Shades of Grey: Transforming Pain Into Hope by Dorean Malandra-Dara

A couple of months ago my husband and I received news that we were going to have a child. We were both very elated. Nothing brightens up family life like news about children. I was making regular visits to my specialist to monitor my development. Progress slowed up significantly, and we became very concerned. At that point, I had dreamed of my own mother, who had told me everything would work out eventually. Just in time for Samhain, however, the good news turned sour with discourse on miscarriage and I was sent in for an outpatient dilation and curretage. After the surgery I didn't feel much of anything at all. I could move, walk and browse, but I felt as though every movement was unreal, separate, disconnected. Not so much doubt as dissociation had overshadowed my physical body. Before I knew it, I began to feel estranged from my own body, as though something had been taken from me. Something had indeed been taken from me. I felt like I was in store for an entirely new lesson about loss and death.

The lingering loss became physically painful, as though my body was plugged into an emotional interface and the output was conveyed through emotive language. It was a physical depression that relates to feelings of loneliness and emptiness. Eventually my emotions caught up with the physical depression and developed into a form of emotional suffering. An incredibly deep sadness welled up inside of me, and out of personal pride it bothered me. Every time I tried to fight the tears, the struggle only made me worse for wear. It was easy to tell myself that my tears were illogical but once started, ceasing my crying had been impossible. Not friend or kin could offer a successful consolation. I could not ignore what had happened either. There were no pictures to cling to, no memories, and no cause to blame. Here one day and gone the next. Although in its early stages, it was a bond that I immediately recognized. I knew in the depths of my soul that healing was not only a job for the physical body, but for the emotional body as well. A woman can seek friendly consolation or medical attention, have any number of therapists and specialists, but at the end of the day, a woman knows the needs of her own body better than anyone. This was a prime example of the most basic principle, "know thyself". Although it was painful, I knew I could do nothing more than listen to my heart.

At this point I couldn't find the desire or inspiration to do very much. I didn't want the company of friends most of the time. It even damaged my ability to find joy in things that I had previously enjoyed. I knew though, that this was a process and I had to find the time and a way to work through the sorrow. Watching the end of Fall pass me by, my flashes of past winters reminded me of how I used to mourn the dark phase of the year - where Gaia, the personification of Mother Earth grows cold and falls into silent repose inside of herself. This concept was not so far from me during this time. I was, in a sense, doing the same thing as I turned my focus inward on my belated mourning. Recently it had rained here, and I watched as drops of rain scattered across the windshield. As they did, I was reminded of all the tears I have shed. Like the rain that falls and fertilizes seeds of thought and creation, the rain has also helped me to resolve my sorrows by association. The tears we shed, like the rain, transforms our perspective, and produces an inner peace.

I have always perceived the Earth and Rain as personifications that express themselves to me in terms that are part human and part nature. The presence of my mother in the dream prior to the miscarriage was also significant. Ever since she died, she has become an iconic figure for me, an ancestral guide who appears in my dreams when I am in need of comfort and guidance. At the time of the dream I thought she meant that the problems I faced [at that time] would work themselves out immediately. Through my inner reflections on the personifications of earth and rain, I came to believe that through the lessons of sorrow and a new-found perspective behind Samhain, I would learn to transform the pain. An old adage declares that "time heals all wounds". In my realizations, my inner reflections had assumed a very natural position with respect to the healing process. I achieved a state of transformation, and began to view the world again with a renewed sense of hope for the future.