Grief and Jiu-Jitsu 3

Grief changes over time. It is brutal and brings you to your knees over and over. Nothing cures grief. The loss just integrates into your life and becomes true. Often in death and loss people turn to their spiritual practice for solace and answers to cure their grief somehow. After my mother died, I tried to turn to jiu jitsu—which is my spiritual practice—to cope.

In retrospect, I see that I engaged somewhat listlessly and unenthusiastically, so of course I found nothing. Jiu jitsu routinely tells the truth. Some of its power is that you cannot hide from yourself, or the truth when you are literally fighting for your life and self-preservation while trying to steal that from another person. But I wasn’t listening–truly listening– or looking for the truth. Jiujitsu told me the truth eventually, a truth I was denying.

Immediately after my mother died unexpectedly from a stroke—and I mean two days later—I was working and seeing clients for therapy. Four days later I trained hard and well at the open mat. I was exhilarated. I was doing great. I was so diesel that I could work and train like nothing had happened. Maybe nothing changed was my secret thought. I started a women’s program in my gym. I was the best daughter of a dead lady ever! I was going to just move on. Then it started to crumble. Honestly, it didn’t take long. It is embarrassing to look back on it. It’s so obviously, transparently denial writ large.

The paperwork of a death and settling an estate is repellent and awful. It is bizarre to have certificates telling you your mother is dead, but you need them for all sorts of stuff. For months I couldn’t touch them physically. I carried them where they needed to go in an envelope and wouldn’t actually handle them. I put the estate to-do lists in a different notebook. I couldn’t have the words literally touching the other things on my lists. I disconnected in every way I could.

I used to call my mom on the way home from training at night. I would reach for my phone to call her for weeks and blink into the darkness, stunned she was gone. Inexplicably I had to just keep living. I would shake my head to rid myself of the memory and drive home.

I had an emergency appendectomy and woke up crying that I wanted my mother, but that she was dead. I started drinking and sleeping whenever I could. The holidays came and went. I drank, ate, and seethed. I seethed that you all had nice holidays. I seethed that my mother’s house was cold and empty even though I adorned her small tree with her favorite red lights, as though it was the same. But I was fine, right? I was not letting myself grieve and it was showing up in my jiu-jitsu.

I seethed that my training sucked, but I didn’t really know why. Some days the force and touch of another’s body enraged me. I was enraged by my training partners’ smiles and efforts; all their enthusiasm was obnoxious. For several months almost no one knew my mother died. We had not written the obituary yet; I made no social media post. I wasn’t talking to friends or family much about it either and many didn’t know. But I was still so deeply hurt that no one knew or cared. Of course they didn’t though. If I was denying it and pretending to be fine, then of course everyone thought I was tough and fine. No one was actually deficient in support and I didn’t really know I needed to ask for help. I avoided my therapist. I worked a lot. 

My jiu-jitsu became empty and hollow. Rolling was a burden. Teaching was laden with resentment, confusion, and resistance. I would show up and act like I was tough, knowledgeable, and passionate. But jiu-jitsu had lost a luster, to say the least. It seemed meaningless and pointy, painful. I had a brief respite when my hero Emily Kwok came to do a seminar. I even was her demo guy and it was wonderful. But then quickly the malaise blotted out the joy. I cried in the bathroom. People learned my mother died and then they didn’t ask anymore but they wanted me to fix their accounts, asked if we had sweatshirts, and wanted to talk about guard retention. They eagerly dominated me and submitted me in my darker and weaker moments and I had to just be gracious.

I did not feel gracious. I felt enraged and sad yet empty and distant from everyone and myself. I still didn’t really know why. It was awful. 

Soon, the rage and agitation shifted. I just didn’t care about anything. Jiujitsu was another chore like gassing the car or making my lunch. I trained because I had been training for years and it was in my schedule. My family trained, I taught, and I helped run the gym. What else was I going to do? So I trained with zero heart. For the first time in my life I experienced the bizarre juxtaposition of warmly and even authentically smiling and laughing with beloved others, but the moment I turned away, I felt my face fall, my heart sink as darkness enveloped me again.

I’m a therapist, a really good therapist. I was dysfunctionally coping with the grief and I had no idea.

Jiujitsu was the canvas upon which I could see what I was feeling or not feeling, how I was living my life, where I existed and where I was trying to be invisible. The biggest sign that I was not myself was the emptiness and disengagement from jiu-jitsu. My relationship with everything was distant but usually jiu-jitsu was the panacea for that, the way I got back to myself and the rough and beautiful truth of life. Being unable to access that in jiu-jitsu was really one of the core signs that things were not okay. My coach told me that he saw something wasn’t right and that it was similar to what he saw after my father died. I was shocked but suddenly saw he was right. Finally, many months later I turned towards the truth.

Although jiu jitsu did not cure my grief or dysfunctional coping, the way I was feeling about jiu-jitsu, how the relationship felt, was my cue that something was very wrong. It was that I was absent from the truth in my life, my needs, and my feelings: My parents are dead and that is exquisitely painful and life-changing. Actual commitment to the truth, my therapy and starting Lexapro were what finally brought me home to myself and my life. I was missing so much, consumed by loss, fear, and emptiness alternating with rage and sadness. Jiu-jitsu and I are close again and I am living the truth of grief and joy. I am grateful that jiu-jitsu insists, over and over, on telling the truth. Honestly, that’s its biggest gift to all of us: Jiu-jitsu always tells the truth. 

Author:

Jess Buckland

Staff Writer

Jess Buckland is a brown belt training at Raptor Academy of Martial Arts in Central PA. She is a clinical psychologist in private practice and mom to a 14-year old. When she’s not training you can find her riding her bike, walking her dog, writing about jiu-jitsu or doing NYT crossword puzzles.