Words&Dirt

Summary:

Francis Weller’s The Wild Edge of Sorrow is a heartfelt book about how grief work is understood and practiced through what Weller calls “soul-centered psychotherapy.” Weller suggests that the act of living calls each person to “take up an apprenticeship with sorrow” that allows us to acknowledge the pervasive presence of grief in human life, including intrinsic connections to the loss and suffering of the natural world (4). The book covers many grief-related topics, most notably Weller’s “Five Gates of Grief,” a series of metaphorical “doorways” which highlight “the many ways that loss touches our hearts and souls in this life” (23). The book also describes types of grief-centered rituals and practices that Weller uses with his clients and community.

Key Concepts and Notes:

• Anyone who reads this book will immediately notice the artfulness and passion of Weller’s writing. He’s clearly a gifted therapist with much experience and wisdom to share with his clients and readers.
• I think Weller’s core idea of cultivating a lifelong “apprenticeship with sorrow,” is an excellent invitation, one that extends well beyond the realm of grief work. Sadness, loss, and failure are replete in any human life, and Weller does a great job of showing how we can meet these challenges with acceptance, curiosity, humility, and compassion.
• The “Five Gateways” are interesting and instructive opportunities for reflection. They are as follows: (1) Everything We Love, We Will Lose, (2) The Places That Have Not Known Love, (3) The Sorrows of the World, (4) What We Expected and Did Not Receive, (5) Ancestral Grief
• I also appreciate Weller’s focus on grief rituals and practices. This gives his book a practical angle that goes beyond merely trying to “think” or “feel” a certain way about grief. There’s plenty of helpful suggestions about what we can “do” about it as well, but not in the diminishing sense of “solving” or “getting rid” of our grief.
• Weller’s approach has some significant drawbacks, ones that will likely alienate readers who don’t share key elements of Weller’s values and worldview. Though undeniably poetic, Weller’s prose is extremely repetitive, and often takes on a tone that some people (myself included) will find histrionic or overwrought. Even though this book is very short, I think it could have been considerably shorter.
• Another potential obstacle is Weller’s belief that the modern world is essentially broken, and we along with it. He has a lot to say about “our entire suicidal culture––our death-dealing, nature-consuming, hell-bent-on-our-collective-demise society,” none of it good (138). At the same time, he heaps uncritical praise on indigenous ways of living and knowing, to the point where I felt like he overindulged in “noble savage” thinking and appeals to antiquity. It’s not that the modern world is perfect and we can’t learn anything useful from other or older cultures, but Weller’s “new = bad, old = good” narrative is very consistent and overly simplistic.
• Related to this problem are Weller’s constant appeals to nature. Many passages in the book rest on an unstated premise that everything naturally-occurring is good and everything technological or artificial is bad. Again, it’s not that he’s entirely wrong, it’s just that these statements are not nuanced enough and are therefore likely to be off-putting to readers who don’t already share Weller’s views.
• Finally, I’m torn when it comes to the notion that one’s personal grief is necessarily bound up with the suffering of other people and the natural world. For some people, I think this is a very powerful and healing framework that will facilitate a greater sense of connection to humanity and the earth. Weller seems to do amazing and valuable work with such people. However, for others, I worry that expanding the circle of grief in this way might backfire, making it more overwhelming, anxiety-inducing, and/or giving rise to cognitive distortions about the degree of impact individuals can or should have to ameliorate hypercomplex problems such as climate change and social injustice. I don’t have any experience with this in a therapeutic setting, so this is purely speculation.

Favorite Quotes:

Our broken hearts have the potential to open us to a wider sense of identity, one capable of seeing through the partitions that have segregated self from world. Through grief, we are initiated into a more inclusive conversation between our singular lives and the soul of the world. We are coming to understand that there is no isolated self stranded in the cosmos; we are participants in an entwined and entangled net of connections with a continuous exchange of light, air, gravity, thought, color, and sound, all coalescing in the elegant dance that is our shared life. It is the broken heart that can let slip into its core the shimmer of a salmon gliding just under the surface of the water, the startling arc of the swift, the wonder of Mozart, and the sheer beauty of sunrise. (xvii)

It is the accumulated losses of a lifetime that slowly weigh us down––the times of rejection, the moments of isolation when we felt cut off from the sustaining touch of comfort and love. It is an ache that resides in the heart, the faint echo calling us back to the times of loss. We are called back, not so much to make things right, but to acknowledge what happened to us. Grief asks that we honor the loss and, in doing so, deepen our capacity for compassion. When grief remains unexpressed, however, it hardens, becomes as solid as a stone. We, in turn, become rigid and stop moving in rhythm with the soul. When we are in touch with all of our emotions, on the other hand, we are more verb than noun, more a movement than a thing. But when our grief stagnates, we become fixed in place, unable to move and dance with the flow of life. Grief is part of the dance. (20)

All too often we deny our grief because it is not as severe as someone else’s…It is easy to dismiss our grief when we compare it to circumstances we consider to be much worse than our own. But the grief is ours, and we must treat it as worthy of attention. In fact, it is essential for us to welcome our grief, whatever form it takes. When we do, we open ourselves to our shared experiences in life. Grief is our common bond. Opening to our sorrow connects us with everyone, everywhere. There is no gesture of kindness that is wasted, no offering of compassion that is useless. We can be generous to every sorrow we see. It is sacred work. (70)

Hundreds of times in my practice as a therapist, I have heard how fearful people are of dropping into the well of grief. The most frequent comment is “If I go there, I’ll never return.” What I found myself saying one day was rather surprising. “If you don’t go there, you’ll never return.” (107)

There is a proverb from Africa that says, “When death finds you, make sure it finds you alive.” I love this adage, a wise reminder that death is always present and that when it comes, it is best to meet it fully alive…Too many of us suffer from premature death, never fully embracing our lives and being open to the beauty and terror of existence. This is a result, in great part, of our refusal to accept life on life’s terms. Instead, we try to avoid pain and suffering. We don’t turn our face into the world, into the full experience of life, but instead we slowly back into the grave, stubbornly trying to avoid our losses, ignoring the truth that these sorrows can be our greatest teachers, our greatest gifts. This half-life is not what we came here to experience. To change this story, we must be able to bring death close to us. We must be willing to live with the ways that death keeps us––paradoxically––aware of whether or not we are fully embracing our lives. (124)

Letting go is a difficult skill to acquire, and yet we are offered no option but to practice. Every loss, personal or shared, prepares us for our own time of leaving. Letting go is not a passive state of acceptance but a recognition of the brevity of all things. This realization invites us to love fully now, in the moment, when what we love is here. (135)

Rating: 5/10