Dealing With Grief: Interview With Sister Sarah Hennessey
Grief is the great equalizer. At some point, if we live long enough, we all experience it.
Grief can take many forms — the echo of a loved one’s laugh, a favorite saying or even a silly joke. It’s a belonging on a living room table, clothes you can’t quite bring yourself to donate or a domestic animal who wanders the house aimlessly after a loved one’s death.
Yet “the number of people who feel alone in their grief is extraordinary,” said CNN’s Anderson Cooper, who hosts a podcast on the topic, “All There Is.”
Perhaps that’s partly because loss can leave an indelible mark on us as individuals both emotionally and spiritually. For some, it can be an extraordinary test of a faith that was, until then, untested. Others can find solace in institutional religion with its familiar rituals. Those untethered to faith traditions may find the loss of a loved one the beginning of a search for meaning, an inexorable challenge that raises profound existential questions.
In this new feature, Religion Unplugged will talk with a variety of men and women — both public figures and private citizens — who have found themselves at such a turning point as they tried to deal with the reality of a shattering loss and find a way to integrate it into their lives. Learning to live with loss is probably a lifelong discipline. The people interviewed here are somewhere on the road, one that looks different for everyone.
The series begins with Sr. Sarah Hennessey, a member of the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration community in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Hennessey, a spiritual director, leads weekly virtual mental health meditations that draw participants from around the world. As a younger (she’s 51) member of a religious order, Hennessey has experienced the death of many of her companions in the religious life.
In 2022, there were fewer than 42,000 American nuns, according to statistics kept by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. That’s a 76% decline over 50 years. When Hennessey entered the community, she said, it had more than 500 members. Now there are under 140 sisters.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Elizabeth Eisenstadt Evans: What led you to become a Catholic sister?
Hennessey: My journey wasn’t straightforward. I grew up the daughter of a Catholic and a Methodist. We were raised Methodist, and then I became a very active Quaker, and went to a Quaker college. I was enamored with silence and with testimonies. It just felt like a wonderful fit for my spirituality. In my first semester of a study abroad program in Mexico, I met a Catholic sister (a member of Hennessey’s current Franciscan community). She asked me if God had a call on my life … at first, I said, no way. I don’t know what you are talking about. But when I went out when I went out that night, there was a little fire in my heart.
Friendship with her changed the direction of my life. I had a genuine conversion to Catholicism. I fell in love with the Eucharist, and started exploring religious life. I looked at a variety of communities, but eventually I came to the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in La Cross, Wisconsin. For the past five years I have been spiritual director at the Franciscan Spirituality Center here.
Evans: How do they talk with you about loss in their own lives?
Hennessey: People experience loss in many ways. I journey with people grieving the loss of a spouse and with people grieving through a divorce. Retirement can often be a huge loss of identity, co-workers and place. There’s a real experience of loss in many transitions in our lives. Here at the Spirituality Center, I also help lead grief groups (we have a fairly robust grief support system). We have a fairly robust grief support system.
Evans: Why is grief so central to your vocation and that of your order?
Hennessey: To answer that question, I’ll tell two short stories. My first year in religious life, there may have been, between 15 and 20 funerals of sisters. We had a lot, and we were in a time when sisters were passing away. I would go to funerals of these beautiful women (many of whom I hadn’t met) and I got to know the music, readings, everything so well, that when I entered the novitiate, I requested the “Magnificat” (liturgical text based on Scripture) sung at them. It was part of my experience.
Now the sisters who were my friends and mentors are passing away. That’s one form of grief. Another, for me, is living in community with sisters for a long time. Then our life changes and we naturally move on to other living situations. That feels like an intense loss, one I couldn’t really name or describe to anybody.
Grief is so varied, and unique, but I think the people (who come to her for counsel) often experience God as presence, as the God who won’t go away. Sometimes there is anger, or a loss in the spirituality that often accompanies these big changes in life. I have experienced the God who stays, who heals and who loves. These faces of God in my life bring me into a deeper level of intimacy with God. I experience the face of God through my sisters, through prayer and adoration, being in the presence of Christ, exposed to Christ and Christ exposed to me.
One of the other spiritual directors here says what the world needs now is brave grievers. When you grieve, you come to understand what you thought you controlled, you don’t — what you thought was manageable, isn’t always. But you still find a way through. That gift of grieving is what the world needs. It’s irreplaceable. It’s unfortunate in our society that so many people do grieve alone. There is a joy in grieving in community.
Evans: What advice do you have for others who are grieving?
Hennessey: Lonely loss makes it harder to bear. Reach out to someone else who knows loss, who is a professional listener. Reaching out is often a step in. The other thing that sometimes can be powerful is naming your grief. Put a name and a shape and a word to it. That can help as you move forward.
Elizabeth Eisenstadt Evans is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Religion News Service, National Catholic Reporter, Sojourners, Christian Century, The Washington Post and Philadelphia Inquirer.