Sometimes, we are called to a new journey, and we don’t want to go. And why would we when the call comes in the form of a loss? Loss of health with a new diagnosis. Loss of certainty about the future. Loss of faith. Loss of life for a family member or friend.

Such significant losses call us to leave the life and places we knew into a journey toward the unknown. Resistance to this call is understandable, sometimes for as long as we can. This journey offers no guarantees except uncertainty and distress. To accept the call and begin a journey prompted by loss can be a fearful thing.

Yet we go.

Perhaps we go because the place we lived, in body or mind, no longer exists. Something or someone important, fundamental, has been lost. Going back is not possible. Sitting in the ruins of what was seems no option. So, with varying amounts of reluctance and resignation, we say a shaky “yes” to the invitation to a journey to somewhere else, fearful of what may be found and frequently unsure what it is we are actually seeking.

For those who study such things, this is called a “hero’s journey,” but we don’t feel much like a hero. On bad days, we feel like a victim, helpless in the face of unwanted changes. On better days, a survivor, stubbornly alive in the face of something we thought might destroy us.

Is it possible to do more than just survive on this journey? Maybe, but it doesn’t feel like that, at least in the beginning. Taking our first steps into the dark unknown, surviving can feel like a pretty lofty goal, and it is enough.

It takes courage to begin a new journey, to take those first steps toward a mysterious horizon. It can feel like there is no choice, but there is always a choice about how to respond to a call. Continuing to live among the ruins of what was. Grasping to hold onto what is already gone. Pretending we can go back to the way it was. These are all options, and we might have to try them before convincing ourselves that the only reasonable option is to accept the call to this shadowy journey forward.

It’s an inward journey as much as anything, and inward journeys can be quite intimidating. To take an honest inventory of what is left in light of a huge loss. To take a long hard look in the mirror to see who we are today. More aware of our weaknesses than our strengths, to begin and continue an inward journey is a strength of its own.

Almost always on a loss journey, there are newly discovered strengths or newly developed strengths never before experienced or thought possible. Taking first steps requires both courage and strength and so does taking more steps especially when we fall (and we will), get lost (we’ll do that, too), and want to go back home to the place that no longer exists (we may need to try this more than once).

Traveling on this new journey, support will be found that had not been anticipated. Old friends unexpectedly step forward to walk the path with us. New friends and unimagined sources of guidance, comfort, and inspiration surprise us. They will all make the unbearable bearable and bring glimmers of light into some of our darkest places.

An unwanted loss journey will be full of unwanted obstacles and challenges. Some anticipated and others catching us unawares despite our vigilance. Each will be a trial or a test, and we will often emerge wounded and sometimes wiser. Not always wiser, unfortunately, as we can also emerge embittered, anxious, and angry. Grief is such a challenging journey.

One of the insights gained in our loss journey is that this kind of journey has no clear end. The journey is not only something we do; it can become a part of who we are. This type of insight and deep knowing is part of the transformation that can come in an odyssey of loss and grief.

There will come a time when our loss journey brings us back home to both places and people. While we are mostly recognizable, our community can see that we have changed. Our travels and our woundings have left scars. Like writer Sheri Reynolds, we can look at our scars and see hurt, and we can look at our scars and see healing. Both are true. Not always but often, growth has been experienced as a result of our struggles. The look in our eyes has a different knowing, and our home, life, and world do not look or feel as they did before.

Returning, what are we to make of this new and different understanding of ourselves and our world? Whether staying to build a new home and way of being or taking home with us as we travel elsewhere, there is a call to another journey. It is a different call as loss and legacy grasp hands and beckon us, wounded and perhaps wiser, to begin another journey into a different unknown.

Another “hero’s journey?” Maybe. “Victim” and “survivor” don’t seem like adequate descriptors anymore. Yet we can’t fly, don’t have a cape, and feel every blow, so we don’t feel like the stereotypical hero. Nevertheless, there is something heroic about our quest for a new way of thinking and living. Maybe the label is not so important. Maybe what’s important is that it’s our journey and it is not walked alone.

And maybe most importantly, it is once again our time to answer the call and take those first few brave steps into a new journey toward the unknown and another way of living the life we have now.

 

This essay was inspired by the comparative mythology insights of Joseph Campbell and the work of Ben Rogers and others who have found that seeing your life story as a Hero’s Journey increases meaning in life. Rogers, B. A., Chicas, H., Kelly, J. M., Kubin, E., Christian, M. S., Kachanoff, F. J., Berger, J., Puryear, C., McAdams, D. P., & Gray, K. (2023). Seeing your life story as a Hero’s Journey increases meaning in life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 125(4), 752–778. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000341

 

Greg Adams

Program Coordinator

Center for Good Mourning

goodmourning@archildrens.org

 

Greg Adams

Greg Adams is a social worker at Arkansas Children's Hospital (ACH) where he coordinates the Center for Good Mourning, a grief support and outreach program, and works with bereavement support for staff who are exposed to suffering and loss. His past experience at ACH includes ten years in pediatric oncology and 9 years in pediatric palliative care. He has written for and edited The Mourning News, an electronic grief/loss newsletter, since its beginning in 2004. Greg is also an adjunct professor in the University of Arkansas-Little Rock Graduate School of Social Work where he teaches a grief/loss elective and students are told that while the class is elective, grief and loss are not. In 1985, Greg graduated from Baylor University majoring in social work and religion, and he earned a Masters in Social Work from the University of Missouri in 1986. One answer to the question of how he got into the work of grief and death education is that his father was an educator and his mother grew up in the residence part of a funeral home where her father was a funeral director. After growing up in a couple small towns in Missouri south of St. Louis, Greg has lived in Little Rock since 1987. He married a Little Rock native in 1986 and his wife is an early childhood special educator and consultant. Together they have two adult children. Along with his experience in the hospital with death and dying and with working with grieving people of all ages, personal experiences with death and loss have been very impacting and influential. In 1988, Greg’s father-in-law died of an unexpected suicide. In 1996, Greg and his wife lost a child in mid-pregnancy to anencephaly (no brain developed). Greg’s mother died on hospice with cancer in 2008 and his father died after the family decided to stop the ventilator after a devastating episode of sepsis and pneumonia in 2015. Greg has a variety of interests and activities—including slow running, reading, sports, public education, religion, politics, and diversity issues—and is active in his church and community. He is honored to have the opportunity to be a contributor for Open to Hope.

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