Loss, Lack of Meaning, And a Hawk That Renewed a Broken Man’s Spirit.
Loss, lack of meaning, and a hawk that renewed a broken man’s spirit.
A man and a bird hovered between life and death.
George Gattling — a middle-aged auto upholsterer in Gainesville, Florida — lived a life devoid of meaning: repetitive, monotonous, and hollow.
The only significant relationship he had was with his son Fred, the one person whom he cared for.
But after a tragic incident of his son drowning in a pool, George developed an obsessive relationship with a wild red-tailed hawk.
And he wanted one single thing from that hawk: to tame it and master it.
But the hawk’s nature was wild and restless; it did not want to submit to another power.
As the resistance of the hawk grew, George’s training of the hawk turned violent and self-destructive.
His helplessness turned into brutality.
He starved the hawk for days trying to break the hawk’s will, but nothing worked.
George, too, even starved himself for days and abandoned his sleep.
The weeks grew with more exhaustion and torture for George and the hawk until eventually they both collapsed and broke down.
But the breakdown birthed a new insight that both set them free.
So what’s the point of this story?
What’s the lesson here? Grief.
The hawk was not just a bird in the story; it was a mirror of George’s inner life. As George tried to tame the hawk, what he was doing was trying to master his own grief after the death of his disabled nephew, Fred.
Like the hawk, by breaking and remaking the self, George experienced grief.
His grief isn’t any different than ours: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
Like taming that hawk, we try to tame and master our own grief after a loss. It’s truly a painful process, but there’s a light that shines on the other end of it. And if you feel like it’s too much to take, remember these three things that lie in the wake of your healing transformation.
Grief:
burns away illusion
clarifies your essence
transforms wisdom into compassion
Solutions for Working Through Grief
Let yourself feel your emotions instead of managing or suppressing them.
Speak your grief out loud to someone you trust—naming the pain softens it.
Create small daily rituals to honor the person or part of yourself you lost.
Give yourself permission to rest; grief drains the body as much as the mind.
Seek connection, not isolation—healing accelerates when you are witnessed.
Practice self-forgiveness for what you “didn’t do,” “should have done,” or “wish you had known.”
Allow grief to move in waves rather than expecting linear progress.
Grief is a transformational tool
Grief transforms us by showing us what truly matters. Like George and the hawk, we break before we rise, discovering a strength that was always waiting beneath the surface. When we stop trying to overpower our pain and instead learn from it, something inside us begins to awaken. And in that awakening, we find meaning, compassion, and the courage to live again.