The beautiful thing about grief is that it stems from our ability to truly love so profoundly, that our loss is almost unbearable. The love that we feel, as a response to our motivations for closeness with others, is not divided by separation, even one as seemingly finite as death, and our grief is the price we pay for being able to love them so deeply (Archer, 1999). Though feelings of grief may accompany a range of life losses, it is generally defined as the response to the loss of a significant loved one through death (Zech & Stroebe, 2010). These psychological and physiological responses are often fraught with complexities, involve a cocktail of emotions, challenge our understanding of the world, evoke a range of enduring issues, and necessitate long term coping strategies for the bereaved. Support with which is often neglected in western society. So, can we actually talk about death for a while and how nature connectedness might offer some refuge following bereavement?
In my thirty ninth year, I lost my dog. She was my best friend, my soul family, and my shadow. To be honest, I lost part of myself too. For weeks I felt like I had been cut from gut to gullet and left to walk over my own entrails that sprawled out of the wound. I tasted blood for a month, a true broken heart, with pain both physical and emotional, that I had never known before. Mia’s end was traumatic; a 3 a.m. car journey to the emergency vet through a dark, autumn morning, whilst in the back seat, she drowns in her own blood. Up until the time I see her x-ray and the extent of the cancer we didn’t know she had, I am hopeful that she will bounce back, but deep down I know that I will be driving home alone. By 6 a.m. it’s all over, we sit in front of the wood-burner, stomachs churning. At one point I realise I have stopped breathing altogether, I gasp for air — how do you forget to breathe? I cuddle up under her blanket, but there will be no sleep here. In search of ways to soothe my anguish, I found precious little about the loss of an animal, and the information about the loss of a loved one seems to me to be rather simplistic and outdated.
Now aged forty-four, I have a new and unexpected grief to comprehend — the loss of my nephew to suicide, two months before his twenty-first birthday. The most traumatic and utterly devastating experience of my life, that no words can explain, has led me to studying the potential benefits of appreciating beauty in nature following bereavement. Whilst my own experiences and research into grief can never qualify me to understand yours, I do know that if you have ever loved, that you too have lost; it is a universal consequence of being alive. Despite this universality, many people and cultures shy away from it. Some cross the street to avoid confronting the deep sadness they see written all over your face. I think it frightens them about their own vulnerability. But what if we faced this impermanence head on, found wisdom, compassion, and a greater appreciation of life?
Let’s look at the theory for a moment: Humans have walked this Earth with their companions for at least 300,000 years, and evolutionary psychologists agree that both grief, and its neighbouring emotion sadness – if not adaptive themselves – are the product of other adaptive responses. This means that they have a purpose, which most likely results from our need for attachment with others for survival. Some say our recognisable signs of grief are to highlight our need for social support when we face things that we do not have the resources to cope with alone. Whilst ‘psychology as normal’ takes a pathological approach to grief, positive psychologists suggest this is misguided, and that more often than not, people experience post-traumatic growth during times of hardship (Bonanno, 2019). Although this is not guaranteed and does not replace the suffering we face (for no personal growth will ever take the pain away) it can coexist, leaving people feeling ‘more vulnerable but stronger’.
So where is nature in all of this? It is generally accepted that positive contact with nature has significant benefits for wellbeing, akin to those found through increased education and income (Lumbar, Richardson & Sheffield, 2017). Whilst some researchers aim to discover a significant ‘time dose in nature’ — Meredith, Rakow, Eldermire, Madsen, Shelley & Sachs, 2020, for example suggest that just ten minutes in nature can improve a person’s mood — others advocate that it is not the time we spend in nature that is of benefit to our wellbeing, but the way we spend that time. This is the basic premise of nature connectedness, described by some as an innate human need since our cognitive and emotional evolution within the natural world has shaped who we are today, a theory now widely known as the Biophilia Hypothesis (Wilson, 1984).
Interestingly, many of the wellbeing effects found through nature connectedness are only significant when people also attune to natures beauty (Zhang, Howell & Iyer, 2014). So intertwined are beauty and nature, that the ‘appeal of beauty in nature’ is named as one of the nine values of nature connection in the Biophilia Hypothesis.
Whilst what constitutes beauty is subjective (both within individuals and across cultures), beauty, and its relationship to wellbeing, has been discussed in philosophical and artistic circles through the ages. In psychological terms this engagement with beauty has been divided by researchers into three distinct forms: natural beauty, artistic beauty and moral beauty (Diessner et al. 2008), each leading to development of the others (Gusewell, & willibard, 2012). The ability to appreciate and engage with beauty in these areas appears to increase aspects of wellbeing, life satisfaction, meaning and hope, (Haidt & Keltner, 2001) whilst also buffering against psychological distress such as anxiety and depression (Martinez- Marti, 2016). And the one with the biggest impact? Natural beauty (Diessner et al. 2008).
Knowing that grief is universal, and that nature is beneficial to wellbeing (especially when we tune into its beauty) how can we apply this to real life? My own experiences through grief have led me to feel that sometimes you need something to do, a reason to get you out of the house and into the sanctuary nature provides. When you are not focused on anything, the brains’ default mode network steps in. This part of the brain, responsible for ruminating, planning, or thinking about the past (amongst other things), shuts down when you focus on a specific activity, bringing your attention to the moment (Sheldrake, 2017) giving you a well needed break from the agony of grief. At other times, when you have no motivation to do anything, you need the space to just be; to sit with wherever you are at in that moment and to accept the deep sadness that you sometimes experience. Accepting this emotion as it is can play its own part in helping you to cope and process your life without your loved one.
If you or your clients are currently experiencing grief loss of any kind, here are two possible experiences you could offer. In doing so we must always remember that these are an invitation, not an instruction, only the individual knows what is right for them on any given day.
The first is doing an activity involving photography. Being open to beauty in nature requires a stillness that looking through the eye of a lens can support, plus it’s easily accessible, most of us having decent cameras on our phones these days. You could try this meaning-in-life intervention, adapted from Steger and colleagues (2013), by going in nature to take between nine and twelve photographs of something that moves you, means something to you, or creates a strong emotional response. A week later, go back over your photographs and write a short paragraph of what each of them means to you. This has been found to improve people’s sense of meaning in their lives and has the added benefit that even looking at images of nature can enhance your mood.
When doing anything at all is just too much, traditional forest bathing experiences like sensory engagement with nature have been found to be greatly enhanced by mindfulness practice. For me, focusing on breath when in the grips of sorrow can sometimes make me feel worse, set in panic and initiate feelings of entrapment within the situation you would often rather be able to run from. Instead, I have practiced “bodyfulness”, or embodied mindfulness. Try finding a place to sit cross legged on the Earth and spending a moment finding a neutral position, going into the yoga move ‘seated cat and cow’ several times, followed by rocking from one side to the other until you find a grounded seated position. From here, there is nothing else to do but observe what you sense around and inside of yourself. If you are able, see if you can notice anything which you find beautiful in your surroundings. Being in nature without doing anything in particular can reduce activity in the area of the brain responsible for sadness, minimise the stress response (which is so vital for maintaining your own physical health), and provide the space for journaling if it feels right to you (Timko-Olson, Hansen, Vermeesch, 2020).
Wherever you are at in this moment, whatever losses you have faced in your life, my heart goes out to you. I hope that you have found some solace in these brief words and can take hope that as devastating as death can be, there is often a gift in it. It reminds us that life, and every moment within it, is precious. It makes us think about the people we really want to be, the life we want to live, for what are we, other than a beautiful expression of life.
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References
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