Labor of Love
When I go into labor, there have been a consistent series of events. This is not always true for everyone, but it has been for me.
At about 38 1/2 weeks my water breaks, nothing much happens for several hours, sometimes eight. As Oxytocin (the love hormone) floods my system, I get really calm and relaxed. At some point, contractions pick up pace. I am in active labor for about two-hours before transition labor which is when the really fast and painful contractions come just before its time to push a baby into the world. When it is time, I push a few times, and a new being comes into the world. The vulnerability of being so open that we can allow life to begin beyond the safety of the womb is profoundly hopeful.
Pregnancies and labor have been easy and enjoyable for me. New projects and new beginnings, with all their unknown possibilities and potentials excite me.
And, as a parent, I continue to stretch the umbilical cord as my children grow and develop. I can feel the stretch coming at pre-school, kindergarten, the leap into middle school, high school, and then the learning to be in-the-world part of their 20s. The stretches happen when I realize they do not need me in the same way. It is my cue to back off and let them do them. The labor pains of parenting become a little further apart, can be less acute, and sometimes imperceptible.
The death of a person or relationship is also a kind of labor. Grief is labor backwards. Cortisol (the stress hormone) floods my system. Laboring through the letting go in grief begins with the intense, painful, and fast contractions of transition that can take me down. It requires so much support to move through it, and it takes over my whole body at first. The acuteness in the beginning of grieving is the harshest part. The letting go and dying to a way of being with Edmond is birthing in reverse. I fill with fear and terror at the notion of releasing a partnership that has sustained and nourished me and that allowed me to belong to something bigger than myself.
I remember from other losses that the pains and waves slow down and become less acute through grief-time. But, now, it is hard to see that it might be possible to make it through a whole day without falling to pieces, screaming at the sky, and feeling like I have been left behind.
I do not know how long this transition phase of grief will last. It feels like too long already. Certainly, it is much longer the the 20-30 minutes of intense transition that happens for me during childbirth. I am trapped in it, and feel or believe at times I might not come through it. Some part of me is grateful that I do not know a pattern for this kind of grieving. Yet, it would be so good to know how many hours, days, or years it will feel this acutely painful.
I ask some of my people on this path with me, ahead of me in months or years, how long? I know they cannot give me a definitive answer, but asking somehow feels orienting.
When will I not have to schedule time in my day to sob in a puddle of missing his touch? When will remembering his laugh or smile bring me joy and not a gut punch? When will I stop asking him why he isn’t here? What if the answer to those questions is never?
We cannot remain in a state of trauma 24 hours a day. We must have escape hatches and energy releases. We have to let some of the steam out of the pot so it doesn’t burst the lid right off.
Short Term Energy Relieving Behaviors (STERBs) is a term coined by John James and Russell Friedman who founded the Grief Recovery Institute. STERBs might include exercising, shopping, television/movie watching, substance use, reading, or cleaning. STERBS are a way to release some of the built up pressure in the emotional cooker. These behaviors are not inherently bad or good.
Being aware of our STERB-states and activities is important. We can know what we are doing, taking a break from the falling apart. Having awareness around our behaviors that bring relief can keep those behaviors from becoming compulsions/addictions that only compound a difficult situation.
STERB behavior that is outside of awareness can become a problem, imbalance, or addiction. They can keep us numb and on the shore and prevent us entering the liminal place of transformation.
STERBS are part of our emotional regulation and balance. Taking a long walk to burn off some of the anxious energy does not necessarily directly address the emotional components of grief. But, a long walk does take the edge off the acuteness of the painful feelings. I still have to feel the feelings but perhaps with a little more agency to work with the feelings instead of letting them work me.
Some energy relieving behaviors may allow us to go into the blur and not focusing on anything while others help us come into intense focus on a particular action. Most of us need both to balance the intervals of the intense emotions that come with the liminal territory of loss.
Having a glass of wine in the evening or zoning out with movie are a relief from the painful reminders of all the places Edmond is not. Cleaning every crevasse of the baseboards or folding towels in perfect thirds offer me a center where I can put my focus and attention, and I can push the panic and anxiety into the peripheral blur. Both are much needed respite from intense emotion.
Grief is not all that different from labor. We cannot avoid its pain forever, and we can either ride the waves of contractions and releases or allow them take us over. Either way, it is coming. I know I must make room for the waves, feel them and lean into their force and power. I know I also must find respite, someplace calmer where I can collect myself and find a little order or give in to the chaos. It is not possible to sustain the pain constantly.
It is a dance of holding intense focus of a center and letting go into a vast open expanse and then stepping fully into the liminality of the loss that we must meet. It is survival and a way through to move between centered embodiment for specific actions and leaving our physical form to not feel anything for a while. We cannot sustain what is being asked of us all the time. We must move in and out of the waves, like labor and like the sea that offers us both the shallows and its depths.
The focus and the blur of energy relieving behaviors are the opposite poles, the shallow beaches that live on either end of the liminal territory. Being able to step out of the deep waters of that tangle ball is an important option during this process. Going back into the liminal zone purposefully might even require that we give our bodies and souls a little rest from each other or to do something else. Transformation through grief is hard work, a marathon not a sprint.
When I labored in childbirth, I knew the essence of the being within me, but not the details, memories to come, or specifics of how it would all unfold. I did not know what possibilities were being born through me. I did not know all the tangled up love we would feel for each other through time and experience. I had no idea how much each of them would teach me so much about who I could become.
In the midst of this grieving, I do not know what is being born. Most of it terrifies me. I feel pushed to my extremes in all directions. Letting go of the specifics of what I knew, loved, felt, and remember is a struggle and resistance. I am hesitating hard. There are so many haunting and beautiful memories that I cannot come home to anymore. He isn’t here. There is no warm embrace or hand holding. There isn’t some bird or beast being grilled for dinner while we sip on bubbles on the deck. We are not going on a long walk talking it through. Grief is the reverse of possibilities that come with birth. Loss is the knowing of what is not and will not be.