Little earthquakes: How grief and trauma shapes us

I recently finished reading, Little Earthquakes: A memoir by Sarah Mandel where she recounts the heartbreaking story of her six year long battle with stage four metastatic breast cancer and the ensuing trauma that unfolded from that. Mandel was a therapist who used narrative therapy to help her clients work through their trauma, and then chose to apply her own therapy methods in the writing of her memoir. It was a way for her to make sense of the trauma she had walked through.

During a point in her cancer battle where she was in remission, she shares how she turned to Yoga for healing – both in reconnecting with her body, and as a way to process her trauma. Yoga was a way to get out of her head and into her body – a body that she had perceived as an enemy and had to learn to trust again. Over a period of about two years, she learned how to do a head stand, which for her, was a particularly dangerous pose to be in. Her bones were so brittle that one fall could mean she breaks her back and never walks again. She describes the work that went into mastering many tiny steps towards being able to do that head stand.

When she finally mastered it, she discovered something she had not realized. All the time while learning to do the head stand, she had believed that she needed to be perfectly still to maintain her balance in the pose, until one of her instructors encouraged her to allow her body to sway a little. She had said to her teachers that she feels wobbly in the stand, like she is swaying from side to side. She wanted to know how she can keep her legs straight while in the pose and one teacher said: “The swaying is part of the posture. Allow yourself to move slightly, shifting the balance around your base. Try not to grip. That’s when you’ll fall.” Sarah’s mind was blown. All that time leading up to that conversation, she had believed that she had to figure out how to be perfectly still in the posture. It took her a while to process that she was supposed to sway while being in the pose. She was baffled by the idea that allowing movement would actually maintain stability.

Sarah continued to practice her head stand, now allowing for her body to sway gently, ever so slightly. She did not clench up or try to fight the sway. She described her body’s shaking as “little earthquakes”.

Months earlier when she had started Yoga, the shaking in her body in these more challenging poses triggered automatic fear. It was only over time, with sufficient practice, that she could notice the unsteadiness, not make it wrong, and move with it, not against it. There was still fear during each pose. What was different though, was that she had built trust in her body through persistence, and she had learnt how to respond to her body’s cues.

I feel like this is such a profound metaphor for Life. How often do we feel good when things are going smoothly “according to the plan”. And how often do we resist Life’s interference with our plans. How often do we complain when Life is lifing? My coach says this often, and I often say this to my clients, “The issue is not the issue. How we are being with the issue as we move through the issue, is the real issue.” After having walked through the experience of my father dying, I have an even deeper understanding of that now.

It would have been so easy to resist the reality of his illness, to fight against it, or to opt for denial. In fact, that is what my mother chose to do. And there is no judgment of that. We all show up differently to our grief, and sometimes it’s far easier to stay in denial than to step out into the grim reality of what Life is presenting to us. It would have been so easy to make all that was occurring be wrong and bad. And that is very much what I did initially. I went into “fix-it-mode”. My default pattern is rescuing / fixing / saving, so of course, that is what I tried to do. I tried to figure out what I might do to find a solution. Until there was no other choice but to face the truth of what was occurring. Nothing could be done to change what was occurring.

Once we realize that Life is going to continue to present us with little earthquakes whether we complain about them or not, we are faced with a choice. Do we keep resisting Life? Or do we meet Life in its as-issness? It’s much harder to resist Life, than to meet it in its as-issness. When we meet Life as it is, we are choosing to meet Life without judgment, and from a place where we actually have the freedom to choose. See, I could not choose the outcome I wanted – which would have been for my father to live. However, I could choose how I wanted to show up to the experience Life was presenting to me. And I chose to spend it being fully present to the experience of connecting with him, caring for him, and sitting next to his bed as he was dying.

I chose to allow the fear to be there. I chose to allow the anger to be there. I chose to allow the tears to flow when they needed to flow. In other words, I allowed the little earthquakes to move through me. And I chose to take breaks when it all became too much, and I simply needed to be outside, or spend time with my kids, or laugh, because I had run out of tears to cry.

We live in a world that makes feeling our feelings a problem. Most of us have been conditioned not to express the fullness of our feelings. What was modeled to us growing up, was that some feelings were acceptable to express and others were not. So, we learnt over time to suppress grief, sadness, anger, frustration, joy, elation, exuberance, enthusiasm, silliness, or whatever felt unsafe to feel and express.

An outdated model of what it means to be an adult depicts the adult as someone who has an even temperament and as someone who is in full control of their emotions. Stoic even. However, have you ever considered whether you can actually control your feelings? Think about it. Do you have control over what you feel, when you feel it, how you feel it? Or do you essentially just notice that you are feeling something, or experience a shift in mood?

Emotion is energy in motion. Feelings are experiences we have in our body as a result of a chemical reaction in our brains. We do not control this chemical reaction. It’s automatic and is outside of the control of our rational brain. Our Amygdala – our feeling brain – processes sensory input and releases a chemical reaction, that creates the experience we have in our bodies. So, if you are not in control of your feelings, what has you believing that you should be in control of them?

And I want to be clear here – there is a significant difference between feeling our feelings and reacting to our feelings. Feeling our feelings means we recognize the chemical shift in our bodies, and the sensations that accompany the feeling, and we can name the feeling we are feeling. When we can name what we are feeling, we can seek to understand what has this feeling coming up for us, because our feelings are data. They are signals that tell us what is occurring for us – whether that is in our bodies or in our minds, or both.

Reacting to a feeling means that we don’t slow down to notice what is occurring – essentially, we are not letting ourselves feel the feeling – we try to avoid or suppress the feeling, or we let the feeling completely take over how we respond in the moment without even considering what is creating the experience in the first place. Reacting means we push down until we explode, we rage, or we burst into tears, or we push those we love away, because we are too afraid to be vulnerable and to feel what we are feeling.

In the work I’m doing with Kendra Cover, I’m learning a new way to connect with my body and with the sensations in my body. I’m learning what it means to be a luscious woman. A luscious woman is a woman who has access to the full range of her emotional experience – in other words, she allows space for all her feelings to be there, whether it’s anger, grief, or joy.

We are feeling animals for a reason. Our feeling brain allows us to experience depth and richness that would otherwise not be available to us, yet only if we are willing to allow ourselves access to the full range of what we can feel as feeling animals.

My experiences have taught me that you can only truly understand the depth of joy, wonder, and awe, if you have allowed yourself to go to the depths of grief, sorrow, fear, loneliness, despair. It’s through the dark that we get to see our light more fully. It’s through the pain, that we grow and expand our capacities as humans.

The Chantal of eight years ago would not have met her father’s death with acceptance and grace. She would not have had the courage to show up and be with every aspect of the experience – both the horrific, and the wonderous. She would have reacted. She might have not understood the depth of what was occurring, or the level of connection that was available. She might have continued to try to fix / rescue / save, and she would have been angry at Life, and resisted what was occurring. She would not have allowed space for her tears and her sorrow. She would have felt the need to move on quickly, to stay busy or distracted, or to numb.

And at the same time, it was the Chantal of eight years ago that had to face the depths of her own sorrow, and sit in her grief. She was the version of me that had no way out. She was the version of me that was tortured, angry at the world and at herself. She was the version of that walked through life feeling unsafe, and not trusting herself or Life’s guidance. She was the version of me that had to hit rock bottom and find the courage to begin the work that would have her show up to her father dying with presence, love, and gratitude.

I still want things to be different. I still wish that he hadn’t died, AND I’m grateful for choosing to be in the present, and meet Life exactly as it occurred, without resistance. I allowed myself to sway with each earthquake, and I stayed steady. I allowed the earthquakes to be there – the devastating news, the chaos, the powerlessness, the long hours at the hospital, the overwhelm at times – and I stayed grounded in presence and trusted that that would be all that would be required. And it was.

Where are you resisting Life lifing? Where are you showing up with resistance and rigidity in your life, where more gentleness, more loving, more compassion, more grace, more willingness to sway is being required of you? What do you gain from staying rigid? What do you get to avoid by denying your own humanness and your own feelings and vulnerability? How might your life be different if you could expand your range with just five percent?