Frontiers Friday #81. Grief, Loss & Heartbreak (Part V)
One of the best ways to not get invited to a party is not just be a boring conversationalist, but have a 5-part series on the the topic grief and loss.
Welcome back. And in case you missed them, here's the previous four parts:
I hope you'd find this week's recommendations useful and inspiring.
📖 Story: Kafka and the Travelling Doll
I first heard this story in one of Tara Brach's meditation series. I was enthralled by this, I searched online to find this exact story written by the Spanish writer Jordi Sierra i Fabra.
Take a read.
🎧 Listen: Album Carrie & Lowell
Sufjan Stevens, one of the great singer-songwriter of our times, takes a deep personal dive into his relationship with his belated mother who struggled with schizophrenia.
On Death with Dignity,"I forgive you mother, and I love to be near you.
Every road leads to an end.
Your apparition passes through me..."On Should Have Known Better,
"When I was 3, 3 maybe 4,
She left us at the video store."Vox describes this album as an attempt to learn to grief.To hear the album, click here. For more about this album, read this.
📽 Movie: Riverdance
I watched this on one of family movie nights. This animation tells the story of how a young boy deals with his loss of his beloved grandfather. It's not all heavy. It's heartfelt.
📕 Read: Grief: The Price of Love
You might not have not come across Danish psychologist Svend Brinkmann's work before.. His previous work on books like Stand Firm, Stand Point were outstanding (especially the latter).
So when I stumbled on his latest release in the shelfs of our local bookstore New Edition, I grabbed it without a second thought.
The subtitle says it all: Grief: The Price of Love.Key Graf:
"Grief tells us that we can never completely master life."
"it is precisely this impotence, this fundamental fragility, that creates the ethical demand in our interactions with others. In that sense, grief and ethical life are interlinked."
Brinkmann argues why grief should be seen as a foundational emotion, on par with other emotions like anxiety, shame and guilt.
⏸ Words Worth Contemplating:
Every thing that you love, you will eventually lose, but in the end, love will return in a different form.’
Reflection: Our obsession with competence and excellence can paradoxically strangulate us from being open, warm and kind. Beyond mastery, maybe life is simply inviting us to be part of. This often becomes more apparent in grief work. No longer something to "master," but finding our way to be a with-ness of.
BIG HUGS TO NEW PEOPLE WHO ARE AT THEIR FRONTIER!
If you've just joined us, I'm glad you can join us at the "bleeding edge." Feel free to check out the back catalogue of Frontiers of Psychotherapists Development (FPD). You might also want to go into specific topics in the FPD Archives like
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Unintended Consequences (2 Parts)
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