Mourning Surf

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about various forms of kinesthetic empathy, or placing yourself in someone else’s shoes and walking with them. We are neurologically motivated by “mirror neurons” to process what we see, through our own bodies. With so many visual images coming at us from social media and the news, images that depict people in often harrowing and desperate situations, we cannot help but feel it in our bodies.
I practice kinesthetic empathy in my grief movement classes and workshops – moving with – it’s a form of physical listening and an attuning to another’s experience. By expressing kinesthetic empathy, I am communicating without words that I am sharing the grief being expressed.
I had an incredible feeling of kinesthetic empathy while watching the movie Hamnet recently. The last scene ravaged me in ways I am still processing. But to see the audience reach their hands toward Hamlet, to feel their kinesthetic response formed into that collective reaching gesture was astonishing. They all had tears in their eyes, crying for someone else’s son. Empathy is the basis for tragic drama – the idea that we must feel for those onstage in order to ultimately purge painful emotions, which in turn causes catharsis.
Kinesthetic empathy is grief shared through movement.
Kinesthetic empathy is also shared joy. As Bad Bunny’s joyous performance demonstrated, movement invites us to collectively witness and celebrate the truth of another’s experience.
How are you experiencing, practicing or sharing Kinesthetic Empathy these days? Take care of yourself and each other ❤️

Grief is a Beach
 
“Summertime,
 And the livin’ is easy”
 
So sings Ella Fitzgerald in her dreamy dulcet tones, which makes me want to drift lazily in an innertube or doze in a hammock under a shady tree. Summer can be so full of sensory riches. But grief doesn’t end just because the sun is shinning and the idea of being sad in the summer can sometimes feel so at odds. But summer is my grief season with anniversaries and deathaversaries back-to-back from July through to September. Grief, like storms, just seems better suited to fall and winter.
 
I remember taking my five-year old daughter to the beach to build sandcastles and feeling terrible that we had left my very ill husband that afternoon. How could we be at the beach without him? It was something we always did together as a family. But we did find lots of ways to bring summer inside that year, from banana popsicles, to watching Jaws on repeat to opening up the doors at night to take in the August moon and catch a whiff of the night blooming jasmine outside his room. Even now as I am coming up to the ten-year anniversary of Jim’s death, I am reliving his last summer almost day for day, as I look at pictures and read my journal from that time. It’s gorgeous outside and I’m curled up in a ball. I come to the day Jim died in my journal. I hesitate to read what I wrote. But I am not surprised to find that only a few hours after holding him for the last time, I am in the ocean.  I remember crying in the ocean - already shocked that I could inhabit a world that he was no longer in. I’m going to the beach today, swimsuit on, sunscreen on, because tears and summer must co-exist for me.
 
“One of these mornings
You’re going to rise up singing
Then you’ll spread your wings
And you’ll take to the sky…”

It started with a book. Well two books. As my wedding anniversary approaches, I cannot help but reflect on my life with Jim and and that special day when we met. NYC. East Village. Coffee Shop. Two city dwellers reading books on a Sunday afternoon while their laundry spins nearby. Very handsome, I think. Reading. That’s a plus. Then I notice what he is reading. It’s a biography of Thomas Jefferson. Wow I think, that’s kind of funny because I’m reading Declaring Independence, a study of Jefferson’s oratory. It’s for my Ph.D. exams. Ok that’s an opening. What are you reading I ask? Or did he ask me? I don’t remember because I was lost in the sensation that I was somehow speaking my first words to the person who would become my husband. We talked a long time and he walked me home only to discover that we were next door neighbors. What followed was a beautiful romance, pre-cellphone, which led to a few months of leaving notes for each other on our mailboxes – “J’aime, want to have a catch?”
“Hi Jim, want to walk in the snow today?” – “J’aime, I love you.” I still have these notes and I cherish them.
 
Jim died August 14, 2015 six years after being diagnosed with a brain tumor. I haven’t shared this story before, but it’s my story, it’s our story, and writing it down, sharing it here helps me keep these memories alive. So much love, a lifetime of love in my heart for us. ❤️

About two months after Jim died I took my daughter to Oakland, CA to visit a friend. It was a short trip and we had made the journey many times. I was caught completely off guard when I returned home to find him not there. My heart was blown open all over again. Normally he would have made dinner and he would be watching football or puttering around the house - home was wherever he was. I learned that I had to anticipate these moments. I didn’t travel for some time after that. This coming home to his absence was something I felt every time I walked in the door but it was especially palpable after a trip. If you are grieving and you find coming home is not the same, I’ve put a few things that helped me above. ❤️✈️❤️