Grief Season
We are entering one of my favorite times of year. As a death activist and regular death meditator, I deeply value the Day of the Dead season and the thinning of the veil that comes along with it. But this time of year also holds a very personal place in my heart because October marks the start of what I call my grief season.
Ten years ago this month, my mother embarked on the first steps of her final transformation. After more than a decade of living with a challenging chronic illness, she began her courageous walk toward death. She knew it. I know she did because I remember my first of many pleas, each one beginning with please: “Please make it to Thanksgiving,” followed a month later by, “Please make it to Christmas.” A difficult January and February came and went, but the final milestone was her 70th birthday on March 22, 2017.
My mother had already outlived her mother, much to her surprise, but she really, really wanted to make it to 70. I remember so much of that last week in detail, but in particular, I remember telling her on March 2, “Well, you made it to March 2, and that's basically the same as March 22—isn't it, Mom?” She smiled and proceeded to accept my permission as one of the final cues she needed. She died the next day, March 3, at 11:45 p.m., as the final credits of the movie we were watching together, Manchester by the Sea, began to roll. My entire life, we loved watching movies together, and it happened to be Oscar season. In her final weeks, she wanted to catch up on all the nominees for that year so we spent a lot of time in those final days watching movies together in her bedroom. We had said all the things, but sitting in silence staring at her just didn't feel as safe and soothing as sitting next to her staring at the glowing screen as her awareness faded in and out.
The greatest gift my mother gave me was, of course, the gift of life, but the second greatest gift she gave me was the gift of her death. Navigating and surviving the extremely challenging, rough waters of losing one of your closest people stretches you in ways that are permanently transformative. In the beginning, the grief is unbearable and feels out of control, but slowly learning how to turn toward my grief and meet it with curiosity was profound. I didn’t do it alone, of course. I had the help of many amazing humans: an incredible therapist, a loving and supportive father, husband, daughter, extended family and friends. But I also had the help of the trees, the birds, the water, and my dear pup, Iggy.
Very early on in my grief journey, I remember walking into a session with my therapist and asking the question, “Does grief affect our eyesight?” because everything outside that day was so bright, bold, and crisp. I saw details in nature I had never seen before, and I genuinely thought something had physically altered my vision. I know now that the natural world was leaning in. It was welcoming me into its arms, and I decided to lean back. By making this choice, my place within the natural world was forever altered.
My relationship with the trees in my life—the expansive Japanese maple in my front yard and the trees in nearby parks—became powerful. I began taking weekly, and sometimes daily, walks in one of the parks near my home. The trees, ferns, and moss held my grief with me. This was profoundly healing, and it was my first clue that the plant world and the spirit world were deeply connected for me. I was of them, and they were of me.
During this period, I also became obsessed with the entire world of grief, loss, and death and learned so much about the vast and fascinating world cast into the shadows by our death-denying culture. I poured over books, documentaries, podcasts about death—everything I could find. One of the more powerful resources I discovered was Ned Buskirk's organization, You're Going to Die (https://www.yg2d.com/).
Just last week, I was listening to an episode of the Your Going to Die podcast where Ned was interviewing the Poet Laureate, Ada Limón, and she stopped me in my tracks with her description of her relationship to death. It felt as if she was living in my head and behind my eyes when she said:
“I have a hard time accepting that we don't go around talking about death all the time. It confounds me. And so for the most part, I feel like it's the thing that terrifies me. It's the thing that guides me. It's the thing that makes me recommit to the world over and over again. It's the greatest mystery. And it is the thing that brings me toward a deeper appreciation, attention and love. And at the same time that I wanna battle with it and get really rageful against it, I also think it is the reason that I do what I do and the reason that I love as deeply as I love.”
Limón powerfully summarized what I have thought and tried to articulate so many times before. Beyond my friends in the natural world, it's the courageous voices of artists, poets, musicians, and healers that have allowed me to shed the lifelong death-denying conditioning I grew up with and stand in my true, authentic and curious connection with death and dying.
Five years after my mother’s death, during my second year of graduate school, that year’s grief season led me into a delightful inquiry that changed the trajectory of my life. I was earning my master’s in social work and needed a topic for my research class. I went to Google Scholar and searched for “effective tools and treatment for patients facing anxiety caused by a terminal diagnosis.” I scrolled through the first couple of pages and came across many modalities I was already familiar with, such as “palliative and hospice care,” “CBT,” and “music therapy.” But I was intrigued to come across the work being done at Johns Hopkins on psychedelic therapy for cancer patients.
At first, I was surprised I hadn’t heard about this research before. Then I realized it was familiar: I had heard Michael Pollan discuss his book How to Change Your Mind in an interview in 2019. In October 2022, my passion for grief, death, and the intersection of spirit and nature led me to explore plant medicine. In April 2023, after submitting my research paper on integrating psychedelics into the U.S. health care system, I decided I needed to stop telling everyone how effective psychedelic therapy could be and experience it for myself.
That was when I went on my first guided journey with psilocybin. That day, I felt something like what I had felt the night my mother died: the sense that my entire perception of reality had shifted. Her death had opened a door in me; this experience helped me recognize where it led. Since then, grief has remained not only a season I return to, but also a teacher—one that keeps drawing me toward greater curiosity, connection, and love.
Suzanne Shoemaker
Psychrament Core Team Member