I beat the shit out of things today

I went offline all day. Today, Sentinel and I went to a grief lodge event and went through a very intense grief ritual together. It was an unexplainably profound experience and very much what I have needed. I spent five full hours at the lodge.

I’m so exhausted. I feel hungover like I binge drank all day, but I am completely sober.

In the upcoming days, I’m just going to take things slow and easy for a bit. There will be waves that follow this intense energetic release.

I beat the shit out of things today (they had a rage area just for it). I haven’t been able to physically move my anger in years. My arms, neck, and back are sore. I held absolutely nothing back.

I beat and beat until I couldn’t beat any more. Went outside to cool off. Came back in and repeated it. Two more times. Screaming every frustration and thing about my life that bothers me. All the losses. All the fucked up shit. All the ways people have hurt me and what they have taken from me. The traumas. Everything that wasn’t fair. Everything I should have never had to experience.

I beat, screamed, and yelled at the top of my lungs until all of it was out of me. Until I had no strength or energy left to continue it. Then the tears hit.

I’m still trying to wrap my head around everything I experienced and that happened in the ritual. I’ve had some pretty intense emotional experiences on psychedelics in my past but this was a whole different level.

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The Ritual

It started out with all of us in community, standing in a circle chanting a sacred three word song over and over. A large drum being rhythmically beaten in the background.

Very peaceful. I wasnt feeling any emotions. I had no idea what was even going to happen. Nobody was showing any signs of anything. The chanting went on for probably 10-15 minutes. People were dancing, moving around, rocking back and forth.

Then out of nowhere, a person suddenly lost it, and released their emotions in a sudden deeply-rooted scream, like their soul completely exploded out of their mouth.

Thats when it’s like I left the universe. In seconds the entire place transformed. Like all of our trapped emotions turned us into some kind of emotional zombies instantly. I remember every second of it yet feel like I was in the twilight zone the entire time. I couldn’t stop any of my emotions. Everything surfaced, immediately.

I went from feeling completely unemotional (wondering how and when I was actually going to feel my grief) to every single emotion trapped deep inside of me exploding out of my throat and my eyes. And eventually through rage with safe, intentional, physical expression of it.

The chanting and my emotions didn’t stop for 75 minutes. I probably lost a liter of fluid through my tears. And then the ritual slowly got quieter and calmer. A few minutes later, at the same exact time, with no prompting or signals, everyone stopped chanting. The circle and lodge became completely silent. It made the hair stand on my neck. It was absolutely wild.

Grief isn’t just about dead people.

My grief was about the childhood I never got to have.
My innocence being taken away from me through people abusing me.
About bipolar disorder taking my brain away from me.
My chronic health problems that have taken away so many things from my life, and the loss caused by the burden of all the pills I have to take for them.
Recent relationship and friendship losses.
Identity loss.
Loss of time with people I have been estranged with.

And so much more. I have experienced loss throughout my life, starting with the birth of my sister (when I lost “only-child” status), my parents divorcing a few years later, my divorces, my job losses, and too many other losses to mention.

I have written about many of these losses and grief in the story where I introduce Sentinel, the buffalo.

I’ll be going back to the lodge for more. I will keep going until I have moved 42 years of trapped emotions through my body and out. And I will keep going to help grieve the future losses I will endure and experience.

Grief and loss are part of every day of our lives.

Holding in grief eventually destroys us, and everything around us, and creates more loss, that we will eventually have to also grieve.

I’m choosing to release the grief. To feel the loss. To express my anger and emotions. To shed every tear it takes.

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