I learned something new about loss, grief and anxiety on the African Savannah

Static came over the radio, then a few unintelligible words, and we were off. Our driver moved over the dirt roads with incredible pace and agility, and there was a palpable collective excitement of the half dozen of us who flew across the land in the open-air Jeep.

We raced towards the burnt orange horizon and I could feel a nip of cold in the air, but mostly, my cheeks and body were hot with anticipation.

We dodged, weaved and sped so we could get to her before she crossed the border out of the reserve, but we were also in a foot race with the sun which had by now fully dropped off the edge of our slice of the earth.

Beyond some final remnants of light that would linger only seconds longer, It was almost completely dark.

When our vehicle began to slow, I knew we were getting closer. The engine quieted and so did we, and the muffled sounds of dusk came forward.

There she was.

We could hear her before we could see her, and her moaning became more intense as we inched closer. She shook and groaned — deep guttural pleas. She was without her family, which must have felt so naked and alien.

We approached slowly, and our guide switched on the lights so we could make her out. My first thought was, “Wow, she is big, so much bigger than I had imagined.”

At some point in the days prior, there had been a war, and a rival pride had killed her family along with her newborn cubs. She was the lone survivor.

She was the first wild lion I’d ever seen, and something about her language was familiar — it was the language spoken at the intersection of impact and fear.

While it was clear to us that she hadn’t sustained severe bodily injury, she cried out as if she was unsure of whether all her limbs remained intact.

Indeed there had been a sort of amputation, albeit not the physical kind, but she was in such shock, she could not process it as though it hadn’t actually happened.

Who knew how long she’d shake, groan and call out for them? Who knew how long it would take her to process the trauma? The only thing for certain was this: she was walking through a portal grief, and as she passed through, she’d express every bit of pain.

It was unmistakable and unbridled, and we were with her, in communion.

It was there on the African Savannah when I learned something new about grief. I also realized that maybe, as a human being, I am too aware of who’s observing me and what might happen next.

Loss is traumatic, and it makes impact.

When it happens, we begin our own journey through a portal — even if human nature asks us to move through it far too expeditiously and politely. Contrary to our instincts, we may not even flail and scream and shake.

Or if we do flail and scream and shake, we risk being categorized, or worse, shamed and thought of as somehow tainted or ill.

Instead, we feign stoicism. We straighten our spines and hold our chins high. Our minds applaud us for moving on, so we do.

But, then, our traumas get embedded in our bodies.

My own anxiety was born as traumas that were quickly hidden away, tucked deeply into the pocket of my jeans or my purple pleather purse or my designer coat. All that has ever been certain in the aftermath was that something was lost.

Although I have spent most my life emulating forbearance and grace, I have also been a disoriented creature who’s grown nervous when the light is low and the shadows are long, because my body remembers. My anxiety likes to linger, like the glowing residue of history that gets new life, each new dusk, as long as it remains unprocessed.

Anxiety feels like carbonated effervescence in my chest cavity and it pings the back of my throat. I begin to wander around my habitat, quietly, in and out of rooms; up and down the stairs; opening and closing drawers and cabinet doors; searching for the salve to sooth I don’t know what.

Anxiety is a no-man’s land — a confluence of grief over what happened and a solemn promise that it could happen again.

Am I in the middle of the intersection of impact and fear? I wonder. Or am I in my walk-in closet?

A person could spend a lifetime in this undertow, gasping for air, looking up at the street signs and stop lights, confused, paralyzed, processing and processing.

And we might be the only species who endeavors to mitigate and hide our amputations like we do. We are hemorhagging and stoic. We are wounded and poised. We are celebrated for our strength and for moving on.

But our traumas get stuck.

Unlike the beast who shakes after surviving an attack, and creates unmistakable groans of agony, and who knows not the audience that judges her nor does she value that judgement, we could spend years, decades, or the rest of our lives at that intersection of loss and fear — looking outside ourselves for validation, pleading to the signs for some clear direction in which to turn.

We wander, organize, ruminate, obsess, inhibit ourselves, and hold ourselves together by the vice of judgement.

I know all this, so I remember Africa and the time I learned something new about the expression of grief.

I don’t hold my breath. I pull a generous breath in through my nose, expand my ribs and then release through my mouth. And I groan. I groan with wild abandon so that I may once again roar.