‘Sorrow Songs’ by Brigitte Green, M.A., LCPC

It has been reported that for many years, a whale has been cruising the Pacific from central California to the Aleutians, calling out with a voice unlike any other whale’s, and getting no response. “The solitary wanderer emits its metronomic calls at around 52 hertz, a tuba pitch that is, nonetheless, far higher than the calls closest to it – those of the giant blue and fin whales.” The call, possibly a mating signal, suggests that the animal lives in total, and undesired, isolation.

The song of the whale is a song we are all singing. To cry out and have no one respond is the remotest condition of being solitary. With unconscious exertion, it seems our pain can be elevated to a place…out of our awareness. Sometimes we become inaudible.

We then try to live in a world that allows for a double-consciousness, one that W.E.B DuBois names as something that is seen “through the revelation of the world, always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, measuring one’s soul by the tape of the world that looks in on amused contempt or pity.” We put that on ourselves instead of looking at ourselves through the lens of self-acceptance and love. We do it because our perspective is warped and ridden with our own narratives, scorched with worldly abandon. Left inhibited, we live from a wounded place. Rumi said, “the wound is the place where the light enters you.” With light comes healing, new perspective and the ability to thrive.

Sometimes we feel our song validated and hear our own silence…noticing all of its edges and calm. This is a great reverence of self and homage to our story.

The sophic of one’s “two-ness” sometimes forces new awareness and understanding. As the great James Baldwin stated: “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” And though our silence is so loud, we recognize in therapy that another human is there listening with us, fiercely listening to what we say and what we don’t say…

With a keenness, this person is there to let us fall apart and hold hope for the shattered dreams, the pain, the grief that is “unletting.” There is a person with us who believes in our restoration and that very belief is the power in the room that helps let the light enter us, to be transfigured.

And when it doesn’t and we are completely broken, waiting for the light, we can let the anger steep and scream, we can let the sadness melt until it lets itself out into an array of words, that mimic a song of sorrow.