For the past few months (yes, this book has taken me months to get through) I have been reading one of the most significant and transformative books I have ever read. It’s called ‘Women Who Run With The Wolves‘ by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. Granted, it’s not the easiest read due to the deep wisdom and philosophical nature of the book, but its a book I feel all women everywhere should read at some stage of their lives.
In the book, Clarissa speaks about something called descansos which is a Spanish word meaning ‘place of rest’. She uses this word to refer to the small crosses you often see along roads, trails, cliffs etc. that mark where someone’s life has been lost. She goes on to explain how we all go through many deaths in our lives and the importance of marking these deaths with little descansos:
“Descansos mark the death sites, the dark times, but they are also love notes to your suffering. They are transformative. There is a lot to be said for pinning things to the earth so they don’t follow us around. There is a lot to be said for laying them to rest.”
Reading about this made me stop in my tracks as I realised how significant this really was. As we go through life, we are often so caught up in what comes next and our future-oriented perspectives that we don’t take the time to process endings, big and small. We sometimes don’t even realise that we have gone through a death of sorts in our lives, and then we question why we feel down, or anxious, or just not ourselves. Deaths in our lives are not always represented by our loved ones passing away. They can be marked by big events, or small events.
The following are examples of things we could consider to be “big deaths” in our lives. These are events or situations that usually feel significant to us whether we consciously process them or not; they can be challenging, emotional, take time to heal from, and usually affect our lives in noticeable ways:
- The loss of a loved one or pet.
- Someone important to you moving away.
- A breakup with a partner, a friend, a relative – any significant cutting of ties with someone in your life that has meaning to you.
- Moving to another town/city/country.
- Changing careers.
- Issues with your health or physical wellbeing.
- A decline in mental wellness such as a move into a depression.
- Big life transitions (the ending and starting of a new metaphorical chapter).
- The birth of a child marking your transition into parenthood.
We’re usually pretty good at being conscious of the “big deaths” even though we may not honour them as we should. It’s the little deaths that we don’t seem to give due attention to. It’s the small turns in the road, the roadblocks, rejections, disappointments and changes of course that we seem to navigate so frequently and just charge on without the slightest pause. It’s the small endings, the transitions from one version of yourself to the next, the days where things happen that take you from page 4 to page 5 in your life.
I’ve been feeling so emotionally heavy lately and after I had finished reading about these descansos I realized that over the past year I have gone through so many deaths and rebirths in my life and yet haven’t taken the time to stop and honour all of these changes the way they deserved. I haven’t stopped to lay down little descansos in the road to mark where I have lost something along the way, a point in my journey where, after that, something would have forever changed. Whether you take the time to honour these beautiful moments or not, you will still feel the emotion of it within you. Even when things are changing positively there will still be endings in your life that you need to respect. Things you will need to say goodbye to. There will be a version of yourself, a chapter of your life, a sense of certainty that you need to stop and mourn.
You are allowed to grieve the endings of things. In fact, I think if we stopped to mourn these deaths along the way we would feel lighter and happier as by laying down little descansos in the road, we put that emotion down and allow ourselves to lighten the load with which we will continue to walk.
Even though I am approaching such an exciting new chapter of my life I have been feeling sad, and not myself. I now realise that I am grieving this part of my life that is needing to end for a new chapter to begin. I am taking time to mourn this version of myself that is soon going to grow into someone new. I am mourning the special time I have been able to spend with my family and friends these past few months. I am mourning the view from my bedroom window, and the routine my life follows. I am mourning the end of the career I have known for 5 years, and the incredible people I work with everyday. I am mourning familiarity and certainty. And that’s okay. In mourning our losses, transitions and endings we allow ourselves to be present and truly experience the end in order to clear the path for new beginnings.
What endings, transitions and changes have you been going through that need to be marked with little descansos?
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