REFLECTIONS | BRAD TAYLOR
Each year, my family joins millions of others around the world for two days devoted to remembering and celebrating the lives of those we have loved and lost. Día de Muertos gives us the opportunity to welcome those whose time with us is now in the past. We light candles, display photographs, share stories, offer food, and mourn in community.
And each year, I learn more about myself and discover more of myself that I can bring to my life, personally and professionally.
At the heart of my work with Brad Taylor Group, whether I am facilitating a discussion or process, conducting a training on interactions with individuals in distress, or strengthening team dynamics, I try to create the conditions that allow for curiosity, vulnerability, listening, and learning.
In pursuit of that, I work beforehand to learn as much as I can about the participants, their roles and goals, the challenges they are managing, and the histories and points of view that they and those they communicate with bring to the discussion.
Much of this preparation involves broad perspectives, common challenges, assumptions, and the ways people understand one another.
More challenging to account for are the deep emotions that we carry with us everywhere, to work and home and play and sleep. Among the heaviest can be a sense of grief.
Grief can seem like an invisible layer of weight upon us and a murky lens that helps shape our view. It can become such a fixed part of us that we may not always notice its impact and instead experience it as part of our reality.
When we lose somebody, the loss can cut fast and deep, and there is often a social response of acknowledgment, empathy, and support. Over time, those responses can lessen. Not necessarily because of diminishing compassion, but because the obvious wound can become a silent scar.
And we move through the world with these scars.
Grief, like love, is something that most of us experience in our lives, but none of us experience it the same way. And even within one person's lifetime, multiple griefs attach to us uniquely, distinctly, layering upon one another, but never quite blending together.
Sometimes, when the grief that I carry is especially heavy, I can feel very alone in it. It can feel like it fills the entire center of all the world, weighing me down from all directions.
I can feel some comfort among those who know of my scars, but finding our way to one another is not always easy within the busyness of our lives.
Two days spent celebrating Día de Muertos are enough to refresh my perspective and remind me that grief is as common as love, and that grief grows from the love that we feel. It is ever present, and should not require a formal invitation or introduction to be seen and shared.
Walking, dancing, eating, remembering, and celebrating the lives that have been lost with thousands of others who are centering their own sense of loss and grief can create a new dimension of community. Within the celebrations, despair, suffering, and sorrow sit alongside smiles, bright colors, symbolic costumes, and face painting.
Taking a photograph with my living family alongside photographs of those who have died reminds me that once we love, we never fully leave one another.
My grief does not seem as dangerous when it is held in community and not hidden beneath Band-Aids. I feel more fueled by it, more at ease with it. It seems less likely to disguise itself as a defensive, impulsive, or argumentative response.
And I am reminded that grief does not have to remain a heavy weight that we carry. It can become a dynamic relationship, a continuation of our connection with those we have lost. They can continue to impact us, shape our perspectives, give us strength, and evolve with us.
The scars we carry may appear unchanged to the world around us, but there can be a great deal of life beneath them: healing, growing, and changing our relationship with those we have lost. Our histories don't simply shape who we have become. They continue to participate in who we are becoming.
Día de Muertos gives me an opportunity to engage with those I have lost, not simply to remember who they were, but to recognize the ways they continue to be a changing part of my life.
I have learned to love my grief, to carry it willingly and allow it to be a welcome companion. I have adjusted my eyes to see the world more clearly through the murky smudges where love and life were transformed into grief and loss.
But it can still bite me. It can still encompass me. It can still cause me to respond to what is happening right now from the pain that I carry from the past. At my best, grief makes me better. At my most frayed, grief can disrupt and distract me from what I hope to say or do.
When I am standing in front of a group to facilitate a challenging conversation, provide training on navigating difficult interactions, or help strengthen a team for the work ahead, my grief is there with me, as it always is.
I try to remain mindful that the invisible grief that others carry is in the room as well. Their grief is not on display. It is not named. We do not share pictures and stories of those we have lost and still carry with us.
Our lens can still be fragile, and our burden can seem heavy. Sometimes, what happened in the past can shape how we respond to what is happening in the moment.
It is important for me to remember that I cannot uncover all the tenderness that exists in a group through phone calls, surveys, and planning in preparation. There are some topics, feelings, and thoughts that will not be shared with me before, during, or after a session.
Sharing our grief can make us extremely vulnerable, susceptible to tears, overwhelmed with emotion, and sometimes caught with our eyes wide open in the bright light of realizing that our loss is forever.
I would not try to uncover these scars in a session, but it is important to remain mindful that they are present.
As I stand in front of that group, I remind myself that I don't know what anybody in that room is going through right now. And they do not know what I am going through.
I don't know what happened that morning or the night before. I don't know what text they may have received at the break. I don't know their relationship with love and loss and grief and trauma.
And I don't need to know of it, but I still do need to account for it.
And I need to account for my own wounds and scars, and be gentle with them and myself as I navigate the present with a map
Brad Taylor