Hello!!! It’s so nice to be back here after a long summer break. It’s now mid September and I am still feeling uplifted from a truly wonderful time this past July and August. One big thing that happened in July: I finished the last of my readings and completed my essay for the final taught portion of my MSc in Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes. I sat in a classroom with my friends and colleagues in Bristol for the last official time where our tutors forced us (how cruel ;P ) to look our goodbyes in the eye.
What do I mean by “forced?”
They did not let us settle for: “I can’t believe it’s the last weekend of in-person class! So sad, let’s write a poem.”
Like me, you probably have a lot of experience with goodbyes. Some welcome, some heartbreaking. Some chosen, some placed upon you. Saying goodbye to the many places I’ve called home. Saying goodbye at someone’s passing. Saying goodbye to colleagues and jobs and saying goodbye to a habit of ice cream several times a week.
Good at goodbyes
I am practiced at standing (fairly) sturdy in the face of (most) goodbyes. I don’t mind if people see me cry. Chin up. Eyes on the next thing. Open doors and windows, and all that. I have felt fairly certain that I am “good” at goodbyes.
But on the last day of class, sitting at a rectangle made of tables, we were asked to not merely say goodbye and pass onto the next thing. We were asked to sit in memory, to sit in observation, to consider our shared experiences and what it means that we were at that moment of ending. We were asked to feel what was happening in our bodies as we were together in this goodbye.
I can remember it even now, two months later: I was holding myself in by the shoulders, there was tightness in my stomach like a tight zipper forced over my stuffed Thanksgiving tummy, right up to my throat. Then, we were asked to create a ritual for our goodbye, something that honored our time together.
We had to SIT WITH GOODBYE. Which was annoying because, having experienced a lifetime of goodbyes, I knew how to do this and I didn’t need to be reminded of goodbye until 5 minutes before we parted ways. I’d be fine. Everything was fine.
Lots of people have things to say about goodbyes.
Parting is a certain kind of sorrow, said a certain famous guy.
I don’t like a long goodbye, my dad would say. A hug and then run, preferably while looking at the ground.
It’s fine, everything’s fine, onward. Onward.
Hold on, don’t rush
But what if we didn’t rush. What if we didn’t skip ahead to the next thing so we didn’t have to feel THIS thing?
So that’s what we did, in that room in Engineer’s House, our tutor asked us to be with everything. And so I did. I participated in, experienced, and felt (not just in my emotions but also in my body) the power of the long (or maybe the fully present) goodbye. We wrote, of course we wrote—it’s a therapeutic writing program, after all. We wrote about things we noticed in the room with one another, about things we noticed on walks around our building, we co-wrote a poem in this magical kind of way without knowing what the others had written until the end. We spoke about gratitude and impact that our two years’ worth of experiences had had on us.
As I write this now, I can’t help but think of funerals. Does that sound too blunt? But consider how funerals can involve a more focused sharing of stories, a sitting with others, making space for acknowledging the love and the pain of loss and transition and goodbye. And I wonder at the notion of ritual in saying goodbye at the end of a life that might also resonate at other times of change. While ritual can become something that is passed through in a haze, ritual can also be a space for us to honor a moment, to not merely rush off to life in its next configuration, but to be present, willing to face the whole truth of it.
In that room at the end of our in-person time as classmates, on our way to becoming something new, I began to see myself a bit more honestly, a bit more open to acknowledging the bittersweet pain of transition, of letting go, of saying goodbye. That, while practiced at goodbyes, I have so much to see and experience and live when I sit with the full spectrum of feeling in this times of transition.
Your time for words
I have prepared a few writing prompts for you, if you’d like to consider this time of transition into the equinox, into fall in the Northern hemisphere. You can check them out on Instagram:
The first:
&
The second:
and there will be more to come in this series over the next couple of weeks.
In the meantime, I’ll close this month’s newsletter with a bit of reflective writing:
Writing Prompt
Open your journal and ask yourself how you are with goodbyes. Do you rush through them, eyes darting, like: “Nope! This is not me crying!” What might it be like to sit with what is happening with you and between you and the object of your goodbye: a loved one, a town, a job. Whether you liked it or not, sit with what was happening for you and between you.
There’s no need just yet to move toward your next steps. A goodbye naturally ushers a transition of some sort, an adaptation. That will come. So try to stay here with the goodbye for a moment.
What do you notice happening for you as you think of this goodbye? Scan your body from your head to your toes and jot down what you sense and where you sense it, is there a shape of it, a temperature, a sensation? How’s your breathing? Is it high up in your chest, quick or slow, are you holding it? Jot these things down, too. It doesn’t matter if this is how all of your goodbyes have felt, or this is the first time, or if you note that the memory of the goodbye feels different in this moment than when you first experienced it. Whatever you notice is what you notice. It’s all worth your attention.
Self Care
If you feel overwhelmed at the thought of sitting with a goodbye for this exercise, take note. There’s no need to move into something that is unprocessed or too painful. Be gentle with yourself. Goodbyes can be tricky. If you’d still like to try the exercise, choose a time or experience of a goodbye that was not triggering for you. Perhaps saying goodbye to the last sip of coffee in your mug.
If you begin the exercise and start to feel overwhelmed, you can try this grounding exercise:
Find a neutral object nearby, an object without a lot of meaning attached to it. Hold it in your hands and begin slowly to consider all of its aspects: its size, weight, temperature, color, texture—write these down for several minutes. This type of grounding exercise can help you feel more calm and settled in your body.
While writing like this can be therapeutic, please bring any surprising or especially difficult emotions to your mental health provider for additional support.
In other words
If you read this today, September 17, 2024, and if you have clear skies tonight, you may be able to glimpse the Harvest SuperMoon partial eclipse!
This is an interesting article that explores different cultural experiences of this particular full moon and the various festivities associated with it around the world.
Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
And on that note, with a glance up toward the changing heavens, I wish you loads of gentle, savored moments.
Reading this post brought back memories as I did the same activity when I was on the course! It's such a great way to think of goodbyes to really feel it and even express it. Congratulations on finishing the taught part of your course.