Wearing black all the time – who are you mourning for?
Do you wear black all the time? I would like to write about people who dress in black despite not being in obvious mourning process. Can wearing black be connected to a surpressed and unconscious family trauma?
In my view – yes. Let me explain.
I had a Client for therapy who was always wearing black. I asked her: “Did someone you love die recently? Is that why you’re dressed in black?” She answered that she just liked this color and feels most comfortable in it.
I didn’t give up, so I enquired further: “Did you sometimes try to wear something else? Like other colors?” – I ask. “Yes, I tried. But I failed. I can only wear dark colors”. This made me think. You might wonder here if this is really pinpointing to a problem? What’s wrong about wearing black all the time?
Who wears black in our culture? People who are mourning. People who lost someone close to their heart. On our therapeutic session I asked my Client: “for whom are you mourning? In whose place?”.
Silence filled the room.
So often we do something unconsciously . For example, we dress in black without being aware that there can be some hidden motif behind it. Family constellations help to uncover the truth. Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung said very important words: “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate”.
So, can there be a hidden sense in wearing black all the time?
In our family history there could be cases of death of unborn or young children. Maybe you also experienced death of your unborn child?
Often our mothers and grandmothers who experienced the pain of losing a child didn’t have time or space for mourning. For grieving. Why? Because in those times they had 4 or 5 kids to feed and take care of. There was the II World War and other traumatic world events. Imagine, you are your grandmother. You just had a miscarriage and you lost your baby. Your husband is at war and you’re in the house with 4 other of your kids. Would you have time and space to properly mourn and go through the emotional grieving process? No….
What happens then in the next generations? The unfinished mourning is saved in the cells of our grandmother. It can then, epigenetically, appear in the next generations. For example, the granddaughter can wear black, be depressed or pretend to be positive no matter how things are going for her (the mask of false positivity).
Mourning is an emotional process, which you need to go through. You can’t pretend nothing happened or keep yourself busy with other things. Mourning is this special time when you should make time and space for all the emotions that appear.
When our families experienced many unprocessed losses like losing children or beloved people – this process was not closed on the cellular level. Then we, as descendants can inherit a certain “code”, that tells us that the mourning process was unfinished.
In what ways can it manifest in our lives?
We can experiences losses. Losses of people whom we love, losses of love relationships, losses of money. Usually, they come regularly, once in a couple of years. Like an alarm clock which says: “hello? Can you hear me? Can you see these losses? Can you finally give yourself the time and space to mourn them?”
That’s why we often keep repeating similar situations like our ancestors. So that we finally see and take care of it. Mourn. Scream. Cry. And then, we see that finally the repeatable situations or “events” disappear from our life…
When your crying and sobbing, puffy eyes and deep sadness in your heart take space – only then you have a chance to go through the full mourning process and to finish it.
Finishing a process helps us to close a chapter and to move further.
To life.
To pleasure.
To joy.