Daily Nourishment for August 13, 2024: Grief and the Body
Daily Nourishment Read Time: 40 seconds
Pause/Prompt/Practice Time: 10 minutes
“Day after day, my teeth ached. My jaw ached. I walked into a door and a bruise bloomed on my cheek. Somehow I bruised my forearm and both shinbones. My hips hurt. My eyelids swelled. My eyeballs were tender. My back knotted.” — Sarah Sentilles, Stranger Care
Pause.
Meditate on Negro Lament by Hélène Sardeau for a few minutes.
Prompt.
Grief can feel abstract, surreal, and overwhelming. It can help to write not about its emotional contours but about its concrete expressions in the body. How does it feel on your face? In your chest? Your belly? Your limbs? What do you do with your body when you grieve? Where do you go?
Our emotions always take up residence in our bodies, but we so infrequently speak of how we feel in corporeal terms. What does grief feel like in your body?
Set a timer for five minutes and write how grief feels in your body in a style/form of your choice.
Practice.
Practice a body scan. Take three deep breaths and notice the rhythm of your breath. Then beginning with the top of your head and working your way down your face, neck, shoulders, etc. to the tips of your toes, notice each body part–does it feel relaxed? Tense? Heavy? Light? Scan from head to toe at an even pace noticing the different sensations within your body at this moment.
Want More?
Read The Crying Book by Heather Christle
*
Upcoming Workshops & Gatherings
—The August Co-Writing Schedule is live.
—Spiritual Direction for Writers® + Enneagram for Creativity Gathering will take place on Saturday, September 28th. Recordings will be available if you can’t join us live. You can register here.
August 31— Online Revision Stations Designed by Lauren F. Winner
Today’s Daily Nourishment was provided by Catherine Ricketts. This Pause, Prompt, and Practice were originally shared on April 13, 2023.
Catherine Ricketts is an essayist, songwriter, and writing instructor. Her nonfiction on the arts, grief, joy, and spirituality appears in the Kenyon Review Online, the Ploughshares blog, Electric Literature, The Christian Century, Image, The Millions, Paste, and the music blog for the NPR-affiliate WXPN. She studied writing at the University of Pennsylvania and holds an MFA in nonfiction from Seattle Pacific University. Her first book is The Mother Artist, a work of literary nonfiction on motherhood and artistic practice. Find her on Instagram at @bycatherinericketts, or stay in touch via her newsletter.
*Please help us protect our intellectual property, our creative process, and the integrity of our work. Spiritual Direction for Writers® Daily Nourishment is covered under the Spiritual Direction for Writers® trademark. You are welcome to share this link with others, but any other use (written or spoken) is prohibited without written permission from Charlotte Donlon.