Transformation Through Loss and Crisis
BY Arlene Harder, MA, MFT
If you have experienced a loss that now requires you to move on, the articles in this section will help you recognize your ability to respond with creativity in reaching for the future.
As the growing fetus floats in a soft world of warmth and comfort, you can imagine he's saying, "This is the life. I've nothing to do all day and night but float around and grow."
Ah, but that's the rub. As time goes on, the baby does, indeed, grow, so much in fact that he takes up more and more room until the eviction notice comes and he's kicked out into the wide, wide world.
Thus he experiences the first major transformation of a life that will, if well lived, consist of many transformative opportunities — though he'll often not recognize them as such. Yet all of life is one loss after another. As we fall asleep at night, we lose the day that is ending. When we awake, we are born into another day with new opportunities to grow and stretch.
This process was summarized by Erich Fromm when he said:
Man is always torn between the wish to regress to the womb and the wish to be fully born. Every act of birth requires the courage to let go of something, to let go of the breast, to let go of the lap, to let go of the hand, to let go eventually of all certainties, and to rely only upon one thing: one's own power to be aware and to respond; that is, one's own creativity.
To be creative means to consider the whole process of life as a process of birth, and not to take any stage of life as a final stage. Most people die before they are fully born. Creativeness means to be born before one dies.
This section explores how you can learn to respond to loss and crisis in such a way that it doesn't become an overwhelming burden. I also discuss the many ways that letting go and grieving can be a transformative process.
So if you have lost a loved one, an important job, a significant relationship, or any other loss that requires you to move on, I hope the articles in this section will help you recognize your own power to be aware of and to respond to your own creativity.
© 2006, Arlene Harder, MA, MFT
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