navigating grief - with cairns, Subway Surfer and trail maps
A journey through heartbreak, trauma
If you’ve ever built cairns on a trail, worked through trauma or grief or played any game that makes you respawn at the very start erasing all progress - this one’s for you.
If you’ve ever felt stuck - like you’ve done the work, felt the feelings and felt like you’re supposed to be in a different place but you still find yourself back in the place where you started - this one’s for you.
This one’s also for me. Because I find myself at spawn again. And I feel a little tired so I felt like writing this in case I find myself here again.
I love hiking and traveling to places that offer a special kind of solitude. And if you’ve ever been hiking, chances you’ve come across a neat stack of stones along the trail. I’ve always been fascinated with them. I didn’t know that they were called cairns until recently. And I absolutely loved building them wherever I hiked. Sometimes, I’d collect and carry nice stones that I’d find along the trail and carry them all the way to the end of the trail to stack them on top of each other. Just to take a picture of them with a view. I absolutely loved having this little ritual of myself.
I really wanted to what other people use them for so I tried to find out. Cairns are trail markers or burial site markers depending on where you see them. Before there were sign boards and mile markers, there were cairns. Some trails still use them - which is why you’re not supposed to make your one or destroy/move existing ones. They keep you from getting lost on the trail.
If you’ve ever played games like Subway Surfer or Hades - that make you start back at the very start, from zero when you lose. Or if you’ve worked grieved, worked through trauma. The cyclical nature of the whole thing can sometimes feel like you’re not making any progress. This is so hard to process. This is the point where talking to your friends about what you’re feeling seems impossible. You’ve hit that point where they make it seem like you should’ve moved on. It’s time you move on. The compassion is about to run out. Maybe you need better friends, maybe friends aren’t supposed to be therapists, maybe it feels heavy and you’re frustrated with your own progress (or lack thereof). Or maybe you’ve heard “It takes time”, “grief has no timeline” and you think to yourself “but how long?”.
I’ve felt this feeling so many times over the past 2 years and I’ve always felt a sense of shame, guilt and frustration whenever I got to this point. Except this time, it felt different. It felt like I’ve walked this path so many times that I’ve left a trail for myself to follow. And as I walk along the trail, I find that I’ve made cairns along the way. And I think to myself maybe I should make a trail map for myself. And I find that I can move through the trail faster than I’ve done before. And I’m no longer unsure about forks in the trail. There’s less uncertainty in my steps. It looks different sometimes for sure. When it rains or if somebody else has moved my cairn. But somehow I feel confident in myself to get to the furthest point I’ve ever traveled to. There’s so much uncertainty and so many forks in the trail now.
Buuuut I feel like an explorer now. I feel confident in my ability to navigate. I feel like there’s possibility and adventure ahead. That sense of dread and anxiety is slowly but surely getting over-run by dopamine and adrenaline. Hope and a sense of anticipation for something new, fresh.
The funny thing about grief and trauma work is that sometimes your body and your brain decides to do a MIB-style flash and respawns you at a random place along your journey. And it feels so deflating to find yourself at the start again. To get a high score on your Subway Surfer, fall and wake up at the start again. And it IS frustrating. It IS deflating. And it IS tiring. And it’s completely valid to feel all that.
But once I take a moment to pause and reset, I remind myself that I hold all the ways to navigate these trails. I’ve done this a couple of times now. Maybe I can pickup new tools and new ways to help move faster. Maybe a compass would help? Maybe I can draw out the trail map like I wanted to? Maybe I can take my dog along this time? Therapy, friends (and pets) give you tools that you can learn for your emotional toolkit. Your very own trail-making toolkit or a navigation kit or a map-making kit. You can pause, slow down and decide for yourself what it is that you want. Do you want tools that can help you go faster through the trails? Do you want tools that help you navigate new trails? Do you want tools to make sense of your progress and see you’re at? Collect and learn the things that you need for your adventure. Maybe sometimes you just need to rest, catch your breath, drink some water, fill your waterskin before you set off again.
And as John Muir said,
“The mountains are calling and I must go.”