Kate Bush and My Tears

‘Disappointed Love’ by Francis Danby, 1821

Yesterday I was doing some dream tending, I was drawing symbols from a recent dream to give it texture, to bring it to life, to see what it might reveal for me.

While in this flow, I was listening to music and Kate Bush’s This Woman’s Work came on. By the end of the song, I’d morphed from content woman scribbling to a bursting river of sobs. Fat tears coursing down my cheeks.

All of a sudden, I found myself in a pit of despair about the state of our world. Because some days, grief leaps from the shadows. My heart crumbles into smithereens, obliterates. It all feels too much.

How did we get here?

Why do we do this to each other?

Why do we desecrate our home, our sacred mother?

Why did the outer and inner masculine abandon the feminine?

There was no blame in these sobs - of myself - of anyone else. Just grief.

‘Chi’ by Lucy Campbell

This Woman’s Work was written by Kate Bush from the perspective of a man who is forced to confront an unexpected crisis as his wife goes into emergency labour.

Here is an excerpt from the lyrics:

“I know you have a little life in you yet,
I know you have a lot of strength left.
I know you have a little life in you yet,
I know you have a lot of strength left.

I should be crying but I just can't let it show.
I should be hoping but I can't stop thinking.

Of all the things we should've said,
That we never said.
All the things we should've done,
Though we never did.
All the things that you needed from me,
All the things that you wanted for me,
All the things that I should've given,
But I didn't.

Oh, darling, make it go away,
Just make it go away now.”

Photo of Kate Bush by Guido Harari

We know that the old ways are crumbling. We are in painful times. Death and birth can both be dangerous and excruciating.

I feel the responsibility to navigate this as best within the collective, and on a personal level for my two beautiful sons. To ask questions like:

“What must I give more death to today, in order to generate more life? What do I know should die, but am hesitant to allow to do so? What must die in me in order for me to love? What not-beauty do I fear? Of what use is the power of the not-beautiful to me today? What should die today? What should live? What life am I afraid to give birth to? If not now, when?”

Clarissa Pinkola Estés

But some days are not for taking action.

Some days you just have to grieve.

To feel it all.

To taste each rolling salty tear on a wet face.

“I know you have a little life in you yet
I know you have a lot of strength left…”

---