Honoring Loss: The Bereavement Tea Ceremony and Spiritual Healing

Summary
In this episode of Growth from Grief, host Susan Andersen speaks with Heathclyff St. James DeVille about his profound journey through grief after losing his partner to suicide. They discuss the unique challenges of grieving a suicide loss, the importance of support groups, and various healing modalities. Heathcliff shares his experience with a bereavement tea ceremony, a unique ritual that helped him connect with his grief and reflect on his loss. The conversation emphasizes the importance of community, personal healing practices, and the ongoing journey of grief.

Takeaways

• Grief can disrupt spiritual beliefs, creating additional layers of pain.
• Support groups provide a sense of community and understanding.
• Writing and journaling are powerful tools for processing grief.
• The bereavement tea ceremony offers a unique way to connect with loss.
• Silence can be both challenging and healing in grief rituals.
• Connecting with others through shared experiences is vital.
• Healing is a journey that requires patience and self-compassion.
• Grief can lead to deep friendships and connections with others.

Thank you for listening! Visit www.sueandersenyoga.com for Yoga for Grief classes and additional resources.

Transcript

Susan Andersen (00:00.43)

Hello and welcome to the podcast. My guest today is Heathclyff St. James DeVille. Heathclyff and I have been communicating via email for a few years now. We've both lost someone we love to suicide. Heathclyff experienced the devastating loss of his partner of 30 years to suicide in 2021.

I asked him to be on the podcast today to share about his experience at a bereavement tea ceremony. This is something that he shared with me via email, and he agreed to come and talk about it. So we'll all get to hear a little bit more about this bereavement tea ceremony. But before we dive into the episode, let me tell you a little bit more about Heathcliff.

He resides in Australia and through his writing, he aims to shed light on the unique challenges of grieving a suicide loss, offering insights that may resonate with others on this journey. He's currently establishing a suicide loss support group and is dedicated to working in the postvention field. With qualifications in professional counseling, and plans to join a peer support program, he's just really committed to supporting others who are survivors of suicide loss.

Heathclyff recognizes that such a tragic loss can disrupt even the strongest spiritual beliefs, creating an additional layer of grief. He has a deep interest in exploring the spiritual dimensions of suicide, particularly the impact on one's connection to their spiritual path. So without further ado, let's get on with the podcast.

Susan Andersen (02:08.728)

Hello, I'm Sue Andersen, grief guide and yoga teacher dedicated to helping individuals navigate the challenging journey of loss. Welcome to Growth from Grief, where I aim to offer strategies to transition from the depths of grief to the path of healing. Whatever loss you are grappling with, here you'll discover support to ease both the physical and emotional burdens of grief. Together, let's embark on a journey towards strength, peace, and healing. I'm so glad you are here.

Susan Andersen (02:59.127)

Hi everyone and welcome to this episode of Growth from Grief. I have with me Heathclyff, who you just heard me talk a little bit about, give you a little bit about his bio. So welcome Heathclyff to the podcast from Australia. Different, I just have to say to everybody, one of the things that was a challenge for me was time zones.

And so we kept trying to get the time zone right. So it was a reasonable time for both of us and didn't interrupt work or personal schedules. So that worked out. So I'm glad. So Heathclyff, I'd like to begin, if you wouldn't mind, talking a little bit about your loss. We actually connected via email about six months after your partner died. And I'm wondering if you can just talk a little bit about that. 

Heathflyff: Yeah, so yeah, so basically, my partner had like a mental health issue that was sort of under control for 25 years. But a dentist suggested he needed to change his medication and he went off his medication, couldn't see doctors because of COVID. We had lot of lockdowns in Australia. yeah, and then just he succumbed to that and I just, yeah, found him one night. And yeah, it was really quite harrowing, and it threw me, I describe it as it just shattered my life from that moment on. And it's been a very long journey. 

And then of course, I connected to the organization that I found you through. And that's been very healing, just meeting you, reading your emails, things like that. Especially I like your little newsletter that you put out. One of the impacts for me is I lost my connection to my spiritual belief for a long, time and probably for 16 months.

Heathclyff  (05:15.784)

But I just, every day I just got up and said, dear Lord and lady, I don't know if I really believe in you anymore, but I'm just going to try and keep the connection open. And then eventually I come back to it. yeah. And... Yeah, that it's

Sue: You mentioned the word shattered, which I think is very apt for, you know, a description for suicide loss. I think it just really shatters your life and puts you so out of balance as you described. And your loss is not that long ago either. So that's, you said it took you 16 months to kind of get back into finding your spiritual practice again, right? I mean, that's- so that's, you know, not really a long time, I guess, but probably seems like a long time. But you allowed that to happen. You kind of kept that channel open, allowed that to happen. And I imagine that that is, it's a very important thing to you. And that's why you allowed it to just be and be open. Is that a good description?

Heathclyff: Yeah, I think so because, yeah, I just, I've done a lot of work with a psychologist too. So that was really good. And, know, she's pretty on board with the stuff that I'm sort of into. So, yeah, I think I did keep the channels open because the deeper part of me probably recognized that that was an important thing. Plus, if I hadn't have done that, it would have been another loss.

Sue: Right. Right. 

Heathclyff: Yeah. Because there was several losses around the time of my partner. Like there was my mother, then our dog, then my partner, then my home. You know, a whole lot of things were happening at once. So that would have been just another loss and a very major loss. Yeah. Right. So, yeah. So I did keep the channels open. Yeah. 

Susan Andersen (07:37.622)

Very, very, very traumatic with all of those losses on top of each other and from a grieving standpoint, you know, trying to unpack a little bit about each one of those or trying to grieve each one of those losses, which in and of themselves would have been a very difficult thing. You know, your mother, your dog, your home, I mean, and then your partner. That's a lot, that's really a lot to go through in a very short period of time, three years or something, right? 

Heathclyff: Three, Yeah, so the losses took place over two months. 

Sue: Oh my gosh, wow. 

Heathclyff: Yeah, so it was my mom in September, four weeks later my dog and six weeks later my partner. And then four weeks after that, I had to move because I found my partner, so it wasn't really healthy for me to be in that house.

Sue: Right, right, right. 

Heathclyff: so then I ended up moving into this little flat. But I quite like it now, 

Sue: Oh, good. 

Heathclyff: Yeah, it's quite good. It's an upstairs flat. So because when I did move a couple of times, because the second flat I had, which was downstairs here, I was actually broken into. wow. a lot of that kept reigniting PTSD. Sure. 

So then I said to the agent, can I take the flat upstairs? Cause it was available. And he said, yeah. And he said, you can just move in there and you know, just no rent increase or anything. So yeah. So I moved up here and I quite like it. Yeah. It's a 1950s flat. my personality. Yeah. That's good. 

Sue: so I'm wondering, what have you found helpful? You know, there's all kinds of things that we can do to help us in the grief process, whether it's joining groups or individual counseling or different kinds of healing modalities. I'm wondering, what have you found through this journey, what have you found helpful to you in terms of these different kinds of healing modalities? 

Heathclyff: (10:00.278)

Okay, so the major one would be locking in with a Suicide Loss Support Group. I didn't find that for about eight months after my loss. And so I felt very alone. And then I sort of come across this group. And so I thought, I didn't really want to go, to be quite honest. But I did, I did. I remember being on the train. I was quite nervous going, but I went and it was really, really different to hear people talk about loss.

It was real people, not just people in a book or a magazine. I remember the man beside me talking about his loss and I was just, it was very cathartic. I know that sounds very contradictory, but it was very cathartic because I no longer felt myself to be alone. So that was one of the things I did. 

I do a lot of writing, so I do a lot of journaling as well as writing articles exploring aspects of suicide loss. I started doing mandalas. yes. Yeah. And coloring in. So I've got a couple coloring in books. I bought kids books because I don't really like the adult ones. They're too complex for me. They're too busy. Yeah. So I bought some coloring books and coloring pencils and things like that.

And then I started attending just little events here and there. Went to like a, my first suicide prevention day walk, which they had a section for postvention, you know, for loss to suicide. That was really good. So I actually wrote about that as a way of trying to help people who have had a loss who might be fearful of what that's like because I of, I tried to be very honest. So I wrote about how it was actually very challenging going there. And, you know, I was feeling sick on the way and all this sort of stuff that I said, it was worth it because you felt like you were part of the community. So I tried to do a lot of that stuff too, to sort of also help other people. 

Susan Andersen (12:26.112)

Yeah. I think that's really, really important because it is very scary to, it's, and it takes a lot of courage to move forward and just try something new when you're in this new loss, any loss of course, but with a suicide, I just feel there's so much more complexity. And I think it's important that, I think your writing is important that other people understand that, hey, it's normal to feel nervous but don't let that stop you. 

Heathclyff: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I think it's when we try to hold weak people and we try to say, you should do this. It's really helpful. part of what I want to do, future-wize is actually run a support group. And I believe that everything that we do has to be road tested. And then we, we, cause then we connect into what can occur. 

So a good example would be part of my healing that was suggested by a doctor is that I write about some of my loss. So I ended up writing five pages of all the things that I could remember over my life, like with my partner. And it was really difficult because every one of those things was now a loss. Like it was never going to be repeated. So it was very challenging and but the doctor obviously didn't tell me that. Luckily, I'm sort of, you know, switched on enough to realize it would be like that. And then I went back to the doctor and say, you need to do a caveat with everything that you suggest to people. Because for someone else, that could have been a very traumatic experience. And we don't know where that would have led. 

Sue: Right, right, right. Yeah, that's a good point. I have done some writing exercises like in a group kind of setting. it's a little bit, it would be shorter and a little bit more controlled. So there's a clinician there that can help guide people, which I liked because I felt safe. 

Heathclyff: Yes. Yeah. felt safe. And I think safety is really important. You know, when you're vulnerable, you're in that vulnerable kind of a position.

Heathclyff: (14:51.508)

Whether it's one-on-one with a doctor or even if it's, you know, but especially if it's in a group because there is that vulnerability. And it does happen, doesn't it? Like I was at a suicide prevention course I did and we were talking about pets and I started talking about my dog and I just said, I can't do this. And I just had to go outside.

And then someone come out and I said, yeah, look, I'll be okay. just, yeah, because my partner, he's very tied to my pet. It's very hard for people to sort of understand that, but it's like I lost my family. So that's why it was very difficult. 

Sue: Yeah. Yeah. I understand that. So one thing that you told me about in one of, one of our email exchanges was something that I have never heard of. And you wrote about it very beautifully to me and I could picture it in my mind because of the way you described it. But I think it's so interesting and I'd love for you to talk about this, what's called a bereavement tea ceremony. So my first question is, how did you even hear about this?

Heathclyff: Okay, so I am. Yeah, so I did an LGBT online support group. And they eventually just, you know, sent me an email and said, we've got this thing coming up for the first time. Would you like to participate? I thought, yeah, you know, something different gets me, you know, I work very long hours. So it was a good night off work just to do something different. Yeah, so I went along and yeah, I loved it. was really very challenging, but it was a really interesting thing that the lady developed and she, she originally developed it for her, her own healing from her loss. 

Sue: Okay. That was my question. 

Heathclyff: Yeah. Yeah. All right. So yeah. And then she decided to, yeah, just put it out there. And so that's how I heard about it. Yeah. 

Susan Andersen (17:12.62)

Now I have another question about the, the person that did this, the facilitator or the host of the tea ceremony, did she know about tea ceremonies? Like had she done just a regular tea ceremony and understood the significance and the different teas and all of that? 

Heathclyff: Yeah, so she's an art therapist. I have to think that for a minute. Yeah, so she's an art therapist. She's Chinese Malaysian. So she had a culture that they do a lot of tea ceremony. But this particular ceremony was something that she developed herself and decided to share with others. And yeah, I'm really grateful that she did. Yeah. 

Sue: So can you explain a little bit about, maybe give us a little bit of an overview of that tea ceremony and then maybe pick a couple of highlights for you, like what really stood out for you. I think that would be great. 

Heathclyff: Yeah, okay. So you want me just to describe how it all goes about. Is that right? Yeah. 

Sue: Yes, please. 

Heathclyff: So basically it starts off, there's an introduction to it and she talks a bit about the significance of frankincense and the different types that we drink. It's very silent, which is part of the reason it's very cathartic, because some people there had not been able to connect to their grief. And especially being part of the LGBT community, some people had no one that they could talk to. 

So it started off we were passed the incense. It was like one of the blocks that you put on a charcoal block, you know, that sort of incense. Yeah. So we were passed that and we had to swing it three times anti-clockwise. It was a way of cleansing and centering ourselves to begin with. Then she took what appeared to be a very long time setting up the first tea because it's a ceremony. 

Heathclyff:  (19:34.383)

Obviously, it's very slow and like she, you know, fill out every cup with hot water and then she tip each one out very slowly and, you know, to cleanse the cup and all this sort of stuff. There were actually bowls which I thought was quite interesting. So she did that and then our first tea was a Malaysian, I suppose she called it plant for one of their work called Padman, which is very a bit like a nutty taste, a very sweet taste. And while we drank that, we reflected on the loss itself.

And then the second that went on for about, must be about maybe half an hour, just that first teeth. There was obviously a lot of tears. People were more sobbing than out loud,you  know, crying really loud. We didn't actually have tissues. I thought that was interesting, but luckily the girl beside me, she had some.

Yeah, and then it was very challenging. It was very, very challenging. And then the second tea, it was a similar thing again. She took all the cups and she did it very slow. So each cup was taken individually back to her and then individually cleaned. And then it went on again. That took about 40 minutes. And that was a chamomile tea. And then as she did it, we had to reflect on the person who had now been lost in terms of their relationship back to us. 

And at that point in time, we sort of each time she passed the tea, we had to stare in her eyes for just a couple of seconds. I found that very challenging because I don't really like staring people in the eye. So I don't mind looking at people. just don't like that sort of thing. Yeah. 

Heathclyff:  (21:44.027)

And then we had to pass, so we were given a different cup. We have to pass that to the person on the left. This is all done in silence, as I said. And then we looked at that person and then they drunk their tea and then it was repeated with us. They passed it back to us. And yeah, there was meditation music playing and we just have a lot of time to connect to whatever thought it was occurring at that time.

And then the last tea, I'm sorry, I'm a bit hazy as to what the last tea was, but that was reflecting on what the loss for ourselves and for the other person sort of meant overall. Plus it was also about connecting to maybe your ancestors. Yeah. And,

You know, like for instance, for my partner, I imagine, you know, him being met by his parents, that sort of thing. It was very challenging. It was, yeah, very confronting to do this. Like I, every time I shut my eyes, I envisaged my partner and my dog running in a field and yeah, I was a mess in a way.

I was just tears running down my face. It wasn't audible, but you know, I was, there was that response, but you know, as you probably know, our tears of grief, you know, they have different chemicals to normal tears. And so those tears actually help us heal, which is part of why it was a good journey. 

Sue: Yes. You know, when, when I read your email and, you described similar to what you're talking about now. Two things stood out for me. One was the staring in another person's eyes. that brought back a memory for me. was doing a meditation training probably three or four years after my son died. And one of the exercises that we did

Susan Andersen (24:09.157)

was we just stared in each other's eyes for like, it was a long time. I mean, it was probably two minutes. mean, two minutes doesn't sound like a long time, but when you're staring into somebody's eyes, that's a long time. I had all of this grief and the woman who was my partner, she said, are you okay? Because she could see it in my eyes.

I mean, I wasn't crying or anything, but or no tears, but I'm she I definitely know that she could tell that there was something going on because it was just a regular meditation training. It wasn't anything that was related to grief. 

That brought back that memory for me in terms of how powerful that is to do that staring in someone's eyes. And you were just talking about that, how it affected you. And then the other thing that struck me was that this whole ceremony, which was what a couple of hours sounds like. 

Heathclyff: Yeah, about two and a half hours. Yeah. All in silence. 

Sue: And if you are a person that hasn't, you know, befriended your grief, for lack of a better word, haven't, you know, allowed your grief to happen, I would imagine that silence would have been very, very difficult. 

Heathclyff: Yes, yes, it would have been very difficult. There were some people there that hadn't really talked about their grief before, or probably connected to it even. There was a little bit of conversation, but it was more, yeah, just, you know, maybe five minutes here and there. Okay, yeah. The, um, yeah, but the staring the eyes here, you're right. It was very challenging because I think what happens is when you stare in someone's eyes, yeah, like the eyes really are like the window to the soul. 

So like I did a project, this is just an aside, but it ties into this. And I went through some photographs of when I first experienced my loss up until now and

Heathclyff:  (26:31.756)

I definitely have changes. Now for the first year, I felt really hideously ugly. Like I wouldn't go out and to go to work. Luckily I work overnight and I work by myself. I sort of just, yeah, went out when it was dark, it was really strange. Like a really strange reaction. So, and I look at those early photos and if I look at my eyes in particular, the first photo I look almost well, you know, just empty. Yeah. Just empty. And then that as the photos move on, I start to, yeah, come back to a bit more normality. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. the eyes. Yeah. Yeah. I call it the, um, yeah, the different me, you know? 

So I'm, I'm, my core self is the same, but there's definitely a different me. Like I think a much more deeper and empathic person now than I was before. Like I've always felt that I was empathic and I actually started to be a counselor. And I chose that as an elective grief and I read about suicide. But like most people, just assumed that suicide loss was same as all grief and it definitely is and it has so many of its own unique nuances. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Sue: Right, yeah, exactly. And you you're reminding me of, actually I was talking to somebody about this earlier today, and I don't know if I have the pronunciation correct, but I believe it's called kintsugi, which is a Japanese pottery technique, I think. I think it's the technique of taking the broken pottery and putting the, melding it together with gold. 

Heathclyff: Yes, yes, yes, I've heard about that. 

Sue: Yes. And I remember a few years back that I read about that. And I was like, wow, I really like that. And, and I happened to be reading an article where the, the author was comparing that to grief, you know, like to how you change and through grief and that, you know,

Susan Andersen (28:57.515)

you're still you, you got your, you know, your parts, but there's this, you know, other, this, this gold, you know, thread that's going through that, puts you back together. And I, and I really liked that. I liked that image. It made me feel like, okay, I'm, I'm still have my parts of myself. I can't be the same person I was before, but I'm still that person with maybe a little extra something because it's gold. 

Heathclyff: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I like that. That's gold. That's gold. That's a good one. 

Sue: If it was black, it be like blah, but it's like gold. Yeah, yeah, it's got gold, so it stands out a bit. yeah, yeah, yeah, that's good, So yeah, so that just sort of, you know, just that reminded me of it when you were talking about your, you know, how you saw yourself in those photos, you know, changing over time. Yeah, yeah. 

So tell me, in this tea ceremony, do you do you feel like I don't really like to use the word comparing, but do you feel like that that helped you more? is it something that you would do again or I guess what I'm kind of under trying to understand is something like writing. You you do that all the time and you would do it continuously. Potentially a group you would do that you know multiple times but is something like the tea ceremony something that you would do again. You know did you feel that it was beneficial to you.

Heathclyff: Yeah, I definitely felt it was beneficial. I probably would do it again, but I think it would be something that you wouldn't do a lot because I think it would take away the specialness of it. Sure. So it's a good adjunct to other healing modalities. whereas with mandalas, yeah, or coloring in books, there's something that you can do all the time because they help to balance the inner and the outer you. So they're a really good thing to do on a regular basis.

Heathclyff:  (31:22.422)

I think the tea ceremony, yeah, I think it's something that I really enjoy maybe more as a one-off event. But that's not to say that, you know, if she were to have that again, I probably would go again, but a third time, I don't think I would. Yeah, yeah. I was just curious because it does sound like something very special. And that, you know, the specialness of it, the uniqueness of it, wouldn't maybe be the same because you kind of would know what was going to happen maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

And I think that's a really important point that you've raised too, because as we move forward in our grief, we could do the same ceremony, but we may not get anything out of it. And then we might sort of doubt if we ever did, which is one of the things that led me to write about it, because I wanted to capture what it was really like for me at that time now 10 years down the line if I'm describing that it's going to be very different because you know I'm away from those feelings but if I go back to my article it's going to reignite the feelings a bit like the body keeps the score it's that sort of mentality yeah yeah yeah yeah absolutely absolutely yeah yeah great. 

Sue: Heathclyff, before we before we complete our interview, our podcast interview, is there anything else that you would like to tell our listeners or words of encouragement, anything that you wanna end this conversation with? 

Heathclyff: Yeah, I would just say that, try to do what you can, which feels right for you. And if it's a little bit scary, if you can just challenge yourself a little bit. I think those things can actually start to help you and just try not to limit yourself in what you do. So if you hear about a tea ceremony, try and go along. If you feel like buying something from an op shop, cares if it's something that you don't need? If it makes you feel happy for that moment, just do it. I went too far the opposite way. One of my reactions to grief is I spent

Heathclyff: (33:47.553)

$4,000 I didn't have just on stuff. I just bought like 10 doona covers and all this sort of stuff. And I got into a lot of debt and I had to come front up and my therapist got to give me a letter to negate that debt. But I said, no, no, I'm not that sort of person. I don't want to look at something five years down the line and think I got it by default. So I paid it all, but it was good.

It had its reasons. Mainly I did it because in the early days I didn't want to be here. So I needed something to look forward to coming through the post. But you know, I worked through it and I think, yeah, I think for other people, you know, with the right sort of support and the right sort of, you know, a little bit of your own inner challenge, I think we can get through this.

We don't get through it as you know, but we journey forward. We find out a little bit of a new balance and we meet really interesting people. mean, I've met you for all this, you know. Yeah, I've met a lot of like through my grief group. I've met some people who have become sort of deep friends more so than like in such a short period of time. Right. And yeah, so yeah, so that's basically what I would say.

Sue: Well, thank you so much for joining and thanks everyone for listening to our conversation.