“Align your personality with your purpose and nobody can touch you.” Oprah Winfrey. Her words offer inspiration for coping with grief.
Labyrinths have always fascinated me. I love everything that encourages us to move and I’ve found that they help me when I’m coping with grief.
As a child I enjoyed dancing in the sand and leaping in circles by the ocean’s shore. One time, at a mountain retreat center, I walked through a traditional labyrinth, a single circuitous path designed to move one towards the center and back out again. I felt something shift inside me.
This was surely a portrait of my soul and a crucible of change. The labyrinth is a meditation of sorts. It is an essentially a tool one can use to collect and meet themselves with intention.
Healthy ways of coping with grief
I’ve had the pleasure of building several labyrinths, inspired by the one in Topanga, California. That particular one has its own natural circular pattern laid out on the top of a mountain on hard packed dirt. Stones line the winding pathways into its center. In seasonal light and weather the last nine years, I have come here to meet myself, to let go, to grieve, to recapture joy and to begin anew. There is a process of releasing on the way in, receiving in the center, and returning back along the same path, taking into the world that which you have received.
For me, building a labyrinth is an organic process of feeling the land, walking the space, clearing the area, selecting the stones, placing four sacred stones in the center that represent the four directions (East, West, North, South) and four elements (earth, water, air, fire). It has been a valuable practice for coping with grief and fostering healing growth.
Here is the sign I posted on the labyrinth I built:
To prepare:
- Sit quietly to reflect before walking the labyrinth
– You may enter with questions
– Maybe you’ve come just to slow down and take time out from a busy life.
You are invited to use the labyrinth in a variety of ways while being respectful. You may walk fast or slow, go directly to the center, sit quietly, sing or hum, whatever meets your needs.
When I walk the labyrinth it becomes a vehicle that allows me to drop my personality and walk with my soul. It is a physical endeavor causing me to focus on what in myself is ready to be surrendered.
I bow my head at the entrance, where it is a familiar practice of mine to ground myself into the earth and to listen for guidance. I am a mover and a dancer, and it is through my body that I access an inner stillness. The labyrinth offers a pathway for every part of me. As I wind towards the center, and sometimes away from it, my mind surrenders control leaving my soul to operate my being. By the time I stand in the center of the labyrinth, I receive gems. I hear them, I feel them, and my hand releases a stone or a note into a particular place in the center.
A sacred space
There is an invisible collection of the times I and many others have prayed here. The sheer force of prayers, desires, and wishes pull me into an authentic moment. I am lit up with my full potential, held by the natural intensity of love residing here. I am reminded of my purpose. This place is bigger than I, on a mountaintop of endless skies overlooking the ocean. I am full, I am small, and I am vast.
Do you have a way of surrendering?
Read more about coping with grief and adventures in the labyrinth in my book, Dancing In The Narrows.
