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Connecting to Grief: Men's Paths to Healing
by Tom Golden, LICSW
"Swallowed by a Snake: The Gift of the Masculine Side of Healing"
by Tom Golden, LICSW
Thomas Golden, LCSW, is well known in the field of healing from
loss. Tom's book Swallowed by a Snake: The Gift of the Masculine
Side of Healing has been acclaimed by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
and others as a guide for understanding the masculine mode. Tom
enjoys presenting workshops in the United States and Canada and
was named the "2000 International Grief Educator" by Australia's
Centre for Grief Education. He toured Australia in July of 2000.
His workshops are known to be entertaining and informative. Tom
brings a gentle sense of humor and a gift for storytelling as he
draws on his twenty years of practical, hands-on clinical experience.
His work and his web site, www.webhealing.com,
have been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and
U.S. News and World Report, as well as on CNN and CBSEvening News.
Connecting to Grief: Men's Paths to Healing
My father died in November of 1994. During the week of his funeral
my brother and I decided to design and construct the container for
my father's ashes. That week my brother, Joel, and I spent time
in my parent's garage, which had doubled as my father's workshop,
planning and constructing his memorial container.
During this time the men who came to visit our family tended to
be drawn to the workshop, while the women who visited were more
likely to spend time talking inside. The men who visited usually
had ideas or comments about the work that was being done, and they
gladly chipped in, and did this or that to aid in the project. These
gender boundaries were not solid, though. We men spent plenty of
time in the house talking with visitors about my father and what
he meant to us, and the women would sometimes boldly venture into
the workshop area. It was not that the men and women were separated,
it was that the men and women tended to have different paths to
connect them with their grief.
Just as the tears flowed inside the house, they flowed in the
workshop. As we worked we would share stories about my father. One
of the most important parts of this experience was the presence
of my father's 80 year old best friend, Charlie Beamen. Charlie,
a retired minister, was also my father's woodworking buddy. As the
three of us worked together we exchanged numerous stories. Joel
and I told Charlie of our days with Dad growing up, and Charlie
told us of his exploits with my father in the recent past. As we
worked and told stories the tears and laughter flowed.
We men had found a safe place to act as a "container" for our
emotions. The workshop functioned in this manner to connect our
pain and tears with an activity. The activity of building the memorial
container became a "hook" for our pain. It seemed easier, as a man,
to connect with my grief through an activity rather than by simply
"sharing" it. The women, I noticed, appeared to have great skill
in simply sharing their grief. They were more drawn to connecting
their pain, tears, and grief on a verbal level with their most intimate
friends and family.
Cultural Differences in Grief
In studying the bereavement process, I have learned that my experience
reflected the differences men and women have in the grief process.
This difference puts men in a precarious state in our culture because
almost all of the "action" activities related to death have been
sub-contracted. Activities such as building the coffin, directing
the ritual, digging the grave, or the funeral itself have been turned
over to the "death professionals." This leaves men with nothing
to do following a death and thereby negates many men's strength
of action.
Evidence supporting these observations can be found in looking
at tribal cultures and the ways they separate the tasks and roles
of men and women following a death. For example, the Bara people
in Madagascar literally separate the men and women. Two huts are
designated: the "male hut" for the men and the "house of tears"
for the women. The house of tears is the center of emotional expression,
while the male hut is more the center of activities such as directing
the ritual. In Australia the men of the Yolngu sing sacred songs
around the bed of the person who is ill, and if death occurs, the
songs continue as a means of orienting the newly dead to the Ancestors.
It is said that the women join in the song with their crying and
keening and the blend creates a sound of great beauty.
The Dagura men of Africa dance out their grief for the person
who died. In a different African tribe the men will approach the
women who are actively crying and keening and stand silently next
to them. The men do this to use the women's grief as a hook, that
is as a way to ignite and resonate their own pain. This action is
similar to that of a tuning fork. If one tuning fork is struck close
to another one that is still, the still tuning fork will begin to
resonate with the same vibration of it's active neighbor. By standing
near the actively grieving women the men start to get in touch with
their own pain. In other cultures the men sing the life of the person
who died.
There are many more examples of the separate, but complementary
tasks of mourning assigned to men and women in different cultures.
The point here is that the men are usually given active tasks following
a death and these tasks become "hooks" to facilitate a connection
to their pain. Once the pain is "hooked," it can be expressed and
released which brings us one step closer to healing.
In our own culture there are also examples of men who use a task
or activity to connect to their emotional pain. Eric Clapton wrote
a song about his child who died. Through his strength of music Clapton
has found a way to honor his pain by creating a song about his son.
Abraham Lincoln is said to have had a habit of inviting a male
friend to the White House to play what Lincoln called "sad songs."
This man and Lincoln would walk silently to a room in the White
House and the man would sit at the piano and play the songs. As
he played Lincoln would sit and cry. The songs were Lincoln's hook
to enter his state of grief.
Other examples include the AIDS Quilt, all of the memorials in
Washington D.C., and a memorial World Wide Web site, such as webhealing.com
which I created in honor of my father. All of these examples provide
people activities which allow a connection to their pain by actively
honoring the person who died. This can be a powerful healing IF
the activity is connected with the pain. If not connected to the
pain, it is merely a hollow exercise.
The Need for Rituals
While men and women have different strengths and needs in their
healing process, these needs are often complementary and overlapping.
As our culture finds it difficult to recognize and hold the pain
that comes with loss, members of both sexes often find themselves
in a difficult place when it comes to grief. We need more culturally
endorsed "active" rituals that give us "hooks" into our grief. By
becoming aware of the differences we have in our own chosen style
of grief and healing, we are in a better position to find our own
hooks and honor those around us and ourselves.
Tom's website is www.webhealing.com
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