If you’ve been following me on IG, you might know that one of my long-term partnerships has been as the Creative Strategist and Chief Copywriter for Sah D’Simone and his cult-status spiritual workout, The Somatic Activated Healing Method.
Working with Sah has been a tremendously rewarding experience. He was one of my first freelance clients, and I’m honored to have helped grow his brand (which helps so many people) from a newcomer on the scene to a globally recognized success.
In August 2022, Sah asked me to write a poem about “ungrieved grief” to serve as part of the poetic narrative for a short-form, movement-based performance film that he was creating.
And it was a timely ask.
I had just returned from my hometown, Highland Park, IL, where the community was deep in mourning after a horrific act of gun violence on July 4th that took place two blocks from my family home. My father was recovering from a difficult surgery and about to start radiation for a cancer in his throat. I was tapped into my own immediate and obvious grief, deeply shaken by the impermanence, fragility, and unpredictability of life.
So, Sah’s invitation to explore the deeper nuances of these emotions, and explore the concept of “daily grief” through writing was an unexpected gift.
Every day, life changes rapidly around us. From one breath to the next, moments large and small are continually lost, gone as quickly as they arrived. We lose people, opportunities, time, dreams, and even hope.
There is grief in accepting that life is more not-knowing than knowing.
But there is also peace in that acceptance. If only we could get to that point!
(Reader, I have not figured out how to get there either. And I’m not here to teach you. We are on this path together.)
I think we cling to what we think we know because we crave the false sense of control that familiarity and predictability offer.
We cling to who and what we have because we’re unsure of who we’d be without them.
We cling to the way life is because we can’t bear the uncertainty of what it would be like if it wasn’t this.
We cling to how we think things should be because we can’t accept the unfairness that things aren’t what we expect.
In that desperate hanging on, that desire for control, we can’t afford ourselves the time or space to process the bits of grief that collect inside us while we cling to moments that are always changing.
We’re all carrying around ungrieved grief of some sort.
Sah wanted to explore what would happen if we stopped fighting grief.
What if we befriended it?
So, I sat with the prompt Sah offered, let the topic seep through my soul, and finally, let the poetry pour from my heart onto the page:
Today I celebrate the ungrieved grief
Touch the neglected corners of my soul
Kick up the dust in old, locked, neglected rooms
And dance with ashes of all that has burned in the fires of livingLife is a losing game.
Every second every breath every day
is lost to the ether
the moment it passes.
It's gone,
never again to be experienced the same way.We’ll never feel that,
experience that,
know that moment again…the fragrance on the wind
that passing, mysterious smile
those cleaving, intractable words.Grief is that alchemical blend of experience and narrative
that defines our lives
through all the infinite deathsIf I neglect it, reject it, turn from this daily grief
it builds upon itself, multiplies infinitely, compounds indefinitely.
It claws at me, clings to my heels as I walk,
pulls me underwater in its sinewy undertow,
rises within me as bursts of fitful anger,
deranged denial,
desperate bargains,
the depths of hopelessness,
and distracts me from the beauty
of everything that continues to live as I focus on loss.But if I turn towards it,
invite it to visit me, and hold it closely with love
(leaving narrative behind)
let it mark me with its murky medicine,
welcome the color and character it offers my life…Then I put my survival, my evolution, my transformation
on a pedestal
rather than the narratives,
the causes of these sorrows,
or the pain itself.We can bathe in the waves of grief.
Let them purify us and make us whole.
Let the fires of pain burn hot, fast, and bright
coursing through our veins like lava
so we can be reborn
strengthened and renewed
not by the pain -
but by the decision to rise once again.We can lose
without suffering.
We can change
without chaos.
Grief is no longer suffering,
grief is my salvation.
Sah combined what I wrote with his own profound poetic reflections on grief to serve as a voiceover to a stunning somatic performance, and over the past few months, Touching the Ungrieved Grief became an internationally award-winning short film!
🏆 Winner: Best Experimental Film - Cannes World Film Festival
🏆 Winner: Best Editing - Experimental Dance and Music Festival
🏆 Official Selection: 6th LA Queer Film Festival
🏆 Official Selection: Silicon Beach Film Festival
🏆 Official Selection: ARFF Berlin / International Awards
The film is not yet available for public viewing, but I’ll be sure to share details here once it is.