I have just finished reading Melody Beattie’s book, THE GRIEF CLUB, which brings home the reality of the ever-changing, impermanent nature of life and the accompanying suffering such a reality brings.  Told through the stories of her own experience and those of others, the book left me with compassion and  profound respect for the  struggles we all face as we attempt to come to terms with such a reality. 

In the introduction, she writes, “It is not a book about overcoming. In many ways it is not a classic how-to.  It’s for people in transition, people going through change and loss. It’s for people in pain, people who are numb, and people who aren’t sure what they’re feeling. ..This isn’t a book with a no-pain no-gain theme. It’s about that time in our life when what was familiar disappears, we’re not who we were, and we’re not yet who we’re becoming…One of the darkest places is that place where we don’t get or understand ourselves, and we think nobody else gets us either. We feel lost and all alone. We lose touch with the connection we have to ourselves and each other. It’s this connection that keeps us in Grace. When someone gets us, when they understand us, we understand ourselves. Then somehow the unacceptable becomes okay. We might not be happy about it – whatever it is – but we’ll find peace…Enlightenment isn’t waiting in the mountains of Tibet. It’s in the experiences we’re facing – and often resisting in our lives today. It’s in the changes we didn’t expect, ask for, or want. We can fantasize about the perfect life. It takes courage to have faith with the life we’ve been given and show up for it each day.”

In THE GRIEF CLUB we meet others, like ourselves, who have been initiated into clubs they never meant to join such as The Divorce Club, The Cancer Club, The Bankruptcy Club, The Alzheimer’s Disease Club, and The Chronic Pain Club. Even though we may not have been initiated into their  particular club, hearing the honest account of each person’s experience  connects us more deeply with our own experience as full time members of Humanity’s Club and gives us strength and encouragement. As Ira Progoff says, “This solitary work, we cannot do alone.”