Introducing Moving Through Grief: A Creative Process Workshop
(and reflections on traveling in Italy with my father)
Way back in May, another lifetime ago, before I really began to feel the tectonic shifts that started with the deaths of my mother and stepfather, Jenn and I were on a panel with our SPSCC colleague and dear friend, Kathleen Byrd (who happens to be Olympia’s Poet Laureate!). For the panel, we each read two short pieces of writing and asked one another questions about our creative process. To keep the questions and conversations organic, none of us knew what the other would read. It turns out, unsurprisingly, we all brought work that explored grief, both personal and collective. Climate grief, grief about lost potentials and changing communities, lost loved ones and beloved pets, grief about aging and chronic illness, about children and parents growing older.
Our conversations during the panel felt like a beginning. We know that there are many other folks having similar conversations and working towards collective healing. We want to learn from our community and open up this conversation the three of us have been having for many years, so we’ve decided to facilitate a collective experience around grief and creative process. On the evening of Friday, October 13th and all-day Saturday, October 14th, Jenn, Kathleen, and I will facilitate a series of workshops designed to hold space for both collective and individual griefs, to explore grief as inspiration for creativity, and to use that creativity to move through pain into witnessing and healing.
To learn more about the specific offerings, and to sign-up for the workshop series, check out this link: Moving Through Grief: A Creative Process Workshop
I am writing this Scrapheap post from a hotel lobby in Siena, Italy, two blocks from the incredible Piazza del Campo, where pigeons take turns drinking water that runs from the mouths of stone wolves in the Fountain Gaia, and tourists take turns filling up water bottles. I have a cold and have slept poorly the last few nights; my body aches, and I miss my sweetie and my kids and my bed, but I smell rain and hear a thunderstorm rolling in, truffles are in season, and my Dad is at a café on the piazza waiting for me to join him for aperitifs and people watching. Tomorrow, we move on to Lucca and another adventure.
We’ve dodged cars through crosswalks on chaotic Roman streets and negotiated metros and trains. When we were in Naples, we found ourselves in the middle of a memorial-turned-protest for a young man who was killed by another young man for taking a parking spot. Then there was the vast graveyard of Pompeii followed by a ferry ride to the island of Ischia where the Mediterranean softened the edges of exhaustion and grief. On Maronti beach in Ischia, I spent a long time watching a woman who looked so much like my mother, I could almost pretend she, too, was getting to experience the fumaroles and swelling sea with Dad and me. One night in Orvieto, my dad and I found ourselves in the shadow of a 16th century castle watching a metal show.
Dad and I have been planning this trip for over three years. It is something he has always wanted, but as a retired public school teacher, he never thought he could pull it off. It took a few months for me to convince him that we could make it happen, and when we set the date for the fall of 2023, I had no idea that I would be learning how to live with Crohn’s disease or in the midst of starting a new business as a creativity coach; I had no idea I would spend the summer in Texas cleaning out my mother and stepfather’s house, grieving with my siblings, but mostly feeling stunned and so very vulnerable. At first I thought the timing of this Italy trip was awful, but now, I see it as another part of the natural process of experiencing my parents’ transitions into elderhood. How bittersweet to witness my dad’s expansion on this trip, his first time to Europe, so soon after Mom’s death.
I wonder at the magic of transformation—my margins are so very thin these days that everywhere we go I feel exposed, exhausted, my grief hovers around me like a weight, and yet, I feel it starting to shift into something new, something I have no language for yet. This change is deeply rooted in my body. In the busy, liminal space of traveling, I have not had time to reflect or give my grief much attention, and I think that’s okay. What kind of integration happens when we let our bodies do the work of healing?
I look forward to looking at this question and all the others that come up during Moving Through Grief. I look forward to learning from all the folks who participate in the workshop with Jenn and Kathleen and I, and sharing a communal space for exploring creative process, grief, and healing. I hope that you will consider joining us if you are in the Olympia area, and please pass this along to anyone you think might be interested in attending.
Next time, I’ll be writing from Spain or the Netherlands—who knows what new insights and curiosities my travels will add to the scrap heap!