P-p-p-please!

September 2025 Nature Mandala and photo by Lisa Cheney-Philp

When the weight of the world gets heavy
And trouble rolls in like the tide,
May we stand up and help each other
Find comfort where love abides.
 - lyrics from "Weight of the World” by Peggy Nes, this song is part of the Threshold Choir
Repertoire, listen here (minutes 3:17-5:30) 
—

Friends,

I will admit, "P-p-p-please!" is a pithy title I came up with in hopes of piquing your interest enough to open, ingest, and digest this blog post. However, the more I sit with this single, stuttered word, the more it piques my own.

The word itself is telling. "Please!"  is a call for mercy, for help, for relinquishment of burden. It is
shins to the ground, palms together, fingers zipped and head bowed, praying for salvation from
pain or to be spared of pain impending. It is urgent longing to be relieved. 

The stutter makes the sentence shudder. "P-p-p-please!" There is the admittance of vulnerability, of weakness, of desperation. It says there is room for negotiation, for a deal to be struck. Surely, whatever has been done, or is about to be done, can be undone, can be made not so, can be rendered down into something, anything, that sums to less than total annihilation and devastation.

"P-p-p-please!"

We have all been here before, some of us many times over. We have been frozen, stuck, humbled to our knees, with no certainty of what to do or how to be amidst a significant loss that threatens to consume us like a tidal wave come crashing down on our doorstep.

We become the speck of dust, the grain of sand, the blip on the radar of the Universe. Small, insignificant, unworthy, powerless. 

It is here that we surrender our best laid plans only because they have been taken from us already. It is here where we sift through the rubble of our house of cards. Where we touch ground zero and below.

And it is here, where time stands still, just for a moment - though it can feel like eternity - where we beg something, someone, anything, anyone, to relieve us of the stopped-us-dead-in-our- tracks pain. 

This pain, of course, has a name. It is called grief. And grief, as it turns out, wants to move just as much as we do.

Grief, like water, money, ideas, energy, and so many other phenomena, becomes itself when it is flowing freely. It loses its integrity when sequestered, corralled, suppressed, hidden away, or otherwise denied its essence. And in an out-of-balance state, pressure can build, forcing dramatic releases often out of proportion and in the wrong directions. 

There must be a better way, no?

Yes. Yes there is a better way. An infinite amount of better ways actually.

Enter the pithy title: "P-p-p-please!"

To me, "P-p-p-please!" stands for the 3 Ps of Moving Grief (so you can feel relief). And the three Ps stand for Practices, Projects and Pilgrimages. 

Practices are the small, regular, behaviors, activities, and rituals we can perform that move grief in small, regular, and meaningful ways. Grief practices may look like:

• adding a song to a grief-themed playlist because it reminds you of someone or something you've lost and loved
• saying the name of a person who has died out loud to yourself, a journal, or another person when you're remembering them
• naming seven things you love about something you've lost (because it may take seven reminders of love to balance out one reminder of loss)
• baking a cake each year to honor the birthday of a loved one who has died
  laying fresh flowers on a grave or altar once a week
• looking through a photo album or shoebox of mementos when you're feeling sad
• regularly meditating, journaling, or shamanic journeying with a prompt like, "Grief, how do you want to move today?"
• going to a monthly grief circle or support group

Projects are the one-and-done efforts we put our heads, hearts, and hands to to honor an ending. Projects can be small or gigantic, accomplishable in an afternoon or over a much longer timeframe. They can be artistic, pragmatic, or anything in between. There is, however, a distinct point of completion. Grief projects may look like:

• making a bowl that is the size and shape of your loss and never filling it (to honor the part within you that is carved out in the same size and shape that can never be filled)
• sifting through and deciding what to do with the stuff - the physical objects left behind following a death or ending - then doing it
• designing and holding a ceremony to honor the life and death of something or someone you loved
• cross-stitching a quote that a loved one used to say that makes you smile, and hanging it prominently in your home
• having jewelry, a talisman, or other art made from the ashes of a family member or pet who has died
• repainting and redecorating a room you shared with a partner with the help of a friend following your divorce
  
  

Pilgrimages are the trips we take to carry out our grief tasks. They involve travel, moving from one place to another. Interacting with lands and people foreign and familiar. Pilgrimages may look like:

• traveling alone to all the countries you and your spouse planned to visit together in life and didn't get to before they died and scattering some of their ashes in each country
• returning to a hometown or childhood home to get affairs in order or attend a ceremony of some kind (funeral, memorial)
• revisiting all of the neighborhoods you lived in and your favorite restaurants in the city you've called home for over a decade before moving to a new city
• tracing your lineage back to a country of origin and setting foot on its soil for the first time in your lifetime
• going on a river trip that moves through a confluence (the places where two rivers of equal size come together) to honor and learn more about your own crossing of a significant threshold
  
  

Just as we are unique individuals, so too are our grief expressions. This means that it is up to us to listen and discern which ones are being offered up to us in whispers, nudges, or outright demands, when our desperate pleas for help are answered with the call to movement and flow.

If you have found a practice, project, or pilgrimage that has helped you move from being frozen or stuck in a state of pain, I invite you to email me and share your experience so your success can ripple beyond you and inspire others.

And, if you're feeling frozen or stuck right now and could use some help, I'm here for you. Let's listen in together and see how grief wants to move through and with you.

A few more loving reminders, gleaned from songs in the Threshold Choir Repertoire (because who couldn't use some more loving reminders these days):

• We are not alone, we are here together (from "You Are Not Alone")
• Love is around us (from Love is Around Us)
• We are all just walking each other home (from "Walking Each Other Home")