The Love We Carry When There Are No Words + Prayers for Maui
How to engage story as a tool for healing
Greetings wonderful human,
(For the Maui residents among us… please see the offering for you in this post.)
The love that lives within and is carried and shared through words, story, song, and presence…
this love come from life, from family, from friends who are chosen family, from animal allies…
And this love that is carried– comes from Earth….
and from years swimming through the songs created by some of the largest hearts on our planet… whales. This comes to mind as one the birth places of humpback whales is burning.
I mention this because by now you know, Maui, known as the symbolic heart chakra of our planet, is going through a massive destruction cycle.
This is when – as Sacred Storytellers– you are needed more than ever.
The etymology of crisis comes in handy in such moments: It is a moment of decision making that means: a turning point when change indicates recovery or death.
And as sacred storytellers you know the power of your words– and how we can engage the technology of prayer in such a moment:
Gratitude for what is
Clarity on what we are PRAYING FOR: healing, peace, easeful transition, gentle rain, radical abundance and support to heal and rebuild, rest, a phoenix rising of transformation.
So as you amplify and retweet and resend– What are you amplifying? LOVE? Fear? Drama?
As I am writing this, I am toggling between a text conversation with my dear friend Fernananda who lives on Maui. We are speaking of our love and our grief and shock about the fires and all they are taking.
Fernanda is wondering about the one’s whose story we will never receive, the banyan tree, an elder in the community whose outstretched arms have held Maui’s community for over 100 years. Fernananda is grieving the roosters who rested in the bushes, the geckos… so much life… has transformed out of the form of matter.
No I’m not cool with that. No I can’t jump into some hyper spiritual evacuation and say its all good and was meant to be — they just changed form. Right now— I’m disturbed— disrupted— and the gap of loss in the physical world is real.
Ferananda ended our conversation with:
“Martin Prechtel says Grief is a collective asset.”
I am reminded of when I once lamented a broken heart to my friend Craig, and he said, “You mean your heart is broken open?”
Grief –
I am reminded of the story of an indigenous tribe in Africa that was working with a UN relief group after a tragic loss in their community. The UN group was trying to gather them inside in a building, sit in a circle, and talk about their feelings.
The tribal members responded, in times of great grief– we go outside, we sing, we dance.
Grief is a community affair and when done– can give life.
After a very sudden and heartbreaking loss– Sherry shared this with me:
Grief is the form Love takes after someone we love is gone.'
Like Love, grief is wild.
How to Help People of Maui:
You can give to individuals:
Maui Surfer Girls, who is run by Destin Tester, a dear friend, and who has shared The School for Sacred Storytelling with her community, is raising funds for her staff who lost their homes. Lucy, one of their staff is also an EMT, after running triage for her community, she doesn’t have a home to return to. This is one way you can provide direct support with no overhead fees.
You can give to community services:
This is a local organization that has supported disasters in the past, and provides support to those who may not qualify or have a hard time accessing support.
There are Maui residents in our midst–
I want to honor you through the means that we have– in story circles. For those Maui residents who would like to be held in a healing story circle, please message me, and we will coordinate this for our sacred storytelling community where you can been witnessed and listened to and received in exactly as you are. (For clarity: this is an ongoing gift/offering from the school that has no fees associated with it and can be called upon at anytime. ).
3 things you can do to engage Storytelling in Times of Loss.
If you are tending someone who is dealing with loss, or if you are someone who is in the midst of loss– this is a powerful time of coming together.
“You are not telling the story to change what happened.
You are telling the story to change you.”
~Donald Davis
Host a listening Circle: A listening circle is a time when people share their stories, The teller is not questioned. They are not pumped for information about the hows, ifs, and whats. They simply share– their memories, their losses, their realizations, their tears, their laughter. And are held in the listening.
Bring ritual to your grief: Our Earth is a healer, and she can receive, hold, compost, and transform our grief. Take your grief, anger, upset, loss and place it into something symbolic, write it down, and create a ritual of burying or handing over to earth in the way that feels most aligned to you. You may want to create an earth mandala or altar where you can bring beauty to your healing process.
Allow your story to grow: There will come a time when you are no longer the person who the tragedy happened to. You are different. And so your story will eventually shift and change as you become the person that it happened to. You will eventually have new insight, new perspective, you will most likely find aspects of yourself you didn’t know you had before, strength, the capacity to heal a broken heart, new levels of resilience. As you shift and change, your story will also shift and change and grow with you and hold the healing energy you cultivated in the experience. This can’t be rushed. You do this on sold time.
Check out this talk by Donald Davis:
This is one of my absolute favorite TedX Talks on working with story as a tool to heal.
Release Old Stories….. Welcoming New Stories.
In grieving times… there is a time for no words.
To understand that the mind’s first defense is to make story and meaning.
But this is not that time.
This is the time for whole hearted grieving for a loss of epic proportion.
And Lahaina has a complex history that just burned.
There will come a time when it is time to consciously create a new story. There will come a time to plant the seeds for new life. And as storytellers, even as we live fully in this chapter… we know the next chapter will come.
Tomorrow I am hosting a free master class on Sacred Storytelling.
I will be weaving in how to work with story in times of loss.
Please join me if you would like to gain a few tools to support your navigation of these times, and bring in more joy, more love, more connection, and more life.
May your days be filled with grace.
May you have the courage to grieve out loud,
And may your broken open heart have all the ways to love,
Leah
PS: are you a subscriber? I thank you 100 times and more for your support.
Thank you for this. Maui has been in my prayers. It is so important to think of one 100 year old banyan tree, one sacred tree to make climate change real. Such a challenge to take that grief, to hold that grief and discern how we can help heal the future.