Winnie the Pooh on Tight Spots
Do you remember A.A. Milne’s, Winnie-the-Pooh stories from your young years? If you were an Edward Bear fan, then it’s no news to you that he, better known as Winnie-the-Pooh, or just plain Pooh to his friends, was infamous back in his day. Into and out of more fixes, that loveable old bear was known for getting into rough spots. Milne’s every day, life-savvy wisdom, guided us as kids, and as adults reading to kids, at the same time it thoroughly entertained us.
And as for grief in our young, Pooh was right there with words of wisdom, as always. Do you remember when he dropped into Rabbit’s hole for a visit, ate way too much honey, and got stuck in the front door as he prepared to leave?
“. . . So he started to climb out of the hole. He pulled with his front paws, and pushed with his back paws, and in a little while his nose was out in the open again . . . and then his ears . . . and then his front paws . . . and then his shoulders . . . and then – “Oh, help!” said Pooh. “I’d better go back.” ”Oh, bother!” said Pooh. “I shall have to go on.” ”I can’t do either!” said Pooh. “Oh, help and bother!”
It’s one of my favorites! As usual, through the help of his friends Christopher Robin and Rabbit this time, Pooh shows himself to be ‘man (make that bear) of the moment’ – the present moment that is. Ever ready to ‘be with’ his predicaments; readers find inspiration and hope in the sheer simplicity of Pooh’s approach. Once each new pickle he found himself in was identified, he would hunker down and get to work. He had a wonderful ability to settle himself . . . pull himself up . . . move himself through the thick of it all . . . and ultimately come back out on the other side, humming and rolling along through Hundred Acre Wood; back to doing what ‘Silly Old Bears’ do.
A successful grief journey for kids, and for adults for that matter, is exactly that! It’s necessary to be in the grief, to move through the grief, and ultimately to allow self-permission to come out on the other side of grief. As has been said many times before, ‘there’s no way of getting around it, we have to go through it’. The most important to kids as they maneuver all this . . . is your accompaniment.
“Bear began to sigh, and then found he couldn’t because he was so tightly stuck; and a tear rolled down his eye, as he said: ”Then would you read a Sustaining Book, such as would help and comfort a Wedged Bear in Great Tightness?”
I love Milne’s choice of words – sustaining, help, comfort, wedged, great tightness – words so meaningful in, and descriptive of, times of grief. As often said these days, ‘it is what it is’; Pooh was stuck – it was what it was – he was in it for the long haul, and he resigned himself to it. He simply asked for support as he did so. He didn’t dwell on asking deep, unanswerable questions as to the why of things and he didn’t ask his friends to lay themselves down and do the impossible for him; he simply and directly asked only for what he really needed – their support so that he could be sustained as he did the work of waiting!
As he waited, and as they supported, the weight eventually fell from Pooh; he was free to move back into the flow of his bear life. It’s like that for grieving kids, too. Grieving is work; it can take a good while, it’s far easier done with good support, and eventually the weight of it does fall from our young people. They’re free to return to the more joyful parts of being a child, not forgetting the loved one who died, but moving with greater ease, confident in the security and steadfastness of the support they received. Don’t get me wrong. On a good day death is hard to take, so don’t be surprised if your young one finds loss through death near impossible to understand at times. Haven’t you at one time or another repeated to yourself, “This doesn’t make sense. It just does not make sense.”? Sometimes death just plain doesn’t. They’ll have questions along the way and they’ll bring them to you. But just like Pooh, mostly what they need is your sustaining presence.
If you ‘show up’; it will be enough. You can support them by your gentle understanding when acting out is the only way they can communicate distress, by listening for what is behind their actions and often fretful words, and by helping them with balance – supporting and encouraging them to engage in everyday activities as soon as they are able, all the while recognizing that although they’re back at school and back with their friends, their grief has not ended but, in fact, may be headed for a time of increased complexity as they integrate the feelings that accompany loss with those more light hearted feelings normal in childhood. Key point, again, is that it’s a shared journey when it comes to young people. You make your presence felt and you keep an eye on their progress – they do the work, their work.
“And Christopher Robin and Rabbit and all Rabbit’s friends and relations went head-over-heels backwards . . . and on the top of them came Winnie-the-Pooh – free!”
Quotations from A.A. Milne’s, Winnie-the-Pooh, 1926, Methuen
