THE GRIEFGLOW MANIFESTO: WHY THIS BLOG?

This blog finds its roots in the losses of my life and my slow, stumbling, but steady path towards healing. Of all the resources I explored when I was newly bereaved and deep in grief, the most powerful ones were those that simply shared someone else's story. The least helpful were those that either tried to fix or change me, or communicated with such mutedness and sadness they seemed to make my own sadness worse. In reacting to such times, I came up with something I called the GriefGlow manifesto, which goes as follows. I am pleased to share it and some glimpses of my journey with you. So, the GriefGlow Manifesto: Because grief is never black and white. Because healing is hard enough without coloring everything around us gray. Because we're just sad, not broken. Because we are a community, even when we feel the most alone. Because a picture is worth a thousand words when we have no words to say. Because we don't need to be changed, fixed, taught, or hurried. Because being vulnerable isn't the same as being powerless. Because our story isn't over. Because the world is as beautiful as it is painful. And because though a little bit of beauty can't change the pain today, it may help us toward healing tomorrow.



Tuesday, August 3, 2010

OPTIMISM: poet Jane Hirshfield on true resilience

I read this poem by the gifted American contemporary poet Jane Hirshfield for the first time just recently, and it really spoke to me. I especially love the qualifier,  "Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam/ returns over and over to the same shape..." How aptly that describes the unthinking, unchanging optimism many of us have early in life...and how lyrically the remainder of the work evokes the deeper resilience that comes with time, experience, and pain.

Optimism
More and more I have come to admire resilience.
Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam
returns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuous
tenacity of a tree: finding the light newly blocked on one side,
it turns in another. A blind intelligence, true.
But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers,
mitochondria, figs–all this resinous, unretractable earth.

Most definitely, a poet worth reading.

"Optimism" is by Jane Hirshfield and appears in Given Sugar, Given Salt, © Harper Collins, 2002.This link to the archives of Poetry magazine gives you a brief biography of the poet and several of her other beautifully written poems; this one brings you to the agency that books her for speaking and readers, which offers a longer biography.
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