Song for Metabolizing Grief
Written by: Alexandra “ahlay” Blakely
Even as a grief tender, I sometimes catch myself running away from my own grief. The kind of grief where dreams and sleep feel safer than the agony -- until, that is, I awake in the darkness, to find grief laying right there waiting for me to rock her like a baby. The kind of grief where I seek to fill my days with busyness, community gatherings, exercise… anything to keep the grief at bay. But even then, I can feel grief lurking in the shadows, right behind the center of my throat. The kind of grief where, if I just stopped for one second, she would come rushing in, debilitating me for who knows how long. The kind of grief where I am not sure if I will purge or wail. The kind of grief where bed beckons like a tempting escape. Food, Netflix, and blackout curtains at 1pm. The kind of grief where I wish I could cancel everything and just disappear.
As someone who dedicates a large portion of her life to grief, to the sorrows of the world and the grief that others carry (both human and more than human), I need to strategically build joy and pleasure into my life. When I first began grief work I found succor in the famous quote by the poet William Blake, "The deeper the sorrow, the greater the joy." I understood this to mean that the deeper into my grief I allowed myself to delve, that the pendulum would naturally oscilate back and forth between these two binaries. And after years of waiting, and that not happening, I realized that I might have misunderstood.
What I have come to learn is that grief is a skill we build. It is a skill that is difficult to build, in part, because we live in a grief-phobic culture. We must practice it to become agile in it. And my, oh my, have I become agile in it! My grief muscle had become strong but my joy and pleasure muscles on the other hand had become weak and malnourished. I had gotten lost in the strength of my own grief. And although I do not regret that process at all, I did find myself longing for an equilibrium. I longed for something other than grief, something that would move me toward my fullest expression of being alive.
If I wanted to come back to a more central place from within the circle of my wholeness, I needed to cultivate practices of joy and pleasure. I started to pay attention to what practices had the capacity to shift my energy when I did them. For example, things as simple as focusing on my belly button when I inhaled and exhaled, walking in the forest, dancing, cold plunging, discovering more about my own desire and… drum roll… singing.
Not the singing you do alone in the shower or when no one else is home. Singing with others. Community singing has become a medicine to shift my energy. It isn’t a panacea for grief. I still sometimes end up on the floor in my sorrow. But in that heaviness of heart, I am not alone. I am surrounded by a village of song that supports the metabolization of the emotions that are waiting to move through me. Sometimes, through the singing, I am able to access ecstasy, sometimes I find an ineffable sense of inner calm through the collective co-regulation of nervous systems, entrainment and attunement. Sometimes it takes a few songs before “I feel better.” On the odd occasion, I don't feel better at all, yet somehow I always feel less alone.
Author and educator, Martin Prechtel says that in the Tz'utujil community from present day Guatemala use the same word for crying as they do for singing. And my mentor and colleague, Aaron Johnson, says that singing and grief are not separate. Singing, says Johnson, is a form of touch.
I am convinced that no one thing works for everyone. I am also convinced that we are living in a time when singing together is being remembered by the mycelial brain that is our collective knowing. It is this kind of communal singing that, despite colonization and genocide, many Indigenous cultures still practice today. The communal singing that my people forgot over 500 years ago and perhaps even much longer ago than that. For centuries, my ancestors also utilized communal singing in the oral tradition as a technology to pass stories and memories through time like time capsules to the future ones. Communal singing marked our initiations, rituals, ceremonies & celebrations. Communal singing was practiced by those that knew that song is medicinal. And through generations of assimilation into US culture, communal singing was sadly forgotten. Communal singing fell off the radar more and more as we were able to listen to music through machines. And gratitude to those who never forgot the magic of singing together, we are riding the ripples of their sacred work so that we can remember we’re not crazy for feeling the depth of our sorrow during times of collapse, that we were not alone, and that we do not need to do any of this alone, ever. Singing or grieving.
In my own experience, grief, more than anything, wants me to acknowledge her presence, honor her existence and alchemize her into something else. The way I have learned to do that best is through breath, the movement of my body, fresh air, cold water, and above all else: singing with others. Paradoxically, processing my grief through song has also become a way that I have learned to experience some of the greatest joys and pleasures in my life.
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Alexandra “Ahlay” Blakely lives on Coast Salish Land. She is a song carrier remembering that which was meant to be forgotten in her lineages (Ashkenazi, Scandinavian, Finnish, English, Scottish, Irish): song technology as connective tissues of the communal body. She blends song, body percussion, dance, stillness, breath & silence with the deepest intention to support others in remembering their inherent birthright to singing and rhythm. To learn more about her song circles and grief retreats visit her website and her current project WAILS: Songs for Grief, an album entirely dedicated to grief ro be recorded in summer 2023 with over 150 voices in the State of Washington. The album is inspired by the five gates of grief from Francis Weller’s book, The Wild Edge Of Sorrow.
Alexandra "Ahlay" Blakely
Alexandra "Ahlay" Blakely (she/her) is a song carrier, grief tender and ceramicist remembering that which was meant to be forgotten in her lineages. Her ancient ancestors of Old Europe (Ashkenazi, Scandinavian, Finnish, English, Scottish, Irish) sang, grieved and played together while building, creating, birthing, working & being in reciprocity with the Land. She understands these technologies to be fundamental in the expansion of one's internal capacity to participate in the collective shift towards life-affirming conditions. An underlying prayer in her offerings is that they may contribute to the shared effort to transform white culture into being more connected with our bodies, emotions, Land & the animate world around us.
To learn more about her work visit Healing at the Roots.
To support the upcoming album WAILS: Songs for Grief (an album entirely dedicated to collective grief) visit the gofundme.
