Grieving the Ungrievable

With a touch of Jesus

Dear friend:

I never imagined that I could experience something that couldn’t be grieved. Some losses and disappointments were tremendously challenging, but ungrievable? I was emotionally vital, healing-centered, and brave as shit. I could handle anything, right? (Wrong.)

Then the political thing happened , and a significant number of close connections abandoned me. They didn’t physically abandon me—they still remained in some form of contact for their own reasons—but they abandoned the good intentions we shared. Whether it was because they were blackmailed by the ‘contractors’ involved, or given false information about me, or simply because they were paid, they chose to assume a malevolent role in our connection. Some became information gatherers (seeking info on whether/when I was publishing my Trudeau inspired memoir, and any other info I had about people in political power); others became triggerers and traumatizers (connecting with the sole intention of saying things to belittle/isolate/frighten/upset me); still others were retained to subtly persuade me to put my focus on anything other than telling my political story.

Whatever their role, it was not difficult to confirm their involvement. Even though they likely knew little about each other (the game is to compartmentalize operatives), it was not hard to spot the connection between them: the person that trained them. There were a series of things they all did and said that confirmed that they had been trained by the same odious contractor.

Whenever I would realize that a former friend was compromised, I would feel overcome by a flood of confusion and heartbreak. My mind understood that the connection had come to an end. They were now political props, and not to be trusted. But how to make sense of it?

Somehow, I managed. Some part of the process required allowing the feelings to move through me when they arrived. Some part of it was putting energy into sense-making. That is, owning my possible role in manifesting such a motley crew. What helped me the most was being blatantly honest with myself about the nature of many of the connections. The truth is that I had put little energy into my personal relationships since I began to write. I was lodged inside of my bigger picture — the calling to write and help more souls — and not closely attuning to some of the people that walked through the door. If I was entirely honest with myself, a number had only connected because I was growing in popularity. Opportunists by nature, they wanted to ride the wave of my growing success for their own benefit. As soon as I hit an iceberg, they jumped ship and took their opportunism elsewhere. Still others were not so much opportunists, as long-time harbourers of resentment and jealousy. All it took was a downturn on my path, and their fangs came out.

Grieving these connections would not have been particularly difficult if not for the compressed nature of my daily life. I had never understood what people meant when they said that they were often abandoned at the most difficult moments in their lives. Until now. It’s like the moment humans hit a certain wall, the ones who came to get but not to give, show themselves more clearly. Under normal circumstances, it would be a blessing to realize who cares — and who doesn’t — but it is no easy feat when you are already drowning. Nonetheless, I found a way to weave the process into my daily life, until I no longer longed for those compromised connections.

But there are two connections that felt entirely ungrievable. Not because I felt abandoned, but because I felt their loss so deeply. Their presence in my life met me right where I lived on a soul level, and contributed mightily to my peace of mind and creative output. And I loved their souls, too. They were the ones that came from the soulpod I was born to, and it felt nearly impossible to imagine life without them. And even more unbearable to ingest the very real possibility that they had sold me out to tyrannical political contractors that devote their lives to tearing friends and families apart in order to isolate and destroy whistle-blowers. I could understand the hangers-on turning, but my dearest soul friends walking in such a dark direction? Is this even possible? What would Rumi say?

For months, I was in denial. Every time I came close to facing it, I would do something I am not particularly good at. I would dissociate. And when that didn’t work, I would find myself rifling through other’s books, and then my own books, seeking an insight or wisdom that would serve me. Nothing seemed to help. I was in such unique waters — fled the political world, terrorized and targeted for 4 + years, closest friends turned against me — that I couldn’t find anything to comfort me on the deeper levels.

So, I went to Jerusalem. I communed with my Jewish history, the Western Wall, the best chocolate rugelach on earth. I visited the place where Jesus was buried. I rested like I hadn’t rested in years.

While there, I was able to re-connect with my Jewish roots, clear a backlog of emotional debris, and get caught up with myself.

But then I returned home, and to the confirmation of loss. I could no longer deny the possibility that my great friends had betrayed me. They had. And I was now fully lodged in ungrievable terrain. But how do you grieve something you can’t even feel?

My frozenness went on for weeks, until something interesting happened. For a few years, I had been listening to Christian Music now and then. Modern stuff like Judah and the Lion, Brooke Ligertwood, Lauren Daigle. It was often there, in the background, keeping me company. I found this quite curious, given that I am proudly Jewish and have never remotely resonated with Christian music. It was someone else’s rhythm, someone else’s story.

But now, I couldn’t turn it off. I would turn it on right when I got up, fall asleep with it still playing. I had become a Christian music super-fan! What would the Rabbi say 😊?

I wondered if this was just another way to dissociate from my roots and my ungrievables, but I couldn’t stop. And then it showed me the reason why.

It began with the crying. I found myself crying to certain songs. I played them over and over, like a mantra, digging deeper into all that frozen pain. The music somehow held me safe enough to feel the loss of those once held so dear. It wasn’t to say that we couldn’t find a way to heal these rifts, but for now—and perhaps forever—they were gone. And not gone with the kind of loving farewell that our connections deserved. Gone in a flurry of tumult and trickery.

I released on and off for days, and then the key realization emerged. It wasn’t the music that summoned the feelings. It wasn’t the rhythms that thawed me out. It was the story that the music told—the story of Jesus. It was his story that gave me the courage to grieve the ungrievable.

Where before his story meant little to me, it now meant everything. Not the messianic component, not the re-birth, but the nuts-and-bolts story of confronting and calling out the human shadow. Jesus was not merely a light-worker. He was first and foremost a shadow-worker, seeing through the veils and calling out systemic abuse-of-power no matter the consequences. He did not present himself as perfected, but he did commit himself to the betterment of humanity.

In my own small but very real way, I related. The last 5 years were spent fighting for my right to the light—and as the book will reveal—everyone else’s too. I resisted my involvement every step of the way, but yet something encoded in me, something archetypal and true, demanded that I fight back and carry on. And, just as his story demonstrates, people turned against me. Some because it was just too much to carry; others because their souls are inherently corrupt. Whatever the cause, both he and I were left essentially alone at the end, unable or unwilling to step back and bury our stories.

The secret to my ungrievables was found in the human story.

As I walked this journey, two key quotes were birthed that reflected my experience:

“Tyranny always masquerades as benevolence.”

And…

“Better to die with my story told, than live with my story buried.”

The latter is not a philosophy I recommend to most. Quite apart from its obviously masochistic properties, it is a recipe for disaster. But that ‘disaster’ is precisely what some of us are born to. It’s not for me to say if that is a good or bad thing, but it is for me to say that if that is what happens to me here, I have no regrets. I will have honored that which is encoded in me. Many people say it is never worth it to risk everything to expose systemic corruption. What they are really saying is that it is not encoded in them to make that sacrifice. But it is not to say what is true for another. There are plenty of us out there, prepared to do whatever it takes to inspire this species to the next level of realization. The odds are always against us, but if enough of us can expose the corruptors, we will compel the kinds of change that we all long for. We will have made a real difference.

If you sense that there is a shadow-confronting warrior living inside of you, I encourage you to visit the place where Jesus is buried in Jerusalem. He is only one symbol of liberation, but he is a powerful one. There is something about the lifeless artifice of modern life that makes it hard to imagine a path like his, but when you go there, you understand. In the heart of all that rusticness and earthiness and realness, you can feel the desperate need for change that lives at the heart of this misguided species. We have been beaten down by bullies and manipulators for centuries. Sitting at the foot of his tomb, you know that there is another way. And, if there is a fight that your soul is here to bring, it rises right to the surface of awareness, roaring with life.

Treasure yourself (and humanity), Jeff