Deborah Morris Coryell - Good Grief: Healing Through the Shadow of Loss

This book is dedicated to my father, Saul Goldman (of blessed memory), an ordinary man whose extraordinary love continues to teach me and heal me.

Good Grief

An insightful and compassionate guide to one of lifes essential growth processes. Grieving is not to penalize us; it is loves healing work for loss.

RABBI ZALMAN M. SCHACHTER-SHALOMI, COAUTHOR OF FROM AGE-ING TO SAGE-ING

Helps families deal with grief in a way that is nurturing, honoring, and life-affirming.

GERSHON WINKLER, DIRECTOR OF THE WALKING STICK FOUNDATION AND AUTHOR OF THE WAY OF THE BOUNDARY CROSSER

[Deborah Morris Coryell] writes in a compassionate voice that offers comfort as well as a challenge to encourage transformation through the experience of loss. An excellent companion... a helpful and validating resource for grief counselors, for anyone working with people in grief, and for many working with their own grief issues.

THE LIBRARY LETTER, BASTYR UNIVERSITY

With Gratitude

Through the agonies and ecstasies of writing this book, I have been inspired by guardian angels. My journey into healing through grief would not have been possible without the unconditional love and financial support of Phyllis and Harvey Sandler, Marsha and Ben Swirsky, and Carolyn and Steve Lieberman. By providing the means of support, they gave me so much more of myself. I am eternally grateful.

I am grateful to family and friends who believed in me when I stumbled, fell, doubted, and raged. They held steady. They knew better than me, at times, what I needed to do.

I am grateful to Mel and Enid Zuckerman, founders of Canyon Ranch Living, whose passion and commitment to creating wellness resorts gave birth to a revolution in consciousness in which all of the healing arts could be explored.

I am grateful to Jane Centofante whose editing brought divine order out of sacred chaos; to Mindy Seeger who brought me Jane and whose soulful listening carried me across some very rough spots; and to Annette Hanzer Pfau who read these words with her heart and then designed a beautiful book to hold them.

I am grateful to my husband, Bill, my souls mate, who took page after page of illegible scriptarrows shooting front to back and top to bottomand painstakingly constructed not one, not two, but three versions of this book; who shared with me some terrifying descents into a lifetime of grief; who inspires me with his love.

I am grateful to my son, Matt, whose birth gave me someone to live for and whose life continues to humble and teach me.

And last, I am grateful to all those whose deaths brought their grieving families and friends to me; who taught me that grief is the birthright of life and that love doesnt need a form, it just needs an open heart.

Life can only be understood backwards;
but it must be lived forwards.

SREN KIERKEGAARD

Letter to the Reader

I want to unfold,
I dont want to stay folded anywhere,
because where I am folded,
there I am a lie...

RAINER MARIA RILKE

Gentle Reader,

It was 1985 when I received the first phone call that drew me into the circle of grief. As Director of the Wellness/Education Program at Canyon Ranch Spa in Tucson, Arizona, I thought I had gotten where I was going. Having been a part of the team that envisioned this magnificent environment committed to health, education, and fitness, creating the Wellness Department seemed to be the culmination of what, at that point, had been my lifes work.

As a little girl growing up in Brooklyn, New York, I had discovered the seduction of teaching. One of my earliest memories comes from the fourth grade when our teacher was explaining something in social studies class that my friend couldnt seem to understand. I leaned over to explain what it was the teacher was saying and saw, with amazement, the look of confusion and fear on my friends face turn into the relief of comprehension. I was hooked! Years later my father would perfect the art of sleeping with his eyes open so that I could use him as my audience for all that I was learning and so desperate to teach.

When Ron Sandler, then general manager of Canyon Ranch, called me to the phone in 1985 to ask if I would speak to a woman whose teenage son had committed suicide two weeks prior, I didnt hesitate. Of course I would, I answered, having no idea what I would say. When Gloria got on the phone I could barely hear her voice. In a whisper, she asked: What can we possibly talk about? How can you help me? I surprised both of us by saying it was her son Robert who needed helpRobert who needed healing. But hes dead, his mother wept. Yes. Then we would need to go where he lives... in our hearts and in our minds.

At that moment, my life turned a corner. I could not know it then; nothing had changed very much. I continued as director of the spas Wellness/Education Program until we outgrew each other. Then I turned my focus exclusively to counseling those dealing with catastrophic life events. Every so often a mother would come to me bearing her burden, grieving for her dead child. My heart broke open with each one. My work with catastrophic illness had brought me to the gateway of life and death many times to share the burden and grieve with the one who was dying. During that time, and even now, when people hear about this work they look at me and wonder about the tragedy of these encounters. I rush to explain. It is an incredible healing for me and a great honor to sit with people and share the burden of grief we all must carry at certain moments in our lives and so often alone. Grieving takes us to the very heart of life itself. Grieving takes us to love and to loss. We only grieve for that which we have loved and, the nature of life being transitory, love and loss are intimately connected. Not only are we all going to diewhich we can see as loss of life or as a wave of transforming energybut every moment is changing and as it changes it brings loss.

My first encounter as a young philosophy student was with the teaching of the Greek philosopher Heraclitus: All things change... Nothing remains... You can never step in the same river twice. What was Heraclitus saying? And was it a cause for celebration or a cause for tears and fears? There is a story that the great physician/analyst Carl Jung would say to a patient suffering in the pits of despair: Lets open a bottle of champagne! You are at bottom, now we can begin to climb up and out! But if a patient would come in celebrating and joyous, he would put his head in his hands and say: Ach! This is terrible. For now the descent will come. This is not Jungs pessimism. Its life. Constantly changing and unpredictable.

At the moment that Gloria and I began our explorations into what healing might look like for a woman whose son had committed suicide, both of our lives had a certain focus and integrity. Within five years, that picture would totally change for me. I would find myself leaving a home and a community that I never thought I would leave; that I would never have chosen to leave if the force of circumstances hadnt compelled me. The betrayals I struggled to integrate would ultimately mean the loss of not only home, friends, and security, but of my self as I had come to know me.