The healing we are ready for doesn’t come from changing anything. It comes from the ability to see and be with what is.
- Mary O’Malley
As I reflect upon the past year, I recognize how grateful I am for the Life I have. Grateful for the love of family, both two and four legged, for my dear friends, for my health, and for the beautiful foothills community where I live.
I am grateful for the clients who trusted me to partner with them on their journeys. For the privilege of guiding and witnessing their discoveries, their healing and celebrating their growth.
I am grateful for the new teachers and opportunities that filled my Life this past year. Appreciative and humbled, I am grateful for their inspiration, the new skills I learned from them, and for their generous support and kindness.
I’m grateful for the challenges and lessons I experienced that continue to help me grow. To expand my view of the world. Of myself. Of my commitment to practice compassion and acceptance with myself and others…
In reflecting, this past year was also one of personal loss and grief.
In late March, my father-in-law died. He was in his ninety’s and the last two years of his Life seemed a cruel wind down for such a vibrant jovial soul. We shared our birthdays, were both left handed, and enjoyed a wonderful relationship of mutual appreciation, humor, and love for almost 40 years.
I think of him often and find connection in the funny stories his sons retell over and over. It’s as if he were still directing the conversation, laughing the loudest, amused at his own antics, sitting at our kitchen table.
Although he is clearly alive in my memory, my heart felt a little ping as we moved into 2023 without him. I think of my mother-in-law who will for the 1st time in over 70 years, celebrate their anniversary…alone.
Recently I learned a new term to identify the many experiences of transition and loss that can trigger profound grief, without actually encompassing the death of a loved one.
Living Losses - are those losses we all experience everyday but generally don’t allow ourselves to acknowledge. The losses for which we rarely give ourselves grace or permission to mourn. The losses our culture refuses to identify as such, and therefore, deems unworthy of our grief.
Divorce, loss of job, abandonment by a parent,
a relationship that ends, a friends deception.
The loss of a dream, an ideal, a belief.
The loss of security, an injury, an illness, foreclosure,
a lost promotion, infertility, addiction.
The limitless facets of loss inherent in the Covid 19 pandemic,
the loss of personal identity, loneliness,
becoming an empty nester and on and on…..
In early May, our daughter and her husband called us to excitedly share their plans for a new chapter in their lives. They’d made the decision to leave Colorado and to move their family across country to a small community in northern Maine.
With the enthusiasm of a new adventure, they focused on relating all the new opportunities and experiences they hoped their new Life would bring.
By mid summer, along with our young grandson, 2 horses, 2 goats, their dog and two cats - they were gone.
The shock and grief that followed for me revealed a new level of what mourning a living loss can look like.
The fourth “remembrance of Buddhism”
All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.
I am learning to accept the nature of Life. I recognize it is my resistance to change, rather than the change itself, that causes my suffering.
Another lesson from Buddha…
That doesn’t mean denying my feelings. To the contrary. It means actively allowing my emotions to surface and then to be expressed. This is an act of mourning.
Mourning is the outward expression of our internal grief. I consciously free the grief that builds up in my heart. I release the emotional energy that if denied, can take up residency in my body.
I’ve learned through my own experience- stuffed emotions, specifically grief, continue to simmer and then explode without warning!
Suppressed grief, pain, and fears can emerge as anger, depression, physical illness, addiction, and other uncontrolled behaviors.
Author Karol K. Truman reminds us of this in the title of her book,
Feelings Buried Alive, Never Die…
When I practice mourning my grief, I am gradually lifted up to walk again in the “sunlight of the spirit”. I begin to see opportunities and ways for me to heal and grow.
Is it easy? No.
Is it worth it? Am I worth it? Absolutely.
I just have to allow it to be so….
Grief does not take us to where we were before the loss,
it takes us to where we need to be afterward.
- Rev Dr Jim Lockard
At the beginning of each new year, I embrace one word to guide and direct my intentions. For 2023, my word Relinquish came as a download from one of my Angel Guides.
I am delighted at being given the exact word I need.
The definition of relinquish: to voluntarily cease to keep or claim, to give up, let go, release Here is the acrostic poem I created in focusing on my word for 2023.
Relinquish
Rest in the moment
Eliminate strife
Lose expectations
Implement my values
Nudge out stress
Quietly accept peace
Unlock my forgiveness
Ignite my loving heart
Silence my judgment
Have reverence for what is….
