellectual, spiritual book,” but let me explain the method to my madness (see my book Uplift for the full story):
The musical octave is more than music. The notes Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-La-Si-Do are based on whole numbers. For example: The Octave is a music interval defined by the ratio 2:1. Sing it, and you can feel the glorious completion when the pitch is doubled. The ratios 3:2 and 4:3 describe a fifth and a fourth in the scale. Whole numbers are a good thing. Having two children feels better than having 1 1/2 kids.
The musical octave mirrors our transformational journey with a beginning, some complications, and a resolution. We watch movies like Meryl Streep in Sophie’s Choice to experience the emotional terror of Auschwitz or Dirty Dancing to swoon with summer’s last dance. Every sitcom is an octave of set-up, conflict, and resolution. The Octave runs through symphonies, plays, pop songs, novels, illness, healing, and every human enterprise that carries risk and reward.
The Greeks used theater as a cathartic Octave to transform societal grief. Sophocles wrote the play Ajax 2,500 years ago to help warriors transform their grief upon their return to society during a century of war and plague. It is a wrenching war story that takes the audience on an octave journey of violence, pride, fate, and hopelessness. Ultimately, the great general Ajax takes his own life, seeing no way forward. In another play, the theater fell to weeping when Phrynichus staged The Fall of Miletus.
When you enter the theater in a bubbly mood and leave transformed — this is the Octave.
In this same way, I have been staging The Fall and Rebirth of Bruce Miller for the past seven months.
Henny Youngman might schmaltz about my tragicomedy and relational pratfalls, but puhleez; it’s no-easy to face the rawness of each new act. Speed grieving doesn’t bypass anything; it accelerates the pain.
The Octave is associated with the musical scale. If you look at the piano keyboard, a black key is missing between Mi and Fa and Si and Do. You can hear the pitch scrunch up between those two shorter intervals if you sing the scale. This discontinuity in the rate of rise between notes explains the missing black keys. This discontinuity also explains why life unfolds with unexpected shifts challenging our expectations.
The transformational Octave was introduced by philosopher, mystic G.I. Gurdjieff (1866 - 1949). His central observation: Human efforts naturally get sidetracked at key points in the Octave (the Mi-Fa and Si-Do intervals). Unexpected events or “outside shocks” enter at these intervals to upset the norm and push us into higher gear.
Even benign vectors force dramatic change: When your partner announces, “We need to talk,” life takes off in a new direction. I would add biopsy results, letters from the IRS, layoff announcements, and even parking tickets to the list of outside shocks.
Here’s an analogy: Each stair step is required to rise a uniform seven inches in your house. When the steps are equal, you can climb without looking at your feet, even while lugging bags of groceries. If a wonky carpenter created a four-inch rise between the third and fourth steps, the funky step (the unexpected shock) would send your eggs flying. The mind assumes uniform steps, but there are no straight lines in life or nature. The Octave throws curveballs at these intervals — and at the mind's expectations — especially if you had no intention of baking an egg souffle for your guests.
Life is like a wild river.
A river follows natural laws, which means it goes where it pleases. Grief from a significant loss throws you and your canoe into the whitewater. I remember taking Ocoee River trips with Karen in Tennessee. The outfitters gave us a paddle, helmet, vest, safety instructions, and the fear of God to stay on the raft. It was a leisurely ride until we hit the section designed for the 1996 Olympics to challenge the best kayakers in the world. One after another, we faced an octave of turbulent crescendos — 1) Tombstone, 2) Mikey’s, 3) Blue Hole, 4) Best Ledge, 5) Smiley Face, 6) Slam Dunk. You’re stuck in an inflatable raft to face each drop. Like with grief, there’s no getting off.
Following the analogy, I named my seven months of grieving: 1) Shock, 2) Mania, 3) Molting, 4) Creativity, 5) Cocoon, 6) Brujo, and 7) Resonances.
On the Ocoee, the finale is 7) Humongous. If you approach Humongous at the wrong angle, you will flip. If you hit it with insufficient speed, the raft will stall, slide backward, then spin slowly until the raft dumps all aboard. Imagine a mechanical bull slowly, then suddenly tossing a group of paddlers. As we approached Humongous, we watched the vortex swallow the raft ahead of us and jettison the paddlers into the raging river.
“Stroke hard,” Tully, our guide, commanded. The five of us pulled hard, ramming our raft through the raging water, pushing through the maelstrom, over-shooting into the pool below, and slamming our raft into a group of innocents chilling at the river’s edge.
“Excuse us.”
What does this story have to do with Actively Engaging Grief? We chose to actively raft the Ocoee, knowing we would paddle through all seven drops into the vortex with no getting off.
On a grieving journey, you face similar points of no return.
When Karen died, I was in shock. After the first few nights of terror, I realized I faced a minefield of feelings, but eventually, I would have to get up off the couch. There’s no right way to do this, but I chose to get off the couch right from the start. Every step of my life had been guided, so why should this be different?
After months of grieving without a discernible win, I wanted one more inning at bat. That’s when I noticed how my over-60 friends were also seeking to reinvent themselves. We were all on the same team, so it didn’t matter who put the run on the board. Hitting it out of the park became my metaphor for “escape velocity” — the speed an object needs to break free from the pull of the planet’s gravity. How much energy is required to break free from an old life and into the new?
This is a serious question. How much energy, focus, determination, outside support, and love does it take to move the needle in your life? Suppose that propellant was Bondo? A rocket can’t escape straight to the moon powered by the propulsion in its tank; it uses the earth’s gravity like an orbital slingshot to reach escape velocity. Similarly, we need boosts of Bondo (from friends, therapists, mentors, and lovers) to reinvent our lives.
With several friends at reinvention points, I put out feelers. My two friends with the greatest need were in do-it-yourself mode — one launching a massage practice and the other a marketing business, and not interested. Another friend took my branding advice but didn’t understand the Bondo of working together.
A little advice: Having spent most of my life in a DIY mode, I learned we need each other for the orbital slingshot. In this way, Bondo describes the network effect, where the mutuality of Curiosity, Connection, Conversation, and Caring provides the energy to manifest something new. When someone has your back, those guardian angels (and entrepreneurial angels) open the energetic doors. I saw this angelic boost during Karen’s final hospital stay when our network of friends (with their thoughts and prayers) boosted Karen’s inner resolve.
We summoned the angels.
I formed an informal incubator to see if one of us could put a run on the reinvention scoreboard:
● Carole Anne left her decades-long university job to launch a therapy practice but was starting with a blank slate.
● Suzy wanted to bring her art career back to the forefront and start a coaching business after years as a New York City interior house painter.
● Carol had been photographing Savannah wildlife for years but wanted to turn her work into a published book.
● Todd’s freelance art director career (and bank account) had dried up; he needed to reinvent his livelihood fast.
We all agreed that having an “accountability partner” would leverage the Bondo energy to reach escape velocity. Quite quickly, these projects slotted into place.
Out of the blue, Carole Anne’s nurse practitioner offered a first client and a place to start a therapy practice. Suzy and I launched two new websites — one for her art and one for coaching. Carol rewrote her manuscript as a personal memoir: “Wild Savannah: Finding Joy After Loss Through the Lens of My Camera.” I reached out to Todd, and we are launching an animation business together.
“What about you, Bruce?” Carole Anne asked. “How are you reinventing your life?”
“I would like a girlfriend,” I confessed, “but that’s a bridge too far and maybe too soon. I’d settle for one Cup of Bondo — one of the C’s. If I could bring one new person into Conversation, that would be amazing.”
“That seems like a pretty modest goal,” Carole Anne replied.
“Bondo sets a very high bar — the Si-Do of relationship,” I explained. “A conversation partner must be just as likely to reach out to you as you to them. Conversation implies all the C’s — Connection, Caring, and Curiosity — to form a friendship.”
Novelist, poet Wendell Berry underscored the power of conversation in a New Yorker interview:
“I believe in the importance of conversation,” he told the interviewer. “I think our conversation is worth more right now than either one of us thinking separately.”
I wanted one new conversation partner. After seven months of ups and downs following my crazy invitations, I had no evidence that Bondo was working — until the proverbial “outside shock” landed in my life.
Remember Miko going berserk at 3:28 am from the lightning storm?
And how, unable to sleep, I opened Facebook, which algorithmically prompted me to join the “Awakened Souls Dating & Relationships,” which warned that the planet was skyrocketing into a higher dimension because the Schumann Resonances were exploding off the chart? There was one other part of that story I didn’t share:
During the storm, I innocently searched “Atlanta,” and one person, Janey, popped up. I clicked on her profile and was instantly intrigued — so many Bruce boxes aligned: Grieving journey, spiritual awakening, entrepreneur, Jewish. Scrolling through her posts, I found an inspiring video of actor Ethan Hawke discussing creativity:
Me being me, I added an unsolicited comment:
“Hi, Janey, this is fantastic! I started following you yesterday. I’ve been a creator since forever (films, videos, books, brands, whirling dervishes, blah blah blah). At a certain point, you discover that the human being serves as a bridge between the imaginal realm and the manifest world.”
Yeah, I was trying to impress. Then I laid it on with a quote by Tom Cheetham:
“All knowledge comes from above by means of a vision of, or union with the archetypes, the Platonic Forms. The “giver of Forms” is the Angel.”
Janey tersely replied, “Grateful for you showing up here.”
I started commenting on all sorts of Janey’s posts (she is a prolific poster), including this cartoon from Liz Fosslien:
I commented: “Needs one more frame with the dude plummeting to the bottom plus the caption ‘How did I end up here?’”
Janey replied, “Life offers pushes too.”
Janey next posted a Washington Post article: “Study finds that fear can travel quickly through generations of mice DNA.”
She wrote: I believe practices can heal the trauma… I believe we need to go into the constrictions and discomfort and allow the energy to move… The consequences are remaining stuck and then all the emotional and physical consequences that go with that. I’ve downloaded your book.”
Whoa… my psychic brakes screeched to a halt. Nobody downloads or reads my books. Who is this person? Is this the almighty fourth C — Curiosity?
And so, I flirted, “Going down the rabbit hole. Now we’ll have to have coffee.”
Was that too forward? I’m supposed to wait 12 months, plus I hadn’t dated in over 40 years and had no clue about contemporary dating minefields.
Several days went by and nothing until the conversation suddenly shifted from comments to DMs — direct messages — whoa, this is serious:
“Hi — would you meet me for coffee at Golden Drops on Saturday?”
When we were kids, romance progressed from passing notes to phone calls, and now it progresses from comments to DMs. Unfortunately, Golden Drops wouldn’t work. I had a long-planned gig as the colonoscopy driver for my friend Sarah. I moved some obligations around and offered to meet on Sunday. Janey agreed, and this is where it gets interesting.
To keep you on track, this is not a chapter about my love life — but about throwing oneself into the Octave.
On the seventh month, to the exact day and hour that Karen passed away, Janey showed up at my doorstep with a blueberry pie.
Yeah, the Si-fucking-Do. I haven’t shared how pie has served as a talisman throughout my life and how Karen and I struggled to procure a slice of verboten Thanksgiving pie at Emory Hospital for our last meal together on this earth.
“That was definitely Karen,” Carole Anne remarked when I shared the story. “Karen wants you to be happy and is orchestrating events in the invisible world.”
I attribute all sorts of serendipities to my late wife, but that might be a slice too far.
Janey and I walked to the Decatur Square and ordered dinner from a mostly sold-out menu. I became giddy in conversation, and apologized for hogging the conversation; Janey would have none of that. And then my giddiness blossomed into an out-of-body consciousness — like whoa, whoa, whoa, this… is… really… happening.
Years ago, I met Karen on a blind date cooked up by my Sufi teacher.
If there were a Sears Dating Catalog, Karen would be the last person I would notice, but as she was presented to me, I remember looking at Karen, this too-short, too-Tennessean, shiksa woman, and finding her in my heart (what are YOU doing in there?).
I thought to myself, This… is… really… happening.
Janey and I mostly ignored our bangers and mash, and I’m like, “Oh shit, I’m having an out-of-body experience, and Janey is in my heart.”
Months ago, I was invited to a shiva gathering for a friend’s father.
I started talking to a happy older couple in their second marriage and asked them how they met.
“We were at a party, and I just felt drawn to Irving,” the woman Ruth shared. “It was inexplicable.”
“Did you suddenly find him in your heart?” I asked.
“Oh my God, yes!” Ruth suddenly remembered. “That’s exactly what happened!”
There you have it. It’s a thing.
Janey and I walked back to the house, ate dessert, talked, split the remaining pie, and hugged before she drove off.
That night I couldn’t sleep, and the following day, I found myself in an ungrounded bliss-idiot state — similar to a next day’s hangover from psychedelics. By the afternoon, I forced myself into functionality by solving a brain-burning SMTP email problem for a client.
Out of respect for Janey’s privacy, I won’t share the details of her story, but she was navigating a major free-fall after a marriage meltdown. If you were hoping for a bodice-ripper, a romantic comedy ending, or even a Si-Do worthy of all this set-up, I must remind you that this book is about the mysterious twists and turns of grief journeys. All I know is that my feelings were tied in a knot: “Who was that masked woman?”
A full year earlier, I had reached out to Julie, an acquaintance, 5Rhythms teacher, and fellow sailor, “Hi Julie, if you ever need crew for sailing, give me a call.”
One week after the pie, Julie texted, “Hey, Bruce, not sure if you’re in town this weekend, but do you want to sail Sunday afternoon?”
Um… A) I was in Tennessee, B) Julie didn’t know about my “circulation” vow and C) I started packing immediately. The sailing was fantastic — a rare July wind, with vestibular nourishment and Bondo-like Conversation. Julie and I took a selfie picture on the dock.
The next day, Janey texted: “Hi, I saw you went sailing with Julie this weekend. Hope you had fun. Do you have an interest in 5Rhythms Friday night?”
And I replied: “You must have the secret Bruce Decoder Ring. To offer a more straightforward answer: ‘I’d be delighted.’”
I don’t understand (or particularly like) 5Rhythms. It started in the 1970s as a freeform movement meditation by Gabrielle Roth. You don’t dance with a partner in the ordinary sense, nor talk or touch.
I wanted to be a good sport, so I drove to the event despite a massive storm blowing down trees and knocking out traffic signals. I even baked a loaf of sourdough for Janey. Despite my ambivalence toward 5Rhythms, I did my best to show up for Janey.
Janey spotted it and wrote: “My experience of your energy Friday night was skeptical and contracted.”
Somebody had to go down the rabbit hole, and it was me. Despite my self-image as a well-seasoned conscious mensch, everything out of my mouth went sideways and pushed us apart. Finding myself unexpectedly perched between the Mad Hatter and the March Hare, I held off writing this chapter for as long as possible.
In my reply to Janey, I shared a passage from Fortune, my first book exploring the rabbit hole's mystery. This excerpt about Mandy Roberts has served me well as a koan to the mysteries of Fortune:
I was interviewing Mitchel Bleier, the yoga teacher who opened a door for my friend Mandy Roberts. I wanted to know how Mandy went from a money-strapped single mom to the owner of Atlanta’s most significant yoga studio without a dime of investment.
I asked Mitchel why, of the thousands of students he taught around the country, he gifted Mandy with an astrology reading that was life-changing for her.
Mitchel replied to me:
“Mandy and I got close during training,” Mitchel explained. “I was aware of her life changes. I wanted to support that.”
“But why Mandy? I pressed further. “You probably have oodles of students.”
“The moment of attraction is a mystery,” Mitchel continued. “And, in the force of being together, you understand why things are.”
“Okay,” I replied. “I understand the force of attraction. But sometimes it happens and sometimes not,”
Mitchel paused and added, “Why something comes into being in a particular moment? That’s the mystery.”
If Karen were with me, she would point in this direction:
Karen: When I was a child, the prospect of conflict was threatening — life-threatening. Over these years, I’ve learned that conflict is a normal part of life.
Bruce: It’s easy for an armchair philosopher like me to say that, but conflict is uncomfortable. No one wants to go there.
Karen: Yes, there is a palpable discomfort. It brings up strong emotions like anger, fear, and shame. We try to steer around it or put a band-aid on it. But that’s not the same as addressing it. I have learned to put my strong opinion of the misunderstanding on the shelf for a minute, go toward the person, towards the conflict, and see what I discover. It’s a conscious decision.
Thanks, Honey. Tough love.
I am not a Gurdjieff "authority", not even a scholar - but what I remember is that an "external shock" is necessary to pass the "interval". Now I'm wondering if the Universe always supplies the "shock", and it's up to us not to miss it or react from our mechanical parts. (IE: take "it" personally)
Aw, so Karen really was/is a bodhisattva. Things/experiences/people are brought to us for a reason. As far as I am concerned, my work is to never react from an ego-defensive or self-cherishing point to now. It's totally up to us to be present with all that is in the moment. Even confusion and miscommunication. It's all the path. No mistakes. I hope you and Janey get closer, she sounds really great....
And yeah, the love so strong in the heart can't be denied. My guru is in there, as well as Susan my late wife. And I discovered that I am there too. All part of why I call myself a bhakta.
Certainly everyone talked about Dede that way.