How to find healing in grief: An extended conversation with Dr. Joi Lewis

Hearts are broken across the country after the tragic white supremacist hate crime in Buffalo, New York last Saturday. How do we cope with so much loss and anger?

Dr. Joi Lewis joined host Cathy Wurzer to talk about how to heal through grief. Below is a transcript of their conversation.

Dr. Joi Lewis: Oh, thank you. I'm so glad to be back. I am doing well. I'm doing well. You know, just like many folks finding ways to hold both heartbreak and joy. I am doing well.

Cathy Wurzer: I'm glad to hear that. You know, I mentioned that you are a healer. And I'm wondering if you could kind of outline your healing philosophy. Do you have one?

I do. I think about myself as a healer. And the easiest way to describe that is that I am a body worker for both individuals and institutions. And so if you kind of think about a body worker who helps you like kind of find those hard places where things might be tight in your muscle, may sound like the place to be able to push on it and kind of move things through and help us to be able to adjust a bit more in our bodies. That's really the kind of healer that I would actually describe myself as. And then I also would just add that I do that work in the context of healing justice, which is really a process that is about making ourselves becoming more sound or whole again.

How did you get into this work?

I guess I was being sort of mentored or being shown this way of life as a healer through really my grandmother. You know, my grandmother had 33 grandchildren and 44 great-grandchildren. And, you know, we all thought we were her favorite. But I think I was. But anyway, I really saw her negotiate a lot of both family community issues. And I didn't really realize how much of that I had internalized until, you know, sort of fast forward through my career in higher ed for 25 years and doing a lot of work around diversity, equity and social justice. Nevertheless, I have been doing a lot of healing work and then when I left that formal work and started doing work in community and saw like, 'Oh, these needs are there,' and 'These skills and abilities that I've been learning my whole life can be useful.'

Does it seem to you that the needs are just getting so much greater than they even were when you first started this work?

Yeah, that's such a good question. In many ways, I don't think that the needs have grown. I think what has happened is that more people are now aware of those needs.

What perspectives did you have on this time in our history in the healing that we need to move forward?

Really great question. Before I answer it, it reminds me to just take a pause, which is one of the practices that we'll talk about. So many heavy things that have happened and it's like, well, I could go into like just regurgitating a whole bunch of stuff, but I'm like, 'Let me just take a minute and pause.' Here's what's true: the world, in some ways, did not really change when our brother George Floyd was murdered. But what did change is that this is really kind of hard for people to deny any more, right, the violence that has been taking place. And whereas that's hard, I'm also encouraged because I think that people are more open to the ideas of healing from this trauma and incorporating practices like radical self-care, because we just realize we can't hold all this stuff in our bodies and in our minds, it's just too much.

So many people see this time, the past few years, as, you know, really depleting. And that feels right to me.

I feel empty. My body feels. My body is feels weird. I just it's a very strange feeling, and a lot of my friends say the same thing. How about you?

Yeah. I mean, here's what I am hoping that we can maybe take in is like, yeah, what's happening in that response is our bodies being human, right? How could all these really heavy and, you know, tragic things that are happening to us, that happen around us, how could all that happen? And there are ways that I and and other folks have used and participated in things to try to shut that down, right? What helps is engaging in some of these healing practices, meditation, mindfulness, getting out of isolation and connecting with people, causes, movement, dancing, doing stuff that's going to help move things through. Otherwise, it's hard to even get up, I'm gonna be honest.

Is there a healing practice that we could do together right now?

Absolutely. One of my favorite healing practices and I try to share this with folks as often as possible is hand over heart meditation. So what I'm going to invite you to do is to take your right hand and just place it over your heart.

And you just pause for a moment, you begin to feel your entire central nervous system start to calm down. Just feel that if you like, you can close your eyes, which is kind of space in which to put your gaze. And we're just going to breathe for a moment.

I invite you to let your feet get planted solidly on the ground. Sit up like a dignified tree. And we're going to take just a deep, unifying breath together on the count of three. One. Two. Three. Deep breath in. Go ahead and release. This next breath, I'm going to invite you, before you take it, to consider being completely pleased with yourself. Nothing to change. Nothing to offer. Just simply being pleased. If you want to go back to not being pleased after we finish recording, that's fine. But that's for now.

But these moments just go ahead and be pleased with ourselves. We're going to take a deep, unifying breath on the count of three. One, two, three, deep breath in. Go ahead and release. We're going to do one more breath together. This time I'd like for your shoulders to go all the way up to your ears, and we're just going to hold it.

They're already there. Just kidding.

Okay, keep it there. Oh, okay. One, two, three. Inhale. Shoulders up. Hold it, hold it. Hold it and release. And just go ahead and shake. Shake it out, Cathy. Go ahead. Let out your hands. You can stretch, feel it in your body. What are you feeling? What do you feel?

Really crunchy. The word crunchy just comes to mind.

That's good, that's good. That's stuff just waking up. It gets stuck there and that helps us move it through.

So this practice will help move through some of the angst and trauma?

Yes. And here's the thing. When you do a practice like hand over heart meditation, what you're doing is, your body is like, 'Oh, oh, I feel anxious. Something is happening. But wait, wait. My hand is over my heart. And that reminds me to pause, to slow down, to breathe.' And your body is so smart. Cathy, here's the thing. As you continue to do this practice over and over, what will happen is your eye will catch that hand coming towards your heart and before it even makes it there, it will start to relax. Isn't that amazing?

Wow. Can you tell a story about how all this has worked for you personally or maybe somebody you've worked with?

Oh, gosh. You know, I've lost count to how many times I use it in a day because I don't know. I can tell you, even though people think, 'Okay, you're a healer and so therefore you just respond to things in this way where you're always calm.' That is just not true.

Because of things that have happened to me and to my people, I am wired in a way where I feel like, 'Okay, something is happening. I need to jump in there and see how I can, how I can change things, what do I need to do?' And, you know, I got a call from a loved one who was dealing with some issues and I couldn't get to them right then. But I was like, let me let me jump in there. And what I did is I said, 'Wait a minute, Joi. Take your hand. Put it over your heart. Calm down, take a minute, breathe.' And in that time that I was breathing, I was reminded that maybe it's not good for me to just, like, jump in and start trying to fix things.

But what I did was I actually took a minute. I called a friend for some help to say, Hey, can you listen to me for a minute out loud as I kind of talk this through and when I did that. All of the things that I thought that I should should do, you know, like jump in my car, run over there real quick, do these things. Was like, no. Actually the best thing that I needed to do was to actually sit and be still and not react. Sometimes, you know, being still is an act of resistance. And it's counterintuitive but it was good for me.

Hard to do.

Hard to do. I'm with you. You talk to some people who knew me ten years ago, 15 years ago. Oh, 20 years ago. I mean, I'm unrecognizable. I used to have this shirt that said, 'I'm warm and fuzzy. Just don't touch me.' I'm not crying. I'm not emoting. I'm not showing anything.So, yeah, that was me. I was like, I'm the I am not doing any of that. But then I started doing these practices and I still like I do these practices now. I don't get up like, 'Oh, glorious morning, let me do it.' No! I get up and there are other times I'm like, '[I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that. I don't want to put my hand on my heart. I want to just shut down,' you know what I mean? But I do it because it is a practice I have made a decision that I am going to do. I don't wait till I feel like it because if I wait to feel like it, I'm never doing it.

Wow. Okay. You gave me some really good insight and some hope right here because I was just thinking yesterday as I was driving down from Duluth and I was thinking about all the pain and all the stuff that people in this particular business shoulder, especially folks in news, right. And then that's when I made the comment today about, 'I just feel numb to it all.' So it's interesting for me to hear you say, you were like, I was not into... Did you close yourself off from from those emotions?

It was my default. So it wasn't even conscious, you know, it's just like I'm not going there. And I mean, I learned it very early. You know, my mom passed away when I was seven months old. And people used to ask me about my mom and, why don't I ever talk about her? And I was like, 'Oh, well, she passed away when I was seven months old.' And and then people were like, 'I'm sorry.' And I'm like, 'That's OK, I didn't know her.' That's what I would say, right? And when my niece was born and, you know, I would have my niece sometimes, and my niece would cry and cry and cry and cry and cry.

And so my sister came back. And then when she heard my sister's voice, she would start crying and she was probably like five or six months old. And then I was like, 'Oh, I did know my mother,' right? I did know my mother. My niece taught me that.

But here's the question that I ask myself. Just as my niece would cry and cry and cry until my sister came back, she heard her voice. And then I wondered, 'How long did I cry? How long did I cry?' And then my mom wasn't coming back, right? So I made a decision somewhere way back there and so I just shut things down.

And you know what? That was useful. That that helped me do a lot. It did. But I'm not that seven month old child anymore, and I have learned some other ways. One of my favorite books is called Women Food and God by Janine Ross. And she has a quote in there that says, ‘The pain that we're trying to avoid has already happened.’ The pain that we are trying to avoid has already happened. And what happens if I don't take the time to feel it, to to cry, to stop, to pause, you know, what is going to come out some kind of way? Because it's if it's persistent and is usually is not going to come out in a good way. Yeah, I'm a bit irritable, I'm a bit aggravated. I'm going to snap at somebody. Something is going to happen. So that's how it how I just am like, OK, would you adjust to do these practices a little bit at a time?

I had never heard of that. The pain's already happened. I never thought of that. But that makes total sense to me.

Yes.

Because there's so many people that are just snapping out there.

It's just pain. And you know, the final thing I'll say about that, I'm working on my new book, which is called May the Revolution Be Healing and kind of funny, as I have been preparing for and writing and going to stuff my my source, my higher power, you know, who I call God is like, ‘Oh, we're just going to need to go through a little bit more.’ So you have some more like concept for your book? Well, okay, I got a lot of confidence. I got a lot of stuff because life is really hard. And so one of the things that I would talk about, you know, as I've said, I have people in my family, loved ones who have struggled with mental health.

You have to take your medicine, right? You got to take your medicine. And my, my, how about like, hey, Joy, you haven't been taking your medicine was like, what? It's like, yeah. You're not meditating regularly, you're not being mindful, you're in isolation because those things on my medicine, right?

And so it's like we all have different kinds of medicine that we need to take and we're all struggling and suffering in different ways. And here's the thing. I don't know. I'm just gonna speak for me. I don't know about other people, but for me, like, even over this last month, I was like, okay, you're right. I'm still taking my medicine. Let me do the things, let me get isolation, let me connect with people. I think that's the other think myth that folks have because, you know, I do this work. I love this work. I'm in public. That you can relate to this.

And people are just like, Oh, that's a joy. You start over. You know what? It's a practice for me to be around people. I'm not going to make up stuff. Like, for real. Like, I am really. I'm like, I'm on and I'm on and I'm like, ‘Oh, let me go into isolation. Thank you very much. I'm happy to be with me, myself and I.’ And what happens is that, you know, part of my medicine, though, is getting out of isolation and being in community with folks. And but then I start feeling better and I'm like, oh, afterwards I need to take this. Then I start taking my meds, right? I start doing those things. Those daily practices. Because I'm like, Oh, I feel good. So I don't have to do them. But it's quite the opposite. We need to keep taking our medicine.

Yeah, that's a really good thing to think about. And that can be different for everybody.

I want folks to know that you and I will continue to talk and share breathing and healing practices here over the next coming weeks.

You can do this in your everyday practices.

Oh, I love that. Yeah, it's kind of a stretch for some folks to do this. I understand that kind of a stretch for me. So we all got to kind of learn together. And you are going to be our guide, my friend. So I'm excited about that. I wish you a good day today. Thank you for being with us. And we'll talk again real soon.

I'm so looking forward to it. And in the meantime, folks, if you got an opportunity to practice that hand open heart meditation, do it. Do it. Don't wait. Go ahead and do it.