Healing Emotional Wounds: A Back-to-School Altar

A Shamanic Grief Altar

Authenticity, creativity, 
patience, and compassion.

Authenticity, creativity, 
patience, and compassion.

For the past 38 years I have loved the arrival of the first day of school. Whether as a student or as a professor, I've barely been able to contain my excitement about the potential of the new academic year, the new people I would meet, the friends I'd see at lunch, and the new knowledge that's inevitable in academia.

Not this year,  however. On the eve of the start of my 2019-2020 contract, I find myself a bit distracted, if anything, by other things. I want to paint my bedroom door and reorganize the shed. I want to wash my car and make Christmas presents and cuddle the cats. I want to watch cars go by in the rain and figure out which onomatopoeia words best represent the sound they make. I want to learn to play a shamanic drum. I want the freedom to withdraw from others at a moment's notice.

Is This Faculty Burn Out?

Rough Aquamarine and a Jasper and Hematite Sphere

After a series of serious obstacles and emotional upheavals over the past few years, I think I'm simply worn out. I feel translucent in the wake of personal tragedy, illness, and close calls, and I'm not quite convinced I have the energy to usher in close to 80 freshman and somehow convince them to write essays. Composition is not my favorite class to teach. It certainly isn't a student favorite, and they, too, are all very much distracted by other things. I also haven't, to be completely honest, forgiven my classes from last semester for calling and texting me while I sat and held my father's hand while he struggled to breathe in his last few days. They called to ask if I'd graded their exams while I was at the funeral home. They texted to complain about their group members as the hearse arrived. They emailed multiple times to see if I would accept work they hadn't completed in the first weeks of classes as I tried to sleep for the first time in days; for the first time in days not listening for the next breath. I answered all of them as soon as I could, but I can't seem to shake the feelings of resentment and martyrdom that came with it, no matter how many times I tell myself that they're still kids and don't know any better, or didn't know any better at the time.

 On top of it all, I've lost control of my verb tenses. My father didn't once love his cat and stop loving him, so I cannot say "He loved his cat." He left this world loving the cat in the progressive, continuous tense. I also cannot say "He loves his cat" with accuracy. As a grammarian, this lack of verb tense for deceased relatives is an absolute twist of the knife. What if my lack of control over verb tenses seeps into my classroom: Will the students notice? Will I be outed as a sentence diagramming charlatan? Perhaps I should use the conditional and subjunctive mood: "If my father were still here, he would love his cat."

Contemplating grammatical analysis is wonderfully distracting, but it is not for healing. My grief has taken a unique turn that requires unique healing.

The Shamanic Grief Altar

Off to School

Personal items are optional, in this case beautiful vintage marbles.

In "Off to School Altars," author C. B. Cabeen explains how their family used an altar to help a young daughter overcome her trepidation about returning to school. The author explains the playfulness required to make the altar-building process meaningful, especially with a young child, but also offers exceptional insights for people of all ages: "Altars give us a way to mark the changes in our lives, and they reveal our lives back to us as something sacred to honor and celebrate." The author goes on to say that "the process of choosing or creating emotionally charged objects, arranging them, and gazing on them opens up our abilities to see the broader picture and reach a synthesis–or at least start a conversation.  Disparate feelings can stand side by side on an altar without having to edge each other out."

On an altar, my own trepidation at returning to school can stand, as Cabeen says, side-by-side with my realization I need to be with others, regain a sense of community and control, and once again find joy in my life's work. As practical as the creation of a syllabus might be tomorrow, my first official day of the new school year, gathering and placing "emotionally charged objects" may help me commemorate the day in such a way as to bring healing and prepare my heart for the task at hand.

Healing from Grief

Authenticity, the product of mindfulness and a supportive community.

Creativity, because it contributes to the growth of our souls.

Patience with myself and others because we are all as fragile as soap bubbles.

Compassion above all else.

In addition to mourning the end of summer, I am grieving the loss of my father and all that entails for me and my family. Therefore, my altar is also based on the Shamanic grief altar. 

Linda L. Fitch teaches, in "Creating a Grief Altar: A Shamanic Practice for Grief and Loss," that the required items for a Shamanic grief altar are very few:

• A black cloth (you can use a napkin, a scarf, a piece of fabric, etc.)
• A black or dark blue bowl with water in it
• Salt
• One or two light colored candles

When the candles are lit, she continues, the altar is "open."

A copper sphere from Michigan's Upper Peninsula 

Although my altar sits on a woven Navajo mat, as you can see in the image, I've placed a black bowl of spiced salt water on top of a black, cloth-covered journal. The spiced salt was a gift for cleansing my home from a friend, and it seems appropriate to use the journal as my black altar-cloth for the start of the new school year, representational of a blank slate. I've included two white candles and a clear quartz pendulum, plus a small collection of jasper and a shell I picked up on the shores of Lake Huron. Not on the journal, where the basic items are located, but on the mat, I have included a bowl of marbles that belonged to my father, and they are in a bowl he made in high school. I've also created a spiral of black beach stones from home as the ground for a rough aquamarine, a jasper and hematite sphere, a copper sphere from the Upper Peninsula, and a rough septarian. Although I have a large collection of gemstones and minerals, these were the most appropriate for this altar's purpose: To help me heal and prepare my heart for the new academic year.

Want to read more about grief and healing? Try

Grief and Healing: Using the Nice Dishes
Arts and Crafts and Healing
The Intent to Change; The Purpose and Benefit of Personal Altars

Works Cited

Cabeen, C. B. “Off to School Altars.” Pagan Families, Patheos, 23 Oct. 2014, www.patheos.com/blogs/paganfamilies/2014/08/off-to-school-altars/

Fitch, Linda L. ""Creating a Grief Altar: A Shamanic Practice for Grief and Loss." http://lindalfitch.respond.ontraport.net/grief-altar

Copyright Amy Lynn Hess. Please contact the author for permission to republish.