Grief that Breaks Us Open to Be Present with Peter Jabin

In this episode, Tyson Conner speaks with Peter Jabin, a pastoral psychotherapist and spiritual director, about the importance of grief and communal grieving practices. They discussed how grief is a natural and necessary part of being human, and how ritual and community can help us metabolize loss in a healthy way.

Peter explained the concept of the "five gates" of grief, outlining different pathways into the grieving process beyond just the loss of a loved one. They talked about how grieving builds resilience and connection, countering the common notion that it is a sign of weakness. Peter also shared about the communal grieving rituals he facilitates, inspired by traditions from Burkina Faso, and how they create a "sudden village" to process grief in a spiritual context.

This conversation explores how fully engaging with grief through community and ritual can lead to healing and wholeness, even in the midst of cataclysmic changes in society and the environment. It is an invitation to bear witness to loss and honor what we love through the transformative power of grief.

Peter Jabin is a Pastoral Psychotherapist, Spiritual Director, and Grief Mentor based in Seattle.

Peter can be found at his website www.JabinCounseling.com . His linktree for grief retreats can be found here: https://linktr.ee/griefsupport .

Further Learning: 

Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief, by Francis Weller

The Smell of Rain on Dust: Grief and Praise, by Martín Prechtel

© Relational Psych 2023

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Transcript

Tyson Conner: 0:11

Do you want to learn about psychological growth without sorting through the jargon, you're in the right place. This is the Relational Psych Podcast. I'm your host licensed therapist Tyson Conner. On this show, we learn about the processes and theories behind personal growth and experience a little bit of it ourselves. This is season two, where we'll focus on the practice of relational psychotherapy, and explore concepts and theories that consider psychology from a relational lens. And please keep in mind that this podcast does not constitute therapeutic advice, but we might help you And Today, my guest on the podcast is Peter jabin. Peter is find some a pastoral psychotherapist and spiritual director in private practice in the East Lake neighborhood of Seattle. He received his M.Div from University of Chicago in 1993. With postgraduate work at the Center for Religion and psychotherapy of Chicago. Peter is a diaconal minister in the Pacific Northwest Conference of The United Methodist Church. He has trained in the facilitation of grief rituals, with Francis Weller, Therese Chauvet, Lawrence Cole and others. Peter, welcome to the podcast.

Peter Jabin: 1:18

Thank you. It's good to be here.

Tyson Conner: 1:20

And today, we will begin discussing the question, because I don't know if answering is within the scope of the time we have. Why is grief important and crucial to the project of being human? And the task of living in a time of Cataclysm specifically?

Peter Jabin: 1:39

Quite the question.

Tyson Conner: 1:40

So it's a big one. It's a big one. So Peter, maybe before we dive into the first question, which I think should be what is grief? Do you want to explain a little bit about how this came to be an area of interest for you?

Peter Jabin: 1:59

Good question. I didn't actually pause to think about that. How did I get into this? Started with a book study, a friend dragged me to a book study, at Chambala's center down in Madison Park on a Peter Levine book A Year to Live. Met the facilitator there. And she got connected with Francis Weller, who I'll talk about in this conversation quite a bit. He's become a teacher of mine. She attended a grief ritual that he facilitated. And talked me into joining her for one that was 2017. I went to my first grief ritual down in - just outside of Portland. It was an amazing experience. And I've just lit up in this work and attended more rituals, ended up attending a training, now into facilitating the work. And you know, ultimately, it was actually the last grief ritual that I facilitated, it kind of came to me that I showed up in the world with a broken heart. And I have spent most of my life trying to fix that. And this work has been about realizing oh, no, that's part of the gift that I bring to the world. And what I need is community that can not only welcome and tolerate that, but welcome that value, celebrate the broken heart that I bring to the world because, if you're paying attention these days to the world. It's a very reasonable response to be brokenhearted.

Tyson Conner: 4:00

Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you. So what do we mean by grief?

Peter Jabin: 4:09

What do we mean by grief -- and if I can start answering that, in the realm of poetry with some poetry. This is a brief excerpt from a poem by a guy named Steve Garnaas-Holmes. And he says "grief is a wild animal that moves into your house. It will never be tamed. You will learn to live with it. Its moods and hungers. Its sudden movements. You learn to regard it with tenderness. You never learn its language, but sometimes, for the sake of the animal, you go out on the back stoop, overcome with love, and sit beside it." And I start with poetry because grief is really... it's not a cognitive, it's not an analytical thing, it is not something that we grab ahold of and process and get done with and the myth of closure is a myth. We never finish with our grief, it is something that we encounter -- in the same place that we encounter poetry, dreams, myth, right? It is in a deep time, a place that is deep within our genes. It's a territory that we enter into, and give ourselves to. Sometimes talk about it as a technologythat is deep within us. And it is the technology through which we metabolize our losses and are returned to life. Right, and we don't control it. So this image of it being a beast that moves into our house, that takes us over and we can learn to live with it and its rhythms and its movements. So it's beyond languages, before language. That's the first thing that I would say about it.

Tyson Conner: 6:19

I imagine that many of our listeners will be familiar with the stages of death, kind of like --

Peter Jabin: 6:26

Kubler Ross' categories, five stages of grief.

Tyson Conner: 6:30

Right, which I think what you're suggesting kind of stands in contrast to at the very least the pop culture version of that. Where that the pop culture understanding of these five stages, what is it denial, anger, bargaining? So on and so forth?

Peter Jabin: 6:47

Yes, anger, denial, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

Tyson Conner: 6:53

Yeah. There's despair. There's kind of an implied process with an evolutionary kind of process to it, where you do this stage, and then you do this stage and then do the stage and then you're done. And then you've accepted. And what you're suggesting is that grief is actually not that containable. I, my grad school was a seminary as well. And so I was required to take these theology classes, and one of the theology professors would say that, at a certain point, all good theology becomes poetry. And that came to mind as you were reading the poem, just like this is getting at a level of human experience, that trying to contain it in these kind of rigid clinical cognitive categories ends up failing. And the thing that does a better job is something that's a little bit broader, a little bit more associative, a little bit more symbolic, a little bit less rigid. And also, that kind of steps out of time, a little bit, kind of feels like that's part of what you're getting at. Does that all land or?

Peter Jabin: 8:11

It does, and I think Kubler Ross... I've not really read her deeply. I think she was - it's very important contribution for a culture that does not want to talk about mortality or death or grief. Very important to open it up. I don't think she intended how her work is usually appropriated in terms of 12345 and then I'm finished. That's kind of what we do with it because we are uncomfortable with this idea that - I think it's John O'Donoghue says we are initiated into loss at some point in our lives, some earlier some later, but we are initiated into the experience of loss and grief and then we have a forever developing relationship with that, right? This is you know, actually the oldest cultural artifacts for humanity have to do with funeral rites right. So you can say that grief is actually one of the earliest cultural expressions that we have, and could even argue that everything that has followed from that, all art all inquiry is about dealing with the realities of loss and grief. It is a fundamental reality in our life. And yes e apprehend it. At levels before/beneath language. That's why poetry gets to it in the grief rituals. It's why we sing a lot, we dance, there's drumming, there's movement because it takes us back in our genetic memory to an earlier time.

Tyson Conner: 10:06

The sense that I'm getting is that this conceptualization of grief doesn't allow it to be something that can just be talked about and felt through in a contained, objective way. It's something that is a full body thing, and needs the full body to be involved.

Peter Jabin: 10:26

Yes, it is definitely an embodied experience fully embodied experience. It's something that rises up through us. Right, it was definitely an experience in the ritual of feeling it rise and find expression, often quite surprising. Right, when it does find expression, how it comes out might be not at all what I anticipated. Somebody anticipates. And it's very different than talking about the-- which is also important. I'm not dismissing that it's important to talk about the loss and process it in an analytical way as well. But that's only a piece of it.

Tyson Conner: 11:09

So let's, let's talk about these five gates of grief. Because Listener, having accepted that the thing we're going to talk about is inherently not a thing that you can talk about enough. We'll also accept that frameworks are helpful in orienting ourselves even as they are limited. So you've read a particular framework of grief.

Peter Jabin: 11:29

Yes, and this is not my framework. This is actually from Francis Weller, the five gates of grief. This is in his book, The Wild Edge of Sorrow, which is a wonderful read, highly recommended. He's a Jungian therapist who's got just a very - and a ritualist - and he's got a very lyrical way of writing and he came up with this which is used quite widely in the grief ritual, community. And again, he talks about the five gates of grief - a gate is a portal it is an entry point. So these are five entry points to the territory of grief, to the land and the healing territory of grief. The first gate is everything that we love, we will lose. So this is what we usually think about when we think about grief, this is loss of a parent, loss of a spouse, loss of a beloved animal, can be loss of a job, a place, a home, a dream. It can be illness, right but this is the kind of thing that we usually think about. very personal losses to us. And we grieve because we love these things right? So at the first gate this is kind of the first lesson about grief is that grief and love are not -- they're the same thing. Grief grief is a different face of love. We don't grieve what we don't love.

Tyson Conner: 13:02

That's that line that people made fun of in one division, but because it was trying to say this, and it was trying to say it in a superhero. comic book show where a living Android said to the most powerful magician in the world."What's what is grief, but love persevering?" And people made fun of it at the time when people got angry on the internet about it. But it sounds like what I'm hearing you say is that yeah that's the first step into grief that most of us take. Our love continues after we have lost someone or something.

Peter Jabin: 13:39

And that is necessarily also an experience of pain. And or anger, rage. I mean, it could be a lot of... it can be looked a lot of different ways. But yes, it is. Losing what we love. And it is usually where we start in our journey with grief. It's where the world finally gets to us and breaks our heart open. And having an open heart, having it broken open, right, we usually think of a broken heart as a bad thing. But it breaks us open to actually be present to the world. So that's the first gate of grief, what we're most familiar with. They get more interesting from there. The second gate of grief that Francis talks about is the places in us that have not known love. So these are parts of ourselves that have not been welcomed, that have been banished and outcast, places of us wrapped in shame. And we come to treat these parts of ourselves as they were treated with contempt.

Tyson Conner: 14:45

I feel like this gate, the grieving the places that we have not known love, that feels to me like a really common topic for psychotherapy. I feel like a lot of times when I'm talking about people's griefs, this is a kind of complicated level that I get to with people where it feels like we're talking about grief, that you're you're inquisitive curiosity as a child was treated as an affront to your parents authority. And so you learn to never ask a question. But oh god, your curiosity is such a delightful, lovable part of yourself that never received love, and now receive so much cruelty within yourself. That's, for example, that feels like the sort of thing that comes up a lot in psychotherapy, as people are doing a lot of self work and identity work.

Peter Jabin: 15:41

I think it's the result of doing a lot of the therapeutic work to discover these places that we have come to treat as they were treated, we just jumped on board. As a gay man, I relate to this, in terms of that very early erotic self that, that I learned and nobody -- I didn't get a lot of direct -- nobody was telling me gay was bad. Sure, in my household, but it was in the atmosphere, I absorbed it, and I learned, this part of me is not okay, so hide it, push it down, never speak this, never show this. Right. And that becomes a really outcast part of myself and in ifs language becomes an exiled part of myself. And these parts don't just languish in the corner, they show up as addiction, as self loathing as depression, as violence as like, that's how these get lived out. So they're very important to attend, to open to this gate.

Tyson Conner: 16:49

Yeah. And for the Listener, IFS is internal family systems, which is a particular modality of psychotherapy, way of thinking about people that's very interested in different parts of a person. That's a kind of modality that's come up on the show before, but I didn't want someone to be like, 'Wait, what's that? That sounds interesting.' And so thank you.

Peter Jabin: 17:12

So that's a bit about the second gate. The third gate that Francis talks about is the sorrows of the world and this is enormous. This is coming into focus, in a way. Wild edge, I think was published in I think 2015, and how this gate has changed since Francis published. This is about acknowledging the losses of the world around us. Even if we try to shut it out, the loss is in the air we breathe with the wildfires, literally. It's in the air that we breathe, the Earth is scarred, species are going extinct on a daily basis and are surrounded by rampant consumerism, unrestrained capitalism, civil society that is fraying. Right, people are talking about it more and more these days as Earth grief. As extinction anxiety. Right. This is all about the third gate - the sorrows of the world.

Tyson Conner: 18:18

This gate is making me think of the Ingmar Bergman movie, a couple of them actually, I guess. Both Persona and Winter's Light feel like they're kind of about this on some level. The idea of, Yes, I am fine. Maybe the characters in those films are fine enough. But the world is so full of suffering. And that this is something that I would think of as an existential kind of thing, all of these kind of fall under that category. But when people talk about an existential angst, this is the kind of thing that comes to my mind.

Peter Jabin: 19:01

Yes, existential and I think existentialism maybe used to be voluntary or optional, right? It's becoming required reading for all of us, what we are facing the -- I think we are living in a time of Cataclysm and what we do at this gate is crucial. I do like to think of, well Francis actually suggests this, that right our grief at this gate is actually and literally the soul of the world. Anima Mundi weeping through us like we are of the Earth, our tears at this gate. It really literally is the weeping of the earth.

Tyson Conner: 19:53

I've heard people talk about how human consciousness can be thought of as the universe understanding itself. And what I'm hearing you say is human grieving can be the universe grieving for itself. Or at least the planet grieving for itself. I'm gonna need to sit with that one for another couple of decades, I think.

Peter Jabin: 20:14

I think that's what we're up against and invited into. A couple of these gates Francis references Paul Shepard who I have to read. Sociologist, anthropological sociologist, I believe? He reflects on some of these gates, like the loss that we feel of a sacramental world at the third gate, we interpret as our own personal failing, we take it on. And we're encouraged to do this by our culture to not recognize there's something terribly amiss in our world as we're living collectively. We're kind of encouraged to, "what's wrong with me, everybody else seems to be okay. Why am I feeling this way? There must be something wrong with me when there's something amiss in the world."

Tyson Conner: 21:06

And just to plant the seed for something that will come up later in the conversation. I see that a lot in conversations around the function of psychotherapy and society, where I see many people saying, "people tell me to go to therapy. But the problem isn't me. The problem is the world." And we'll get to that. And Listener, I'm also going to put a plug, I don't know where it'll go in the season. But a lot of what we're talking about in this category, very much relates to a conversation that we had on this podcast, which you haven't heard yet, because then come out with Karen Weisbard around the social unconscious, and that way that us as Western society tends to reject the social reality and personalize it and individualize it. So yeah, that's just a link. I don't know what to make of it.

Peter Jabin: 21:54

And I think of Krishna Murthy, "it is no sign of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." I think there's a shift happening here. My task with my clients is not to have them function better in society, right, but to be able to step more fully into a critical relationship to it. So just to hit the last two gates and move on to other things. Fourth gate that Francis talks about, what we expected and do not receive. There's a reference- I don't know who it is - another sociologist who says we are born stone age children, we come into the world, expecting to be received by a village of 40 sets of hands, and 40 sets of eyes, not the maybe two, if we're lucky. We get these days, that genetically, we still come into the world expecting to be received by the village, and to be initiated into what Francis calls the primary satisfactions of the world, which is for us companionship and shared meals and an attentive group of elders and communal rituals, these things that provide connection and fulfillment to human beings. And most of us don't have access to these things anymore. We live in such isolated fragmented places, with such a dearth of resource.

Tyson Conner: 23:33

And that conversation makes me think of another episode we recorded on suicide. And the person we interviewed there, Dr. Tyson Bailey, his diagnosis for society was that most suicide is caused by isolation, which feels very much like missing what was expected. And I'm also thinking about this feeling that many people have at some point in their lives that the world is a little wrong. That was very brilliantly represented in the matrix movies. I think, you know, and then there's also layers of queerness, and things to be considered in that film. But this sense of, we're meant to be together, but we're not. And there's some other, some communities, some group that I don't have, or that many of us don't have. That feels like a pretty common experience.

Peter Jabin: 24:22

this longing to belong, and we have been better. There are cultures that are still better than our dominant culture. And in deep time, we were better at facilitating that belonging with each other. We've really forgotten how to do that. And we replace it with substances and things and consumption and distraction in our technology. There's all kinds of ways to distract from it but it leaves us feeling lost and desperate, right? Even suicidal. Yeah, that's a big one. And the last ancestral grief, which was, I think this has also changed a lot recently. Just really, we can think about this as intergenerational trauma. This is what we receive from a history of racism and colonialism and genocide, which the emerging field of epigenetics suggests we actually inherit this genetically, physically. In some way. This trauma is passed down to us. It registers in our bodies. We are carrying it. And we can work with it. We can heal even grief that is inherited, and not necessarily ours specifically. Which is profound healing work to be engaged in. Much more to say there. Those are the five gates that Francis presents in the book. And, you know, he leaves it open. There's more than this. And I hear people talking these days about additional gates of regret. The life that I did not live, that looking back, I see choices I did not take and what did not happen that could have happened. That is a gate of grief. The harms that I have perpetrated. And again, with climate crisis, this is so sharp these days, my daily complicity in what's happening is very painful to hold. That is a gate. to grief again, and all of those are about entering the territory.

Tyson Conner: 26:56

And part of what I'm hearing in these is, you know, that I was in an online support community for people who had left high control religious groups. And it was really common for people to show up in this online space and say, I feel angry, or I kind of miss my church, and to essentially be posting, Is this okay? And everyone would jump on and be very supportive. And every now and then there'd be someone saying, you're an adult? Why are you asking other people for permission to feel this way. And somebody or other would respond to that person. And say, some variation of people aren't asking permission, people are looking for confirmation that what they're feeling is what it feels like they're feeling. And it sounds like these gates of ways of entering into grief, are serving as that. Saying, these are not exhaustive categories. These aren't the five different versions of grief and every grief falls into one of these. These are outlines of ways of grieving, ways of entering grief. So that if you, listener are hearing this, and there's one of these that's striking you, or that feels close to something that you've felt, that something in you feels a need for some kind of help with, or some kind of addressing, or some kind of speaking or being - something that's already in you. These are some ways that folks have identified this might be a kind of grief you might be having. So take this not as permission to fit a category, but as a potential invitation to begin exploring.

Peter Jabin: 28:31

I would say if if a listener is feeling resonance within any of these, perhaps that is something calling you saying 'attend to me, right. Pay attention.' There is something, there is a loss that maybe you are carrying, that you've not really attended to yet and take it seriously. It's important. It matters. It's valid.

Tyson Conner: 28:58

So let's talk about what isn't grief first.

Peter Jabin: 29:01

Yeah, it is important to talk about what grief is not and the rituals we do. Because there's misconceptions that grief is not resentment. Anger is absolutely an expression of grief. Grief is not just tears and wailing and falling on the ground. That protest is a form of grief. So anger, even rage at times is a form of grief. Resentment is not, resentment -- I think of resentment as anger that has been held and stuffed and becomes toxic and feted and that needs - in the old medieval - that needs a bloodletting to flow again. Grief is not self pity. That's an easy one to fall into. I think, the primary confusion, grief and depression or not the same thing. Martin Prechtel, who is also just a great speaker, mostly (his writing can be hard to follow). Listening to him - he's got some talks on YouTube. If you go to YouTube and look for Martin Prechtel, grief and praise, he's wonderful to listen to.

Tyson Conner: 30:21

linked in the show notes Listener.

Peter Jabin: 30:24

And he talks about grief is not sadness. It's not Depression, depression is a lack of grief, it's rage that has no home, it is the homeless beast of sorrow. So it is not the same as depression. And it is not despair or collapse.

Tyson Conner: 30:43

Yes, that feels important. I, part of the reason I was interested in in talking to you about this is because at one period of my life, I was going through a process of kind of cyclical, prolonged grief was actually in that place when we first met in a little mentoring group that was put on by the Alliance. And my experience of that time was, I could only make sense of my grief by not collapsing. When I collapsed I didn't do any grieving. When I was in despair, I was not -- there was not movement, right. There was left there was death, there was non movement. So that feels like a really important distinction. And sometimes despair is a place that we go to on our way to get into grief, I think. And then I also wanted to on the depression point, do you... as a psychotherapist, I often feel like people come to me with their depression diagnosis. And my experience of sitting with them is like, I think you're grieving dude. Like depression is maybe a label that gets slapped on folks who don't have a category for their grief, maybe they're experiencing grief from one of these other gates, perhaps, or another gate would be a more appropriate way in than just loss of a loved one, which is kind of like the category that most people will accept. And so their experience gets labeled depression. Do you see that?

Peter Jabin: 32:18

So I think it's very common with a third gate, encountering the world these days, and I feel overwhelmed and horrible and I want to weep, and therefore I'm depressed. Well, no, maybe you're actually awake and responding. So I find depression -- anytime a client comes and tells me they're depressed. Okay, that's too easy. What does that mean?

Tyson Conner: 32:43

Yeah, absolutely.

Peter Jabin: 32:46

It's such a write off. So that's some of what grief is not, or gets in the way of grief. One thing is the myth of private pain and grief has gotten privatized. Now you get three days of bereavement leave, go home, and feel bad for three days about this major loss that you've had. And then come back, and we're gonna get on with it. This privatization of pain. And it's why I think therapy is not enough. It is an important point. I'm a therapist, I should value the work. And I think it matters. And when it comes to grief, I think therapy is not enough. I think getting into the communal experience of grief is essential. Crucially, important and hard to find in our culture. But the myth of private pain is one thing that gets in the way, fear of getting lost, people are afraid of grief, "if I start, if I step into this, I will never come back."

Tyson Conner: 33:52

If I had a dime for every time I heard that from somebody, oh, man, I'd have my student loans paid off. I hear that so often, people's fear of getting into usually grief,. I mean, one of the things that I've thought about, you know, one of my professors and grad schools said, the fear of grief is that it will never end, which is what you're speaking to here. And as the poem stated at the start, the reality is that it doesn't, it never will. The I think part of the fear is that they know, if I acknowledge that this thing is with me, then I have to deal with it being with me. And our fear is that we can't handle it, I think.

Peter Jabin: 34:38

It comes to mind something that one of my former therapist said to me all the time, what we fear will happen already has.

Tyson Conner: 34:47

Was that Winnecot? I don't know, ha.

Peter Jabin: 34:52

We're trying to protect ourselves against what is already true. That grief will never end and Hey folks, where we're headed, there is a tsunami of grief that is not coming, that is breaking upon us. This is why this is important. This is why grieving is important. It's about resilience, about those who will be left standing. As the tsunami of grief breaks upon us. As we realize the consequences of what we have wrought over the last 250 years and the culture that we have created, has done to us and to the earth. This is going to radically transform - whomever survives, this will be transformed what it is to be a human being and the capacity to grieve. All of that is essential.

Tyson Conner: 35:49

And you just use the word resilience, which made me think about something that -- I work with a lot of adolescents, I see this most common with adolescent boys. But, you know, if it's showing up a lot in adolescent boys, then I think it's probably at the foundation of a lot of masculine culture. That's just my vibe about it. But the thing that I see often is that the idea of getting into grief is understood as weakness. But what I'm hearing you say is that grieving builds resilience, is necessary for resilience. Can you speak to that a little more?

Peter Jabin: 36:30

Yeah, absolutely. The idea that it's weakness, to grieve is to encounter our finitude, our limit, our loss, what we are, in fact, not in control of which is just about everything. This is not popular in a hyper masculine patriarchal culture, which is about dominance and control, don't tell me I'm not in control, I can't tolerate that. That is a very brittle, fragile position, it does not take much to take you down. If you're in that position. For one who can ground into the earth, into the loss, encounter the reality of all that we are not in control of... this is... it makes for a very flexible, pliable person who can roll with a lot. It is also a profound way -- it leads to connection. Right? And strength is in connection. We've gotten here through this siloed, hyper individual extractive consumptive - the whole ideal is what's gotten us to where we are. Grief is a move into the arms of the mother. Right? And I mean that in a kind of union sense. But that's where resilience is and it's all like, the days ahead are all about resilience, not strength. Resilience,

Tyson Conner: 38:17

That's powerful. The days ahead are about resilience, not strength. I think those that that phrase might echo for a while.

Peter Jabin: 38:24

A couple other obstacles are flatline culture, our commitment to emotional mediocrity. "I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. No, it's good. I'm good." That's that has a strong influence our self consciousness that... we're so conscious of being perceived these days. The idea of performance, am I going to do it right? Am I going to grieve, right? Am I gonna, am I gonna be ugly crying? That stops us and just a real dearth of communal practice. We don't have any idea how to do this together. We've all been to maybe some good memorial services and funerals. If we're lucky, we've gotten some great ones. That's about it. Where else do you go to grieve together? Where's that invited? Where's that allowed?

Tyson Conner: 39:20

Horror movies? Hahaha. That was my answer. During my period of prolonged grief, every horror film was was a chance to grieve communally. On this topic, let's go to this you brought up these grief rituals. You've brought it back again the necessity of the communal nature of this process. And, this technology, this work, and the idea that psychotherapy is not enough. So can you talk a little bit about these rituals. I think you've laid a pretty clear foundation about why it individual work is not sufficient. Can you talk about the work that you do, what the function of a ritual is?

Peter Jabin: 40:07

Yeah, absolutely. And grief is at the very dawn of

Tyson Conner: 40:10

That's a person? human culture. it is one of the first expressions and it has

Peter Jabin: 40:16

There are two people two people, Malidoma and always been a communal act. And the way I come to this, and the way that Francis - well I shouldn't speak for Francis, - many of the people I work with are following and Francis did work with us. So Malidoma and Sobonfu Some came from Sobonfu. They are from the Dakar tribe, in Burkina Faso, okay, in West Africa. And in the 70s... somewhere in there, the elders had their tribe look to the west and ask themselves, why are these people so dangerous, so ruthless, naturally? Adm etymologically ruthless literally means - it goes back to Ruth in the Old English, which is grief. So to be ruthless is to be without grief. And they said, this white Western culture is so dangerous because they have forgotten how to grieve. Go, we send you as missionaries - they sent Malidom and Sobonfu as missionaries to the United States. Teach these people, remind them how to grieve. Take our practices, adapt them to what they could understand. Help them remember. And the grief work that I've come in contact with flows from that, it's what's developed over the last three, four decades, from Malidoma and Sobonfu's work. It's not what happened. It's not what happens in the Deckard tribe, it's it's quite different. But it's inspired by their understanding of grief as something that happens in the village. So it is a communal act. Ritual, again I'll share some of Francis' ideas about ritual. And, Francis, if you ever hear this, I want some of your royalties for all the-

Tyson Conner: 42:16

Hahahahaha

Peter Jabin: 42:17

content I'm giving you.

Tyson Conner: 42:21

There's a spike in book sales right after this episode.

Peter Jabin: 42:24

Haha - I want a piece of that.

Tyson Conner: 42:26

Molly Moon's gift card or something, I don't know.

Peter Jabin: 42:28

So Francis' the definition of ritual is any gesture done singly or in community, done with emotion and intention, that attempts to connect transpersonal energies for healing, or transformation. Right. So a gesture done with emotion and intention toward healing, and transformation. The purpose of ritual is to become transparent to the transcendent. I love that. Right? To become transparent to the transcendent, and to repair the tears in the experience of belonging, that result from the daily injuries of being human. And this is some of France's writing. So I love his writing.

Tyson Conner: 43:11

I keep finding myself as the host of this show, wanting to be like, well, let's slow down and define those terms. And then as I even think about that, it feels offensive, almost? It means a lot of things. And we could pick one and settle on one of those potential meanings. But as we've kind of started with, in this conversation, to engage with and talk about grief, is to talk about such a multiplicity of humanity, that if we do try to boil it down in our standard define our terms way, we're doing a disservice to human being,

Peter Jabin: 43:51

Yes. Because it's the attempt to grasp it, to wrestle it into... And it's really the invitation is to swim in that like, how to become transparent to the transcendent is the purpose of ritual. To let ourselves be fully seen by that which we can't even define. Toward the end of repairing the tears in our sense of belonging that we just accumulate.

Tyson Conner: 44:20

So, in lieu of defining some of these terms, I'd like to offer up some story. If that's okay, from my own prolonged experience of grief. It was a process that I shared with my partner at the time, that grief was one that we both lived with, and we both were walking through. And we each had some of our own rituals that we that we did, both singularly and together. One of them was we developed a ritual of a walk at sunrise at a park once a week near our house. And that was very explicitly so that we could have space to process through this grieving that we were doing. And sometimes we'd spend the whole walk processing, and talking and just sharing. And some days, we talked about it a little bit, and then do a little bit less. And then there were more distinctive things that we did as well. And I'll get her permission before including this in the episode. But one thing that my partner did was, once a month, she would find an object of significance in the process. And this object could be something from... a piece of a plant that she saw while she was sitting and thinking and feeling. Or a bit of an air airliner sized liquor bottle of alcohol that she'd bought for herself in the process. And she collected all of these things in a little glass box. And over the course of our process, the glass box, accumulated these items. And when our process was done, she took the box, and she put it away. And it's now in our closet, we still have it, none of those things are gone. But they're no longer in a position of prominence in our home. Another example, this is that first gate - loss of a loved one. I found out about a coworker who was pretty important to me, and after I left the job, a few years later, I ran into one of my old co workers and found out that this person, Darren had died very suddenly, very unexpectedly. And he meant a lot to me. And so, he used to drink a lot of vodka and smoke a lot of cigarettes with me. And that was like a thing that we would do after work. And so I bought a cheap bottle of vodka and his favorite pack of cigarettes. And I went to a place - we were caterers, and I remember a few catering events that we did together in Discovery Park, that were just him and I and it was, it was good. It was just good. So I went to Discovery Park, and I drank some of the vodka and I smoked one of the cigarettes. And I spoke to him. And then I left the vodka and cigarettes in the park for him. So those are examples. Do these sorts of things fit the definition of ritual? They're more singular, they're not communal.

Peter Jabin: 47:42

And ritual can be singular, and these are gestures. It's not simply sitting and thinking about Darren or you and your partner thinking about this loss. These are these were an enacted gestures, embodied gestures, they were movements, they were offerings, So you are also kind of implicitly involving other aspects of reality. Right? Whatever language works for you for what is beyond this realm that we dwell in. They were gestures that were calling to and including and calling upon those. And what are you aware of, they were they helpful?

Tyson Conner: 48:32

Massively, the individual grieving rituals of my partner's shrine, as she called it, and my going to Discovery Park, were hugely important for each of us. And then that walk, that grief walk that we took once a week together was absolutely essential for the two of us being able to stay connected during that time. Because if we were just trying to manage our grief individually, and at times we were, it was bad for both of us. We were not well people. But with the ritual of the walk together and this understanding that yeah, we're gonna talk about it once a week, while we walk to to the ocean and watch the sunrise, sometimes was sufficient. Our conversations weren't super transcendent. They weren't... we weren't quoting poetry to one another often. Usually, we were just there.

Peter Jabin: 49:31

Which is a practice of coherence, right, to walk together to that place to do that on a regular basis was a way of creating coherence between you. Whatever else happened, and that may be sometimes you explicitly talked about it and processed it a bit or not. But practices of coherenc. And that is essential in the ritual process, in creation of ritual time and space because it's a different time. And it's a different space than that which we normally dwell in. Francis talks about creating the sudden village and singing, chanting, very important - poetry, a lot of poetry, drumming, movement, sharing meals together, sharing dreams, small group interactions, speaking in large circles, all of these create coherence among a group of people. Create a sudden village. It's amazing how quickly people will - a group of 30 strangers will connect. When you do some of these practices. It's the connection, not based on what I know about you and your story, I don't know your story. But I can feel connected to you in this embodied way. And then enter into these very structured gestures like the retreat ends up culminating in a grief ritual, which ends up being a two hour long process. Around a shrine that is created by participants with artifacts of losses and griefs that they're bringing. There is drumming happening, there's chanting happening, people are in motion nonstop for two hours or longer. So it's a kind of an extreme experience meant to bring people to their edges and beyond. I can't think of the word... transcendence and engineered transcendence, kind of using just very old technologies. All of that to open up the space where people can enter into their grieving, not to talk about it. But to go to the shrine and do their greiving, whatever that looks like. They could look like anything, right? Some people scream, some sit there silently, some weep. Some... there's all kinds of ways, but enter into that and be witnessed. to have others witness you doing that when you leave and come back to the village to be thanked for that. To have somebody say to you, thank you. I saw what you did. And saw the work you did on our behalf. Thank you. It's incredible. So that is more than therapy. That is not a group psychotherapy process, that is entering into... it's a deep spiritual experience. That kind of skips over the dogmatic, we're not going to talk about belief systems, who cares?

Tyson Conner: 52:51

I wanted to land on that. Because the spiritual of it all has been in the background of this conversation from the beginning. Right? You have an M.Div right. I quoted a theology professor within the first five minutes, right? The reality that this is, what, how do I want to say this -- there is something about this, that intersects with the spiritual being, of being a person or with spirituality. And I know for a lot of folks that can be a little-- people have good reason to feel suspicious or shy away from things that reach towards the spiritual, either because of their own religious trauma or because of a commitment to a logical, rational, material embrace of the world. I'm imagining a listener who's hearing this and the spiritual talk is maybe kind of turning them off a little bit or making them feel a little suspicious. Could you speak something to those kinds of concerns that someone might have?

Peter Jabin: 54:01

Yeah, I think it's... there's a lot to say about the distinction between religion and spiritual. Religion is a system, it involves dogma and belief and hierarchies typically, it is what is all too frequently weaponized, right? Usually religion. Spirituality, for me, spirituality is simply about my relationship to the rest of the universe, is what spirituality is about. I have a personal spirituality and I can share that with others in the grief ritual experience. There's not not much talk about dogma, people can believe compositionally whatever makes sense to them. That this is a very experiential level and it is about being connected to each other, in a supportive, compassionate way and being connected to deep time, to our ancestors, being connected to the planet, to the earth in this particular moment that is literally without reference for us as a species. Is that? Does that get to it?

Tyson Conner: 55:32

It does. It does. And I'm thinking about, we did an episode on shame and religious trauma. And in that episode, we talked about spirituality, kind of being like- well, here's an update of that analogy. Spirituality is like a book. And religion is like a bookstore, where you can have a transformative, meaningful personal experience with a book. And then the bookstore will be the place you can go to get it from, and the bookstore can also choose which books are allowed and which books are banned. And which kind of bookstore you go to will probably predict a little bit what kind of books you'll find there. But in that sense, it sounds like what you're inviting in this discussion of grief, and in these rituals, is not a membership to a bookstore. It's not a club card, it's to read the book of your own grief, with other people who are also reading the book of our grief and finding that your book is our book.

Peter Jabin: 56:31

Yes, that it is a shared experience. That the invitation is to move more deeply into one's own experience as a human being at this particular time. With all of the history that we carry of 300,000 years as a species, we do have access to that. We forget, we have forgotten we do have access to that; we can help each other access that in very... What we do with that is then very individual, each of us will respond in whatever way we are led to respond to that. But we can help each other rediscover these connections, these things we've forgotten. We're all indigenous to the planet. Every single one of us is indigenous in that sense. And I acknowledged saying that as a white man is fraught, I accept that. And like every human being is indigenous to this planet. And it's essential we reconnect with what that means. And what that means to belong. This is one way. It's not the only way. But sure, one way to do that,

Tyson Conner: 57:49

There's a part of me that wants to ask, this is a podcast that's put on by a psychotherapy clinic. What's the role of psychotherapy in this? Is there one?

Peter Jabin: 58:01

Yeah, I think it's very helpful. I think it's a both-and. You enter into this kind of communal work and have a therapist who is open to talking about - really processing what This is a conversation that never ends, right. Inherently, comes up for this. What we actually didn't get to yet was a question about, well, what does grief have to do with relational psychotherapy with psychodynamic psychotherapy? My understanding it doesn't end but in the same way that these gates can be of psychodynamic therapy is it is fundamentally about relationship. And grief is about the fact that we will lose every relationship we have. And it is the process of metabolizing the loss of all of these relationships. And now in another sense, in the psychodynamic sense, we never lose these relationships. They stay with us. But having a good psychotherapeutic container, a relationship to process. Not only what happens in the communal grief work, but I think very importantly, particularly, it's a third gate, what's invitations into that eternal process that builds resilience, happening in the world? I think it is really important to have places to be able to process that, work with that. Really dive into that with somebody who's going to be able to witness. that does heal, that does connect. My hope is that the listeners have maybe begun, some of that. continued some of that. found some of that grieving internal process in this conversation that they've listened in on and taken part of in their own heads as well. And in that space between your ears where we currently reside. Before we wrap up, do you have recommendations for further learning? For anyone who's heard this and is like, yes, this is started a conversation. I want If somebody wants to read about- I know I mentioned Francis many times The Wild Edge of Sorrow is kind of his primary book on that. Martine preK, hell, The Smell of Rain on Dust, Grief and Praise, great read. Even better on YouTube, go find the YouTube, it's just audio, there's no video, but it's great to listen to. As far as experiments, one that's pretty simple and daring. Find a grief conversation- or well, find a grief witness, partner, someone who is going to be willing to hear your grief, sit down with each other, give each other both to keep going for myself. 15 minutes uninterrupted. Simply speak your grief that you feel that you care about, whatever, any of these gates, whatever grief that you carry. To simply be able to talk about it and have somebody listen. And please, please, please do not let it turn into a conversation. The only response after 15 minutes is Thank you. Don't let it become a back and forth. Just witness. Just receive and hold and do that for somebody, have somebody do that for you. It's amazing. What can happen in that. That's something to try at home if you're up for it. Go to the link tree and find - there's lots of grief rituals happening in Puget Sound. We are rich in grief mentors in Puget Sound. So we have a quite unusual amount of grief rituals happening. They're scary, it's daunting to go. It's intimidating. Every time I go, I still have a voice saying, What are you doing? This is nuts. Go try it out, see what it's like.

Tyson Conner: 1:02:40

And does someone need to be in a place of active loss or grief to go to one of these? I asked that, because I can imagine someone who's hearing this episode, "This really resonates with me. But like, I'm fine."

Peter Jabin: 1:02:56

Go to the ritual. We are all actively grieving, we might not be in touch with it. Actually, the caution is if you've had -- if you've lost a spouse or a child in the last two months, that might be a little -- you might be a little too much into it. That's... find a one on one first and process that a bit before you take that into - if it's that raw. But if you're thinking like, "oh, I don't have anything going," you'll be surprised.

Tyson Conner: 1:03:31

Delightful. I like this. This is a good invitation. And then before we end, if people would like to find you, where would you like to be found?

Peter Jabin: 1:03:43

My website is the best way to to find me. Jabincounseling.com. And there's a grief and grieving resource page where you can find these things that I've mentioned.

Tyson Conner: 1:03:59

And you offer psychotherapy, pastoral counseling. I know you're also leading one of the mentoring groups through the Alliance.

Peter Jabin: 1:04:06

Yes, first time this year doing that and this spiritual direction. That was a gift of COVID. I didn't do spiritual direction before but now I do.

Tyson Conner: 1:04:18

ISo a lot of a lot of ways you can be access. And then you brought something for us to end on.

Peter Jabin: 1:04:25

Yes, it's a favorite poem that I can't get enough of that I think just really sums up why grief is important and where we are. So this is Bearing Witness by Laura Weaver."Sometimes we are asked to stop and bear witness. This the elephants say to me in dreams as they thunder through the passageways of my heart, disappearing into a blaze of stars. On the edge of the sixth mass extinction, with species vanishing before our eyes, we'd be a people gone mad if we did not grieve. We'd be a people gone mad if we did not grieve. This unmet grief an elder tells me is the root of the root of the collective illness that got us here. His people stay current with their grief. They see their tears as medicine and grief, a kind of generous willingness to simply see, to look loss in the eye, to hold tenderly what is precious, to let the reins of the heart fall. In this way, they do not pass this weight on in invisible mailbags for the next generation to carry. In this way, the grief doesn't build and build like sets of waves until at some point down the line it simply becomes an unbearable ocean. We are so hungry when we are fleeing our grief. When we are doing all we can to distract ourselves from the crushing heft of the unread letters of our ancestors. Hear us they call, hear us. In my dreams, the elephant stampede in herds trumpeting, shaking the Earth. There's a kind of grand finale, a last parade of their exquisite beauty. See us they say, we may not pass this way again. What if our grief, given as a sacred offering, is a blessing not a curse? What if our grief, not hidden away in corners becomes a kind of communion where we shine? What if our grief becomes a liberation song that returns us to our innocence? What if our fierce hearts could simply bear witness? Bearing Witness, Laura Weaver.

Tyson Conner: 1:07:08

Peter, thank you for coming on the podcast.

Peter Jabin: 1:07:10

My pleasure thank you.

Tyson Conner: 1:07:32

Special thanks to Peter Jabin for coming on to this episode of the podcast. Peter can be found at his website, Jabincounseling.com link in the show notes. Also in the shownotes, you'll find a link to the linktree that Peter mentioned. This page is kept up to date with dates and signup information for grief ritual retreats and ongoing grief groups. The list includes in person and virtual opportunities. So if you're at all interested in engaging with the communal reality of grieving, I highly encourage you to check out that linktree. In the show notes. You'll also find links to the books that Peter recommended. The relational psych Podcast is a production of Relational Psych, a mental health clinic providing depth oriented psychotherapy and psychological testing in person in Seattle and virtually throughout Washington state. If you're interested in psychotherapy or psychological testing for yourself or a family member, links to our contact information are in the show notes. If you are a psychotherapist and would like to be a guest on the show or a listener with a suggestion for someone you'd like us to interview, you can contact me at podcast@ relationalpsych.group. The Relational Psych podcast is hosted and produced by me, Tyson Connor. Sam Claney is our executive producer with technical support by Ally Raye and the team at VirtualAlly. Carly Claney is our CEO. Our music is by Ben Lewis. We love you buddy.