Gates of Grief
The gates of grief framework is from the work of Francis Weller The first five are from the work of Francis Weller; the sixth is from the work of Rachael Rice; and the seventh organically formed after offering this work to those in the helping professions over the years.
First Gate: Everything we love we will lose.
● Losing someone or something we love
● Loss of those who depart this Earth before us; our parents, spouse, children, friends
● Loss of home, beloved animals, placed you have loved
● Loss from illness or injury; treasured skills capacities
● Loss of a life dream
Second Gate: The Places that have not known love
● Places in ourselves never touched by love
● Places wrapped in shame and banished
● Places lived outside of compassion, warmth and welcome
● Parts that we hate in ourselves and hold in contempt, that we deny the healing salve of community
● Outcast portions of our soul appearing as addictions, depression, anxiety and other symptoms calling for our attention.
Third Gate: The Sorrows of the World
● The losses of the world around us
● Daily diminishment of species, habitats and cultures noted in our psyches
● Sadness for the Earth (not personal but shared and communal)
● Where we experience the soul of the world
Fourth Gate: What we expected and did not receive
●Things we may never realize we have lost, because we weren’t born into village with full joyous welcome of our gifts
And so we carry:
● Unconscious disappointment
● Feelings of loneliness and aloneness
● Diminished experience of who we truly are
● At the core of this grief is our longing to belong and longing to be longed for.
Fifth Gate: Ancestral Grief
● Unacknowledged and untended sorrow of those who came before us, born of:
● Lost connection to land, language, imagination, rituals, songs, stories of their/our ancestors
● Sense of homelessness, orphaned between old and new worlds
● Experience of woundedness, loss and abandonment, where grief and shame are intermingled, residing in the psychic history of our lineage
● Collective soul grief of abuses of millions
Sixth Gate: Regret and Remorse for Having Caused Harm
This path is about the griefs of the harms we have done, and that we cannot undo. It’s about regret and remorse. Not in a self-flagellating, critical way, but by naming it as grief over having caused harm. This path is the grief for all the ways we have had to collude with systems of oppression to get our needs met, or for any violence or harm we have committed, for how we did not choose to create systems of oppression and domination, and for all the times we acted unconsciously that harmed other living beings and the land we live on. For the inevitable harm we do as people living in a modern society. And for the times we knew better, but did the harm anyway. For regret and for the inability to make direct amends or fix it. Those who are not white, male, cisgendered, heterosexual, highly educated, able bodied, are less affected by this gate of grief than those who are.
- Paraphrase of Rachael Rice from a workshop
Seventh Gate: The Grief of Being a Helper Who Cannot Help
The grief that comes with being someone who works in the helping profession and not being able to help certain people, the grief of having clients worsen or even die under our care.