How to Map and Move Through Grief

A peak inside our monthly live gatherings over Zoom and an exercise to help move through our collective and individual grief.

A portrait of grief: Mélancolie by sculptor Albert György. 2012, Geneva, Switzerland.

The poet Lucille Clifton wrote, “Come celebrate with me that everyday something has tried to kill me and has failed,” and I have been thinking about this sentiment a lot lately. How do we find joy in the rubble, a persistence of optimism against all emotional odds? One way to start is by pulling our grief out from the shadows—by naming its particular iteration and charting the ways it impacts us. There’s so damn much to grieve, but by honoring our grief’s existence and letting it move through us, we can slowly begin to escape its all-consuming presence.

This past weekend I hosted our monthly Zoom gathering for paid subscribers, The Short and Sweet. We welcomed a very special surprise guest, my dad, Russ Tamblyn, who joined briefly to honor the late David Lynch and to tell us the story about how his iconic glasses from Twin Peaks came to be. (Hint: The inspiration of the Venice Beach Boardwalk knows no bounds…)

A screenshot of my dad from this month’s The Short and Sweet, wearing his iconic glasses from Twin Peaks.

The theme of this month’s gathering was mapping grief, and so we met to talk about our collective griefs and how to pull them from the shadows: the things that have felt like deaths, or have been actual, literal losses. (The fires in Los Angeles, the election, losing important icons of the art and activism world in David Lynch and Cecile Richards, to name a few.)

During the Zoom, we talked through what we’re holding in and onto, and I led everyone in an exercise mapping out a way to process some of our heartache using a series of prompts and questions aimed at locating where it lives in the body, how and when it shows up, and all the ways we can and cannot control it.

Today, I’m sharing this writing and mapping exercise with all of our subscribers in case you or someone in your own communities may need it right now. It’s meant to be a practice you can return to in order to continue the good work of feeling, accepting, and moving through grief of any kind.

Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it’s self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.
—Audre Lorde

Focus on the people who are counting on you, not the ones who are trying to drag you down.
—Cecile Richards

Keep your eye on the donut, not the hole.
—David Lynch

Writing in the Dark to Harness the Light: Grief Exercise

You’ll need a quiet space to sit and something to write with. If you can, turn your phone off or put it on silent.

Now, close your eyes and center your body in a chair with your feet planted on the ground, preferably without shoes. Sit for at least a minute or two with your thoughts, with whatever is coming up for you in the moment, even if it is uncomfortable.

When you’re ready, explore the prompts below.

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Is there something you are carrying around right now that is a grief? Is it a person, an experience, a state of existence? Something else? Write it down.

Can you locate in your body where you most feel it? Where it most affects you? Is it stomach aches? Migraines? Something else? (For me, it’s in my left shoulder, and for LITD community member Kent, it’s his right shoulder.) Write it down.

Is there a time of day this grief is most difficult to contend with? Does it wake you up at night? Do you feel it most first thing in the morning, or while at work, or when you’re alone? Write it down.

What is something you want this grief to understand about you that it does not? Your limitations, what you can’t give it, what it has done to you? Do you want it to go away? Are you ashamed of it? Do you want it to just be done already? Are you ready to give it more of yourself? Write it down.

What is something you think this grief wants you to understand about it that you do not? It is trying to tell you something, it is going to be here for a while, you need to give in to it, see it in a certain way to find relief, to make peace with it. Write it down.

What are three things you can control about this grief? Write them down.

What are three things you cannot? Write them down.

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Thank you all for being here and for making this community what it is. I hope you’ll join me for our next The Short and Sweet Zoom gathering on Sunday, February 16th from 2pm-3pm ET. I’m working on something fun and joyous for this one. See you there!

Eyes on the donut,
Amber