Living with Dying - Gathering Your Tribes
Living with Dying - Gathering Your Tribes
“Welcome to the club that no-one wants to be a part of”… the first message I received when I joined the Widowed in Ireland group. I was over a year into my grief journey at that point. I’d tried talk therapy, bereavement counselling, sound healing, meditation, you name it… and I’d come to the realisation that while grief is a path that you walk alone in a sense, that there had to be a space out there full of other people who “just got it”. After 14 months I had finally met my first widow in person at a training event we both attended. We shared our stories one night over many hours and many coffees - a cathartic experience which just served to highlight how different our experiences had been of loss, but yet how they were both woven through with the same threads.
Don’t get me wrong, my support system is epic and I am grateful for the people I have around me - my family, my chosen family of friends, Kevin’s family, and those professionals who had collaborated with me on my healing journey so far. But there was a part of me I couldn’t share with those people. It didn’t come from a fear of judgement, but from a place where I felt they just wouldn’t get it - certainly people could empathise, but they could no more understand than I could speaking to someone about the loss of their child, or a parent.
A dictionary definition of a tribe I found - “a social group composed chiefly of numerous families, clans, or generations having a shared ancestry and language”. I love this description because it evokes that sense of unity over a common purpose or struggle. Historically, people identified themselves by what tribe they belonged to. In our modern world, this definition implies that one can be part of multiple tribes, depending on your shared ancestry, which can be taken to mean so many things, and not just our biological lineage. Tribe is a sense of home.
In essence I have many tribes - I have my birth family which in and of itself was brought together by more than just genetics. I have my nearest and dearest friends, some I speak to daily, and some less frequently but we can pick up our connection in an instant. There’s my work tribe, my volunteer tribe, my medicine tribe… you get the gist.
After a lot more searching than I expected to have to do, I eventually found a private group on Facebook, entitled Widowed in Ireland*. A safe, confidential, deeply healing space of amazing souls who “just got it”. A group closely protected by our amazing admins, full of every conversation imaginable, from the most light hearted, to the saddest. People from all corners of Ireland, some of whom I have had the privilege to meet now and share our stories. People at every stage of their grief journey, who inspire hope and strength in others. A tribe connected by shared ancestry. And in it I found another, most unexpected, sense of belonging. Tribe is definitely a sense of home.
I read this passage by Scott Stabile during Kevin’s funeral - it seems more relevant today than ever.
“Find people who can handle your darkest truths, who don’t change the subject when you share your pain, or try to make you feel bad for feeling bad. Find people who understand we all struggle, some of us more than others, and that there’s no weakness in admitting it. In fact, few things take as much strength. Find people who want to be real, however that looks and feels, and who want you to be real, too. Find people who get that life is hard, and who get that life is also beautiful, and who aren’t afraid to honour both those realities. Find people who help you feel more at home in your heart, mind and body, and who take joy in your joy. Find people who love you, for real, and who accept you, for real. Just as you are. They’re out there, these people. Your tribe is waiting for you. Don’t stop searching until you find them.”
*If you would like to join the Widowed in Ireland Group, please follow this link. Please note that this is a private group, and is reserved for people who have lost their spouses or partners, and are located in Ireland. Proof of bereavement is required to join so that this remains a protected space.