How to Release Your Grief of a Lifetime

I recently watched one of my favorite movies for the second time, Hachi: A Dog’s Tale, starring Richard Gere.  I usually don’t watch a movie more than once, but this one I did because it touches my heart so deeply.   The movie is based on a true story about a college professor’s bond with an abandoned Akita that he adopts.   The professor takes the train to work every day, and Hachi walks him to the train station every morning to see him off and comes back at night to greet him when he gets off the train.  One day, the professor has a heart attack at work and dies, never returning on the train.

The family sells the professor’s house and Hachi is given to his daughter who lives far away, but he runs away and finds his way back to the train station.  He finds a home underneath one of the old train cars and continues to go to the station every morning and every night to wait for his master.  This goes on for nine years.  Amazing!!

I watched this movie cuddled up in my bed with my two cats, Metta and Bodi.  I started crying the first time Hachi returned to the train station after the professor dies, and I cried and I cried.  Every once in a while the tears would almost stop, and then something else would happen and I would cry and cry some more.  As my tears flowed, I was aware that they came from a very young child inside of me who held uncried tears from my childhood, and I gave her the space and compassion she so needed.  This movie woke up a tender place in my heart, and I kept on saying to the young child, “Oh, sweetheart, I am so glad you are here.  It is okay that you cry.  I see how hard it has been for you.”  And she would cry again because she knew she wasn’t alone anymore.

To me, this movie is not just about a dog’s loss of love and connection with his master.  It is about the grief we all experience.  It is about the grief of a lifetime.  Stephen Levine, author and poet, tells us that we carry grief, not for the loss of loved ones, but for the loss of ourselves, and this is the greatest grief of all.  Our grief is so deep because we lost our connection with life.  When we were very young, we lost the love that we are and we have been longing for it our whole lives.

When we were born, life was a mystery.  And then slowly and surely we slipped behind the veils of shame, loneliness, despair, and all of the other states that keep us separate from life.  We carry so much grief inside and yet most of us are not willing to acknowledge it because grief is not easy to be with.  It is too scary.  So, we mask it through compulsions, like busyness, food and alcohol.  We think that if we just do things a certain way, if we just get to a certain place, we will be loved.  I can’t tell you how many people have told me over the years that they don’t want to start crying because if they do, they will never stop.  So, we hold our grief at bay, sometimes for an entire lifetime.

I am here to tell you that grief is one of the most healing of all the states. It is also the most challenging.   Looking back at my experience watching this movie, I realized that it allowed me to let the grief pass through me and a few minutes after the movie ended, the tears stopped and I felt at peace.  There are three reasons why this happened.  First, I know how to be aware of what is.  I knew that grief was being woken up by this movie and it was moving through me.    Secondly, I truly know that who I am is not the state of grief.  Anything that is a state — the state of grief, the state of fear, the state of shame — is not who I am.  I also know that these states are part of a passing show.  They come and they go.  And because I know this, it has become much easier for me to be with my grief.  Thirdly, I have cried oceans of tears and I don’t resist the tears when they come or try to make them stop.  I welcome them with open arms because I know they are cleansing my heart and healing my grief.

So, the next time you feel tears coming on, release and let them flow.  Be with your grief.  Just notice it tenderly, and lovingly touch it with your heart when you can.  And be gentle with yourself.  You are holding the grief of a lifetime.  And if there is resistance to crying, like many people experience, be with the resistance.  This will eventually open the doorway to healing your grief through the light of your own attention.

Do you remember the last time you really let yourself cry?  What did it feel like?

Image – Watercolor “Botanical Garden” by Seattle Artist Jennifer Sumner