I always felt ,when it first happened,
and still now, that there are certain feelings that I have 
and experiences that I go through 
that I just cannot find the language for.
Or I don't want to.

There's nothing that neatly puts it 
into a term.
If I say this word, people go, 
‘I know what that means’
It's like just looking around
to have something 
which you cannot put into language
People try to empathise,
but you cannot equate.
Comparative grief. It’s not helpful
Your grief exists
‘Please do not try’, he shared 
in last week’s Death Cafe 
‘to put your grief
next to mine, 
because I feel minimised.
You may not be intending that, 
but please,
it feels dismissive’.

People have been expressing
feelings of grief 
for about as long 
as we've had 
human language
But it's one of the things
that we just can't articulate
However much language 
we have for these feelings, 
you cannot articulate it in a tone
It's beyond, 
it's way beyond
You can't intellectualise it, nor can it be articulated 

In this week’s Cafe, she shared her visit 
to a workshop on vocal Tai Chi,
singing what comes up 
and using her body to move with it
30, 40 seconds on the mic
as they passed the microphone around the group 
‘WOW!’, she said, ‘I feel like I've learned 
so much of your story 
There were no words at all.
But I felt it all, I know it
And not all of it
I know there's so much more, 
but so much depth was portrayed in that
And yeah,
it felt open without language.’

‘So’, she says, ‘I expressed my grief 
in a sound the other day
The idea was in song, 
but it wasn't that at all
It was just sounding 
Scream crying.

SCREAM

Guttural, mournful, loud, long
And that felt brilliant
to express it fully
without the restrictions 
of language’ she explained joyfully 
Letting go of
any resistance
any ideas of how we should behave
any ideas of how others would react to that
Allow herself to 
Exist in her grief, pain and devastation 
Let her body express that
Allowing herself 
A beautiful thing
Watching herself cry
Stops any ideas 
of other people’s opinions 
Crying in front of a mirror
to see herself as a person
She holds herself at higher standards
than she does others
Thoughts in her head,
very self-critical 
Speaking those thoughts
out loud 
She is not as critical 
She is vocalising it 
She is talking to another person 
Her reflection in the mirror 
She would never be 
that cruel to another person
‘When I look in the mirror
I treat myself 
like a person 
as opposed to me’, she explains’
‘I treat myself with 
the respect 
the love
the compassion
that I deserve
as a human being’.