Grieving the Death of a Dear Client
After nearly two months of not knowing, I googled his name again and found a recording of his funeral. And the thing that I already knew, the truth that I knew 15 minutes after he didn’t show up for his last scheduled session, was that he was dead.
Even though I knew deep in my gut, the confirmation allowed me to actually fully begin my proper grieving process. My body convulsed with sobs and I texted two of my dearest ones to let them know that I finally had confirmation.
Then I got in my bed and cried. Doing what I have learned to do over years of intuitive practice, I began to place my hands on parts of my body that felt like they wanted touch. The place where my collar bones meet. And then the edge of my left rib cage, under my heart, pressing into the flesh until my body met the pressure with release. More tears.
After following and tending these threads in my body it felt ready for pleasure. Cupping my vulva caused another wave of tears to fall, but also a desire to move towards the erotic energy that was building.
This is what my body knows how to do. First greeting the sadness. Holding it and letting it swell. And then, as the wave subsides, noticing if pleasure is present. If it is, when it is; knowing that my body uses the movement and sound of masturbation to metabolize grief from my deep inside.
When I felt done. I curled up under my blankets and pressed play on the video.
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It’s a complicated thing to be a provider who supports people with embodiment, intimacy, attachment, and healing in the way that I do; especially because many of my clients don’t share with a lot of folks that they are working with me. I know some of this is because of our sex negative culture and demonization of pleasure. But it’s mostly that the work we are doing is so tender and so new that clients want to hold it close until they are ready to share with the people in their life.
When the video started I felt a pang of regret and sadness that I was separate from his world in such a way that I didn’t know about the funeral until after. My first impulse was to want to be there, to honor him in his death, but also for my own mourning. We had worked together for almost exactly 4 years and for the last two had seen one another weekly. All relationships, inside and outside of my work, are significant… and this one was long term. Our work was a part of the rhythm of my weeks for 4 whole years.
Even though he was “just” my client, his death is a massive loss.
And this is where I want to talk about disenfranchised grief.
Disenfranchised grief is grief that isn’t recognized, where you aren’t seen in your mourning. The metabolization is not supported by others or cannot be. It is grief that is outside the norms for the culture/community you are in.
This relationship. This significant, long term relationship was lost. But because I am a provider and he was my client. Because his work was so deep and so tender that he had only just started sharing it with some folks in his life, it would not have been honoring to the man I knew to attend his funeral. Even if I had known; not going would have been my final act of care as his provider.
But what does that do for my grief? My loss?
So many of us experience disenfranchised grief. Whether it is from our experiences being outside cis-heteronormative monogamy in a culture that says that is the only way to be a valid human. Whether it is from being on the receiving end of violence from white supremacy or patriarchy. If we have had abortions, given up children for adoptions, lost people to addiction… if our grief is expressed in ways that the people around us can’t handle and so we tuck it away…. So much of our grief is disenfranchised.
Disenfranchised grief is such a common experience and we don’t have social scripts for how to hold it. But the beautiful thing about that reality is that we also have the opportunity to follow the process of our bodies and create new rituals to hold us in our grief. In this world that is so starved for knowing how to really grieve, we have the opportunity to create new spaces and possibilities for tending our own grief and our collective grief.
A few weeks ago, when I didn’t “officially” know what had happened to him, I decided to write him a eulogy during a Mindful Erotic Grief practice. It was my process of coming to terms with the fact that I knew he wasn’t coming back. I was able to remember the man that I cared about and the dreams that he had for himself, letting those live outside my body on paper. The first witnessing.
The second witnessing occurred when I was able to share it with the other griever in that particular practice. She asked if I would like to share and I was able to speak of him, in my voice, to one other loving witness.
I shared it with my partner. A third witness.
And now I am sharing this piece of writing with you. Because I need to be witnessed in my loss. I also know that there are other providers who have this type of experience and I want to say Hey. I see you. This specific grief we experience matters.
To say to everyone: The grief that you hold that is not acknowledged by your family, your community, your culture, the world…. matters.
To invite you into my ritual, if you would like, to honor this sweet man in his death by running your fingers through rosemary the next time you walk by it on the street. And if you feel called at that moment to whisper, “You’re free. You’re free. You’re free.” into the wind.