A Long Day’s Journey Through Life and Death and Life

by Robert Wilkinson

30 years ago today I lost my daughter, and any life I had before then was swept down the river of time in a heartbeat. I have been contemplating how I got to where I’m at, and the many ways I’ve changed since then.

I know I’ve become more compassionate in the face of human suffering, and now am no longer afraid of “the underworld” of our passing worldly existence. We must go deep from time to time to sink the roots of our consciousness into the heart of the Earth, so that as we grow higher in awareness, we cannot be blown down by the winds of fate. While I had sailed to the heights of consciousness (and self-forgetfulness) before she came and went, I have come to realize she gave me a deep connection with Life I had never known before. As I gave you 4 years ago:

Blyth’s death taught me to go deeper, much deeper than I ever went before. I had aspired to higher Truths before her, and yet have found even higher ones since her death. I came to realize that most of us build foundations, metaphoric “slabs” or “pier and beam” platforms on which our flowering consciousness finds its ground. These may be adequate up to a point, but sinking deep roots is the Way of Nature. It is how the giant trees stand upright even in the strongest winds.

While I had attained great heights of realization before Blyth, from her death I went deeper than I had ever gone before in this life. These depths allowed me to know the root of Life itself. That root has allowed me to grow into greater Love, Wisdom, and Intelligence than I ever knew before her death.

Through her I learned about the sorrow of the human condition. Before her death I felt deeply, and cared deeply for many things, yet now I have a broader and deeper empathy for those who suffer. In fact, her death gave me a nobility, courage, and strength I had never known before, though I didn’t know it for some time.

The first year was a miserable losing struggle with grief. Even when I felt a little up, soon after I would crash on the reefs of my own sorrow, drowning in an endless abyss. It seemed like nothing I did mattered. Counseling, meditation, reading, and writing all seemed like futile exercises.

Working distracted me, but also exposed me to people saying things that profoundly hurt me. Some people cannot handle other people’s grief, and make it clear through their rude, indifferent, or cruel statements and actions.

It felt like I was going through motions that never did relieve my suffering. I tried to be heroic and take a “spiritual view” of things, but it was pretty thin gruel, and an unending nightmare that “waking up” only made worse. Being asleep was troubled at best; being awake was miserable.

Now I’ll share a part of my story about that time in my life that I’ve never publicly shared before.

After a year of continuing to do chart work and television production trying to stay busy and keep some money coming in, I stumbled on to an interview with Robert Bly, the award winning poet and antiwar activist. In it he spoke of the deep grief that many men carry, but almost never express, since our society believes expressions of grief are a sign of weakness and “something wrong.”

He wrote of things I had never imagined, like the “male mother,” and the ancient “fairy tales” that are actually powerful timeless tales of male and female initiation into the mysteries and self-conscious adulthood. Even though I was quite familiar with male vs. female archetypes, he gave me insights I hadn’t known before then through the lens of ancient stories told for centuries.

I read how he had conducted closed gatherings of men, creating a crucible where men were able to express feelings they had never expressed before. This was in 1989, long before many current therapeutic models were invented. In fact, many of the current models for dealing with grief stem directly from Bly’s work.

Since everything I did at the time seemed hollow and superficial, I figured it might be interesting to see if I could get him to come to Austin to do a gathering of men there. As I had produced hundreds of events in the 70s and 80s, I figured I could keep it together long enough to do another event, despite feeling like a miserable failure at life.

I had a friend who he had mentored, and had his phone number. He called Robert, and Robert said he would come down for a one day gathering of men, and a half day of a gathering of men and women (always a volatile combination when archetypes are coming up!) However, he wanted the University of Texas to pick up the tab for a poetry reading on Friday so we wouldn’t have to pay for him to come down.

Though my friend was very gloomy about the prospect of getting UT to pay for anything, I had a client who was high in the UT administration hierarchy at the time, and asked her if she could find some money somewhere to make it happen. She got excited, was sure it was going to be easy since it would be a major event for Austin.

While securing the money, without me asking she also made a call to Bill Moyers, as she had been an editor for one of his more famous works, and asked if he would consider coming to Austin to do a program on the gathering. As Robert was extremely protective of his people, he had never allowed any videotaping of any gathering, since he was against the standard commercialism of modern media which tends to cherry pick the most lurid shots and turn things into a glamorous spectacle.

When I first contacted Robert in person, I explained I was a video producer and director, and would like to videotape the gathering, and give the tape to him to memorialize it, with no commercial intention. He said okay, but then Bill Moyers contacted him, told him he wanted to do a feature on it, and Robert, for the first (and last!) time in history, allowed videotaping of the gathering on Saturday.

That surprised me, and actually was a relief, since I was already promoting the gathering and in charge of the logistics, publicity, and everything else, and I really didn’t need to be behind a camera at a gathering where I was supposed to be learning to go deeper into my grief. This life I have had many lessons in learning when to stop “doing” and simply “Be Here Now,” as my old friend Ram Dass so famously put it.

So he came, and the event was a singular event that kicked the doors wide open in Texas, allowing me to assist men in several cities to create men’s groups and “sharing circles” to explore deep grief and wounds in places that would be safe for men to go deep into the raw pain and suffering so many carry behind the mask of their daily life. After that event, I and some others did gatherings in Texas, but as with many things, these were immediately corrupted by some local therapists’ desire for wealth, power, and more paying clients, and they became a caricature of the original intention. I learned that just because they were therapists didn't make them safe.

Anyway, the gatherings in central Texas turned absurd, exploitive, and nasty after I was told they didn’t want me around anymore (because I challenged them and insisted women should lead their own gatherings, and not us. I wanted no part in exploiting grief for money.) So I was again back in the depth of sorrow, having been betrayed yet again by men I thought were my friends. I struggled that next year, and did the best I could just to get to the next day and not stay in bed and never leave.

Then I got word from Bill that the show would air on PBS in January 1990. When it did, it blew my mind, and apparently blew a lot of other minds as well, since “A Gathering of Men with Robert Bly” generated 40,000 calls nationwide in 4 hours! Men’s gatherings and groups began to sprout everywhere, and mainly broke into two emphases: the mytho-poetic movement, and the psycho-therapeutic peer counseling movement. A lot of guys wrote and quoted a lot of poetry, and a lot of guys made a lot of money from something they were usually unqualified to do. Choosing the right therapist involves more than them telling you they can help you.

I produced and/or attended quite a few gatherings, from over a thousand to just a few around a fire. It was an eye-opener that male grief is not a simple or monolithic thing! In San Francisco, the grief was overwhelmingly about those who lost friends and partners to AIDS; in Houston, the grief was overwhelmingly about those who lost friends and family in wars; in Ojai, we “celebrated” the Day of the Dead and honored the countless people who have died defending the honor and integrity of their loved ones. And while some small groups became a men’s “whine and dine club,” others allowed us to go way deep and express what we had never had words for before then.

Which brings me to here and now. In the 25 years since then, I have had a long journey through “the valley of the shadow,” and come out unafraid of much of anything. While the first 4 years after her death were impossible, I worked my program and came up from the underworld quite by surprise after 6 years, 11 months, and 2 weeks in the death zone.

During that time I helped found the only support group in a thousand miles for parents who had lost a child at any age, and through my journaling and sharing with the group, found that every month at least one would encourage me to publish my insights and wisdom in a book. Though I resisted the idea of publishing my deepest wound for all the world to feel, eventually those pages became the corpus of my book “Love Dad.” I held the manuscript for 11 years before I published it, and based in the feedback over the years, am truly glad I did so, since it stands as a worthy tribute to two lives, hers and mine.

It is said we all have at least one book in us. This book arose out of a question I asked myself: If I were to die in a year, what book would I write that would make my life worth being here, that would stand as a tribute to my hard-won wisdom born of the deepest grief and profoundest sorrow any adult can have? As you can see, that’s not an easy question at any time, but in my case, there could have been no other answer than “Love Dad.”

I can say it has truly stood the test of time, and is as moving to me today as the first time I read the completed manuscript. I have been told over the years that countless people have been helped by its gentle wisdom during their grief from losing a child, and even other loved ones. Though the original stands as a perfect work on its own, I plan to publish a second edition in 2018 to make minor changes I’ve noted since its first publication in 2002.

And so on this 30th anniversary of her birth and death, I can again say I was blessed beyond description for the experience. I will close with something I give you each year:

May all of you who have lost a loved one find comfort and healing in the courage, compassion, and unconditional love that you were offered from that death. Death is a fact of life. And love is stronger than death.

Happy 30th Birthday, Blyth. You've changed my life and countless other lives forever. Thank you for making me a better man. Love, Dad.

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If you want to order a paperback copy of the book I wrote about my ordeal and path back to a loving, fulfilled life, you can find it at Love, Dad: Healing the Grief of Losing a Stillborn. (Just make sure the subtitle says “stillborn” rather than “child,” since this second edition clarifies this work was written as a result of a full term birth loss and updates all the global numbers related to pregnancy and infant loss.)

Though it was written as a result of the death of a child, what is explored in the work are ways to move through grieving any loss of any loved one, whether child, parent, sibling, pet, friend, or any other. It can also help you understand what the bereaved are going through, and perhaps help you to be a more compassionate caregiver, if that's your privilege.

If you want to explore more about the grieving and healing process, please visit my previous articles. Each one covers different elements and approaches to healing our grief. Though the article titles may look similar in some cases, each stands as a unique work in itself. These articles cover different things than are offered in the book, while elaborating on some of the core concepts and related issues. And of course, give yourself some space and time, since they will bring up some very deep feelings.

From 2006: Love, Dad - Bereavement, Grief, and Healing After A Significant Death

From 2007: Coping With Loss and the Grief That Honors A Love

From 2008: For Those Who Grieve the Loss of A Child

From 2009: Death, Loss, Grief and Bereavement - Honoring the Sacred Moment

From 2010: To Those Who Grieve the Death of A Loved One

From 2011: Death is A Fact of Life, And Love is Stronger Than Death

From 2012: Letting Go Of Emotional Heaviness

From 2013: Losing Loved Ones – Grief in the 21st Century

From 2014: Overcoming Fear of Death

From 2015: Healthy Grief Leads To A Healthy Life

From 2016: Remembering Blyth and the Road Not Traveled

From 2017: The Reality of Death, the Reality of Life, the Reality of Love

Copyright © 2018 Robert Wilkinson

Comments

[Alejandra Tarallo]

I am sorry for your loss Robert. I can't help but think it can't be a coincidence that Robert shares a first name with you and all three letters in his last name are a part of your daughter's lovely name. Sending you love always.

[Nic]

Great book that has helped me through he loss of my child and my partner. Highly recommended.
I am thankful for what we have shared through our common experience. Indeed, hard to believe and communicate the pain, the grief and also its transformative power! Blessings and gift are bestowed on us after learning the life experience of death, but these take time and effort to recognise.

Blessing be to you, Bly, and everyone else.