10/18/2024
My friend and peer, Jenn Fieldman, posted this from her friend and peer in NC. Guilt and Grief ~ emotions that pull us in when we allow ourselves to experience and sit with them. All emotions have value, yet all are not ones we want to experience. All are a part of the human experience, no one is exempt from guilt and grief in their lives. False guilt, real guilt, survivors guilt are places to stay stuck if we take no action, internally and/or externally. Underneath, may be an avoidance of as well as an answer for emotional action to grieve.
Context is the heartbreaking suffering in NC following the hurricane damage within this state. Probably resonants, regardless of context, for all of us. I know it did for me. ❤️
Survivors Guilt vs Survivors Grief
Guilt implies something Done or Not Done
culpability, responsibility that therefore
requires accountability
But you did not bring this storm. You simply survived it.
We address guilt with judgment, sentencing, consequences, and amends. And in a guilty system if we can't restore justice we remain implicated and blamed.
Eyes of comparison invite the unconscious in us to raise defenses and spin justifications and deflect the blame somewhere–anywhere–else because guilt implies choice. It implies control.
Or guilt will spin us into furtive action to anesthetize our internal and external pain.
Guilt constricts and cuts us off from ourselves and each other. Guilt leaves no room for us to have a place of belonging in this story, and that is the home we lose.
But in the daunting expanse of GRIEF there is room for everyone.
Everything matters if we can be brave enough to allow Grief to take us in her arms.
Grief invites us to let go of the shredded illusion altogether–that distracting falsehood which keeps us from things bigger than control.
Guilt is a swirling eddy of shoulda, coulda, wouldas…the shame of luck and privilege that was no more our choosing.
Guilt will silence our feelings saying they need to stay smaller than others because we survived. But Grief leads us deeper through our individual sorrow and if we have the courage to let her do her work in us she leads us to our deepest human longings:
I wish this had been different…
I wish this never had to happen to anyone…
I wish death, destruction, and loss didn't happen to anyone..
I wish we always took better care of each other and the Land.
We lament the discomfort of our guilt when in fact it may be easier--possibly more comfortable and certainly more convenient than the Grief whose powerful force will bring even more of the change we ardently resist.
She will strip us of our certainty, poke holes in all our beliefs about fair and blessed and deserving. She will take us down to the unrecognizable studs of our very identity--questioned, unraveled, lost.
But she will not leave us there!
No, unlike guilt which is a dead end road to the washed away bridge to nowhere, Grief extends promises if we partner with her on this new path.
She will give us new eyes of clarity: what really matters.
Time is precious.
Divisions are pointless.
We are more alike than we are different.
We are here to love and be loved.
If we are willing to release comparrison's separation, we can wade into the waters that surround us all. Grief will tenderize our hearts and stretch our skin to hold so much more compassion for ourselves, for others, for paradox and complexity and non-duality.
Grief will transform us. And if we dare to learn to grieve well and grieve WITH each other it could change the world.
We will never get that from guilt.
So let us change the language that builds the prisons of our hearts and minds, and instead hold out a lantern for this dark, sacred journey of being human together.
Tamara Hanna, LCMHC
Love & Loss Counseling
Black Mountain, NC
10.11.24 Post Helene
