Rhyming and Grieving

A poem a day in February is grief work for some. Just like working with clay will be good for some and welcome. One month a year is enough as it clears away some tears. I especially loved the laughter that accumulates over time, like from one or two or three years!

Sometimes it was upon awakening, other times we were making our way to bed. We would laugh until we cried, pictures of you, hearing you say the words. Some days I cried until I could laugh again.

It is good to cry. A friend of mine said it is a prevention for cancer. She got up on stage and talked of catharsis. She was my adopted sis and she laughed and cried with others in front of an audience. I wince to imagine what it took to do that. She was quite the gal pal. I didn't know she died until well after.

We were planning a get-together and I didn't hear back from her that sister and there was no mister. I spoke with her daughter who said, she died from cancer. Imagine my loss, when she told me of how tears were prevention for cancer. Then I thought, I didn't cry either when my mother died and then a year later when my sister died! That was why I got cancer, and why not her! Yes sir!

Grief and loss is a state you don't want to live in. The work to go through it is the most important work you will ever get to do. My people and others experienced historical trauma, generational trauma, foster care and adoption, sexual abuse, and domestic violence. I truly believe that by the time some get to help there are multiple kinds of grief and loss.

Trauma affects our right brain and that is how we bear the cross. Right brain work heals, and we deal with things like art, music, dance, and other things. Culture is one of the most important activities to do to heal. To see your way out. We have many ways still today that help us to do the tough stuff okay. Talk it out with someone you trust as this is about the loss of power it has over us.

Prayer is a given, offer our asema up. Laughter and tears are important and we need both. It's hard to have one without the other. Culture talks of being in balance, so no other way can it be for our healing this day.

There are different kinds of tears I was told. One saline like to wash the dirt out. The other is a body chemical to heal, to feel better. Laughter gives our organs a good massage. Our lodge needs some of that kind of touch too.

Laughter gives our people resilience. You see circle tears or an audience is the best, my friend Dr. Annette Goodheart said. If you are afraid you won't stop crying if you start, please believe me you will. I thought that too and it's just not true.

Set a timer for some kinds of this work as we don't want to spend a whole day with this we say. Okay then, write for a while and then go play. Enough I say for today and this year.

Rhyming and grieving was my goal although I didn't always know it. One year I was working on spoken word or rap and I haven't arrived as I am deprived of that musical ability and I may never get there and that won't keep me from trying.

I made a book of Anishinaabe culture and Ojibwe Language from a few months of rhyme and a few people did buy them. And, I made a monkey rhyming book for two of the best rhyming monkeys yet. I didn't sell it! I bet that would sell, get it now. This is the end for now and I take a bow.