For Jenkinson, conscious grieving is a skill that we must develop at this moment of loss and demise. It is important to distinguish it from isolation and withholding—those are strategies devised early in our lives to keep hidden what had been shamed or wounded. I know, because I lived this way for forty years, wary and determined to prevent further pain by remaining on the margins of life, untouchable and seemingly safe.

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Be taught now, among the trees and rocks, how the discarded is woven into shelter, learn the way things hidden and unspoken slowly proclaim their voice in the world. A client apologized to me the other day for “going backward” in his work with me, as if forward were the only acceptable direction.This, of course, is just a start, but it has all flown by, hardly time for goodbyes, my feelings French pressed down as Life poured over into new pastures with very little pastoral help.

The Wild Edge of Sorrow Quotes - Goodreads The Wild Edge of Sorrow Quotes - Goodreads

This book rings a shivering bell of hope: that, when lifted by ritual and fellowship, the moist ground of grief actually contains a treasury of gifts that are our ancestral birthright.While we have much to learn from indigenous cultures about forms of rituals and how ritual works, we cannot simply adopt their rituals and settle them neatly onto our psyches. I read it through mine; in this feast of beauty unearthed from wells of great suffering, Rashani Réa and Francis Weller offered me the nourishment of what my soul already knew, and knows, and keeps forgetting and remembering. Quite possibly the best guidebook evercrafted on the art of grieving, this volume is also a brilliant and poetic handbook for becoming fully human, more exquisitely alive, and more able tocontribute to cultural change. One of my most memorable teachings about slowing down came from my mentor, Clarke Berry, a Jungian analyst with whom I apprenticed, following licensure. What I have come to see is that much of the grief we carry is not personal; it doesn’t arise from our histories or experiences.

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Whereas our culture assumes that public grieving is somewhat childish, Francis Weller passionately asserts that “Grief is the work of mature men and women. The work has honed something clear and valuable in his own character, and a delightful wisdom shines through every page of The Wild Edge of Sorrow.Rashani and Francis are skilled toolmakers who masterfully guide us through the raw vulnerability of grief to a place of reverence for the journey, offering a balm to the nomads of this harsh terrain. When this happens I share Francis Weller’s explanation of The Five Gates of Grief which include every type of grief we can experience and how they are interrelated. That man is psychotherapist and author, Francis Weller, in his new book The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and The Sacred Work of Grief.