Grieving Dreams Like Elephants

Asset credits (Adobe Stock): “Elephant line art vector set, intricate design of elephants…” By Arafat; “Dreamy pastel color cloud watercolor icon. Digital art illustration” By: Virtual Art Studio; african elephant animal logo black vector design By: master2d; Designed by me, LeAnn D. Jenkins.

April 16, 2025:

I woke up this morning wondering how elephants grieve. I have no clue why that was on my mind…

…but I found a PBS article about it. It seems they come back to the body repeatedly. They may roll pieces of its body under their feet (perhaps making it real that they are truly dead and not gonna move themselves). Sometimes they carry parts of the body, usually the tusks and jaw bones with them for some time. A mother who loses a child might still protect the child for days until she moves on. When she moves on, she might exhibit signs of depression, walking slowly, lagging behind her group for days.

And now, I'm thinking about Langston Hughes writing, "What happens to a dream deferred?" I'm wondering, "What happens when a dream dies?"

Can those who held it, just let it go so easily? Will they carry pieces of the dream from one place to another? Will they return to its place of death sighing deeply, unable to speak? Will they still roll it around under foot to see if it truly has no life in it? Will they protect it for days until they can process and let go? And when they move on, will they move slowly, having lost their strength to dream or simply live?

I wrote this in April and, after traveling for months, finally have the space to come back to it.

When I read it, I think about my parents who grew up in the trajectory from the Civil Rights Movement to the Black Power Movement in the United States. They were tasked with a level of entrance into middle-class America and its institutions that was not possible in generations before them.

I can see now how that task and the dreams associated with it have led to a number of different responses in my family and my connections - a commitment to meeting any threats to that image with force toward others and ourselves, an exit from society into hermitage, an attempt to live as much of that image as possible in places where our efforts and money can stretch further, a rabid yearning to find and craft new dreams. But the energy I feel underneath all of these responses comes from an understanding, whether we face it or not, that many of our most popular and proliferated dreams - the ones we have built histories, myths, systems and organizations on, hoping for posterity - are dying or dead. This is just one example, but I can feel it the world over. There is a grief that comes from this transition.

As a spiritual companion, I carry grief with others. It seems grief doesn’t leave for good. But even acknowledgement that death is real, death has come, needs a process and ritual (and rest). Then, we need practices for transmuting the sorrow, hopelessness, and sometimes guilt into movement and life-making (with rest).

I am still learning how to do this. Especially in a time where there is not just one death at a time - a time when our inability to face a dream’s end and our tendency to protect what is already dead with violent force is leading to even more loss as it causes mass death of people and communities.

I’m no expert on grief rituals, but many of the ones I’ve learned have to do with water - from crying in the shower, to releasing what we are holding in our bodies into a body of water. Maybe even the baptism we practiced in the churches of my youth was a form of transmuting grief over what we’ve done or the death that life has brought our way, back into a new dream of what life can be.

In this moment, I feel we are seeing and living a multitude of responses to the question, “What happens when a dream dies?” I watch and pray and hold space and don’t look away. I ask the water, the earth, the Spirit, time - any resource we have - to help us face what is difficult to face, to help us release what we must, to help us hold what we cannot hold, and to help us move the best we can move in the midst of death and the call of life.

I invite you to do the same. Like a child whose tears cannot be quelled, like a mother elephant who needs to walk slowly as her sorrow moves through her body, I invite you to be honest about your needs, about what you don’t have and don’t know. I invite you to refuse to not be helped by something, in fact by every resource you can access that is beyond yourself.