Ponding Your Grief

Ponding Your Grief

Growing up in rural Kentucky, it's common to have small ponds providing a water supply to cattle, horses, pigs, and sheep.  After the snowfall of winter, and with the spring rains, the ponds a refreshing water supply for animal stock.

But as the heat of summer set in, and the rainfall dwindled, freshwater sources no longer renewed the pond water.  The water turned green, algae covered the top, and the bad smell reminded you to keep your distance.  The pond became stagnant.

            Stagnate: to become stale or foul from standing, to stop developing, growing, progressing, or advancing, or to become sluggish and dull.

Like many families in the months following a tragic loss, emotions run high, and friendships fray. A family member once called me hard.  After pondering, I thought of it as a compliment.  After all, the wet clay used by the Potter to create a water pitcher must go into the furnace.  A wet clay water pitcher holds no water at all!  It's of no use.  It must become hardened.  Then, and only then can the pitcher hold liquid.  I was smiling.  I had hardened, formed by the Potter himself, I was a fire survivor.

I canceled family gatherings, no vacation getaways, and isolated myself choosing only a handful of individuals to enter my private life.  My life at a stand still, I built more walls.  Filled with broken dreams, emotions, wishes, anger, and fear;  I wasn’t growing, producing, or moving. 

The Potter’s water pitcher, formed and hardened now filled with stagnation.  Like most stagnate ponds, I was drawing mosquitoes. I was toxic.  The toxicity revealed itself in my physical body in the form of severe Fibromyalgia and Lupus.  The stagnation was not a result of my becoming hardened.  It is necessary for the clay to harden to be useful. 

The toxicity came from the ponding.  I cut off sources of replenishment.  I guarded release of the life within me.  There was no flow in either direction.  Nudged to share my personal journey after six years of paralyzing grief;  not speaking a word, opening a door, or answering a phone—a pen and paper now the valves to release the stagnation.

If you aren’t comfortable sharing your personal journey or thoughts, consider writing short stories, poetry, or music.  Stir up the life force of your imagination, and let it flow through you to the paper.  As this force flows through you, the mosquito population decreases.

The Potter formed the clay pitcher for pouring out its contents, that others may be served.  Providing a life source for growth, nourishment, and refreshing.  When ponds become too stagnant for use they have to be dredged by completely emptying the contents and removing the layers of decaying matter.  This article allowed me to turn the valve and release what I came to understand about isolation and ponding.

If you are struggling with grief and recovery—a pen and sheet of paper opened the door for me.