Thresholds
Writings on grief, healing and spiritual practice.
This is part of my series Thresholds: Writings on Grief, Healing and Spiritual Practice.
How did the characters in the last fatal, tragic drama you watched respond when they were informed of the death of their loved one?
Did they fall onto the floor screaming, wailing?
Rush out into the dark night?
Collapse into someone’s arms, hammering their fists on his chest?
When was the last time you watched a drama in which the character remains upright and silent on receiving the terrible news?
We’re conditioned to see responses to sudden tragic events. We expect to witness screams, wails and strong physical reactions.
But what if a response to sudden tragic events isn’t always as TV and Film dramas lead us to believe? Silence is rarely portrayed on screen. I wonder why? What if silence plays a greater role in our responses to sudden tragedy? In real life silence is one of grief’s most powerful forms of communication.
The silence that falls when there are no words big enough.
The silence of an empty chair, a room that no longer echoes with a voice.
The silence of a heart so heavy it cannot form sentences.
One afternoon many years’ ago, when I was a NHS Healthcare Chaplain, I supported a young woman whose partner had been killed outright on his motorbike as he joined a dual carriageway. What was there to say? The woman was shocked into muteness. Any word which I thought to utter seemed fatuous, ridiculous and a complete interruption. I sat with her in the mess of the tragedy which had exploded so violently in her life.
Some words were exchanged as I liaised with clinical staff with her, and on her behalf. I asked if she’d like a cup of tea or coffee. To ask the young woman if she’d like me to offer a prayer seemed to be out of place. Her loss was not going to be salved by a prayer no matter its beauty, its sonorousness, its capacity to carry her sorrows to the heart of the Divine. Silence prevailed. Deep silence filled that warm, sun-filled room. It was enough and more than enough. It was respectful, aware, savant, utterly gracious.
We could hear ordinary noises of the afternoon outside the room we sat in; people passing by in the corridor. Muffled voices of people as they went about their work. Warm early autumn sunshine filtered through the covered window into the room, making it stuffy. Afternoon life came and went outside. Inside, the weight of death falling so abruptly and violently upon the woman’s partner, while, to the woman I sat with, a vague, threatening, emerging inkling of the full awfulness of what she’d have to face once she left the hospital, once she’d left her partner in the Mortuary.
Since then I’ve sat alongside many bereft people in places where silence both held and conveyed the unspeakable.
In psychotherapy, silence isn’t a failure of language but a profound extension of communication. It holds the unsayable. It’s a secure container. Silence is a means by which the psyche protects itself when words would shatter too soon. This is why it’s crucial for therapists to be comfortable in and with deep silence, to resist the urge (the personal need?) to break the silence with a word, a question, a comment. It’s crucial for therapists to recognise different types of silence and to learn how to respect, understand and to work with them, not against them.
Silence can’t be rushed or pressured into release. We have to be prepared for a long, patient wait. We bide with the silence and with the person who holds it close.
When we’re able to sit with silence long enough it can be trusted to provide illumination, insight, release.
Sometimes we’re silent because words do fail us. They feel completely inadequate to express what we want to communicate. When we recognise that any words we might use will fail us, other forms of communication are likely to be far more appropriate in expressing our deepest selves powerfully: painting, sculpting, movement, music - listening to and singing/shouting along with it, and/or playing an instrument ourselves.
Silence may be the container of deeply suppressed emotions which feel too threatening to be engaged with, to be released from their secure container. We’re silent because we’re too afraid of the terror within which has developed in response to the terror without. If we say anything about how we feel, then the door to the deep will open, the terrors will emerge. Who or what will help us, save us?
Responses to loss may cause a person to be mute for a period of time. This is a traumatised form of silence so deep that it’s unreachable. Loving patience, good therapy and time are needed to provide the safety and the space in which the silence can begin to detach itself from its depths and surface in the place where sounds can form, like bubbles rising from the depths of a lake.
Each of these different types of silence is recognised and respected in Shamanic Healing. The Shaman works from a foundation of profound respect for Spirit and for those Allies who present themselves for our guidance and restoration. The words of the Augustan poet. Pope, spring to mind:“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread” We do not, cannot, should not, rush in to break the silence. We discern what its purpose is and how we may work with it for the benefit of our client.
Silence is also the doorway - the portal - through which the Shaman travels into wider, deeper consciousness in order to request, search for, and return with wisdom, guidance and healing for our client.
In Shamanic ritual - as in all religious/spiritual rituals - silence (ideally) is the foundation from which everything else emerges, forms, acts. Consider the deep silence of an empty sacred building after everyone has gone home; the gentle silence found unexpectedly in a forest clearing; the silence which descends upon the gathered ones as they sit, attentive. Silence is presence, sometimes tangibly so, as if we could reach out and touch something solid. Silence contrasts with our inner noise. Silence as gentle invitation, beckoning...’will you come this way with me?’
Silence invites us to listen and to become attentive both to our deepest selves and to the Divine/Source/Consciousness/Spirit. When we allow silence to be then it can open doorways into greater, wider consciousness from which we may ask for and receive wisdom and healing for our lives.
Silence is a form of communication in its own right. While it contains absence, it isn’t necessarily absence in itself. Silence always has space for the other. In grief therapy deep silence within a grieving person may ooze out into the space, enveloping both client and therapist, holding us both.
The important thing to note is what kind of silence do you experience? Is the silence brought about by trauma, causing muteness? Is it the silence caused by fear and the subsequent suppression of deep, threatening thoughts and emotions? Is it silence wrought by our recognition that any words we might utter will be clumsy, violating, futile? Is it silence in which you find a sacred presence which guides, informs and brings you healing?
If you are grieving and find yourself in silence, listen. What is your silence? Listen to it and listen also to your deepest self. Silence possesses the strength to carry our deepest, most terrible woes. Silence doesn’t shirk difficulty, horror, trauma any more than it removes itself from being part of Divine expression.
Grieving can bring us to silence; words fail, fall into emptiness. The challenge to us as we grieve, and to those who support us, is how to respect and to understand this silence - our silence - learning to work with it respectfully, not crowding it out, allowing it to inform and enrich us.
An Invitation
This week, I invite you to sit for five minutes in silence — not to clear your mind, not to fix yourself, but to simply let silence speak. Notice what arises in your body, what images or feelings stir in the stillness. Notice if something long-unspoken begins to find a shape.
You don’t have to write it down or share it. Simply be, be attentive to it. That is enough.
On the Threshold
Susan
P.S. On October 25th, I’ll be hosting a Shamanic Grief Ritual Day in the Yurt on the Falkland Estate here in Fife. This will be a small, intimate gathering (4 places remaining out of 8) for those who feel called to honour and release their grief through ritual. Full details here on Ticket Tailor: https://buytickets.at/susanhollinscounselling/1580024