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mfh

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Often times, we stay away from those who are grieving. It is part of our being uncomfortable with others who are in pain. It is NOT what we do here on this forum. I am amazed at the empathy shown here. When we acknowledge one another's pain we allow them to heal. I believe this. 

 

"When I stay open to the challenges of others, I’m part of the flow of universal love. Sometimes I become a safe place for a person to tell their story, or for a moment, I’m a companion to someone walking through grief. At other times, I’m a witness to another’s courage when they can’t feel it within themselves. Love shows up as me when I make space for it."  ~ Rev. Jane Beach

 
Rev Jane Beach's photo.
 
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Now this is something I do very easily. I don't call it "wasting time." I call it "chillin" and I do it more and more as I age. 

Our brains actually benefit when we waste time. When we let our minds go…to daydream, to wander…an area of our brain turns on that’s responsible for creative insight. And our best work comes from those creative insights—the ones that happen in the shower!

 
safe_image.php?d=AQChyonY63k_3FhV&w=470&
Don’t get addicted to busyness, or let it become a badge of honor. You can do less—and feel good about it. Christine Carter shows you how.
MINDFUL.ORG
 
 
 
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I love it!  Cats are so good at that!  That is a great picture.

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Funny, the things one finds in the middle of the night. I really like this poem.

 
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Grief, grief, grief, 
How mighty you are-
How strong you are.
Your presence coiled me in shell.
Like the snail. I kept hidden.
When I smelled your presence.

Grief grief, grief 
How mighty you are.
Too heavy to bear.
Too enormous to think of.
I fear your presence.

You made my soul depart from my being.
You are simply undesirable. 

~Gbeti gaius Kafui
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Good advice!

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Being here near the beginning of this grief site, there weren't many who'd been here before us to show us that you do eventually adjust, and our view was that it would be this way the rest of our lives.  I don't know that I would have believed it had someone said "it gets better", but maybe it might have given a glimmer of hope, I'll never know.

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This came in my email today from Peggy Haymes ~ some food for thought.

     

"The internet is full of stories about the things you should be doing and the food you should be avoiding and even what your pet should or shouldn't eat. You want to stay away from that stuff, they say. It'll kill you.

Today I want to bring you the happy news of what won't actually kill you.

Your feelings.

You'd think they came with a skull and crossbones label, considering the lengths we go to sometimes not to feel them. We drink or we drink too much. We smoke. We eat or we eat too much. We sleep or we sleep too much. We busy ourselves until we don't know if we're coming or going, not to mention what we're feeling.

Ironically, some of the things we do to avoid feelings are the things that will actually kill us if we continue to do them in excess. It's not the feeling that kills. It's the avoiding it.

The other week I was staffing a grief workshop, a place in which we encourage and help people acknowledge and experience their feelings. I've done many of these kinds of workshops over the last couple of decades.

Not once has anyone died.

I get it it. Some feelings don't feel so good. I don't know of a person who'd volunteer to grieve if you didn't have to. It's too hard. It's too painful.

But here's the thing. The feelings we don't allow don't go away. They hang around. Sometimes they manifest n a restlessness that something's just not right. Or our anger ripens into rage. Many times our neglected feelings become depression. I cannot tell you how many times I've started working with someone with depression and discovered that underneath that heavy blanket were feelings that had been pushed away.

The irony is that our fear that we will die if we allow ourselves to feel is the thing that keeps us from fully being alive.

So, allow yourself your feelings. If you don't know anything else to do with them, writing them is always a good place to start."

Peggy

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GROWTH

Deep within every life, no matter how dull or ineffectual it may seem from the outside, there is something eternal happening. This is the secret way that change and possibility conspire with growth. John Henry Newman summed this up beautifully when he said, "To grow is to change and to be perfect is to have changed often." Change, therefore, need not be threatening; it can, in fact, bring our lives to perfection. Perfection is not cold completion. Neither is it avoidance of risk and danger in order to keep the soul pure or the conscience unclouded. When you are faithful to the risk and ambivalence of growth, you are engaging your life. The soul loves risk; it is only through the door of risk that growth can enter.

John O'Donohue 
Excerpt from ANAM CARA

Garden Path / Co. Limerick
Photo: © Ann Cahill

 
John O'Donohue's photo.
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Courage - David Whyte has been an inspiration to me for several years now. This grief journey needs us to be courageous. 

COURAGE

is a word that tempts us to think outwardly, to run bravely against opposing fire, to do something under besieging circumstance, and perhaps, above all, to be seen to do it in public, to show courage; to be celebrated in story, rewarded with medals, given the accolade, but a look at its linguistic origins leads us in a more interior direction and toward its original template, the old Norman French, Coeur, or heart. Courage is the measure of our heartfelt participation with life, with another, with a community, a work, a future.

To be courageous is not necessarily to go anywhere or do anything except to make conscious those things we already feel deeply and then to live through the unending vulnerabilities of those consequences. To be courageous is to seat our feelings deeply in the body and in the world: to live up to and into the necessities of relationships that often already exist, with things we find we already care deeply about: with a person, a future, a possibility in society, or with an unknown that begs us on and always has begged us on. Whether we stay or whether we go - to be courageous is to stay close to the way we are made…

COURAGE Excerpted From CONSOLATIONS: 
The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning 
of Everyday Words
© 2015 David Whyte and Many Rivers Press

Woman Looking
Ponte della Maddallena
Borgo a Mozzano, Italy
October 2015 © Photo David Whyte

 
David Whyte's photo.
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I forget to come here sometimes.  Such an awesome thread for inspiration and in no small part to you dear Anne.

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Thank you, Stephen. I have found this thread to be helpful to me. I spend most of my time here at the Grief and Loss threads as I continue my grief work. It is never over. Thank goodness for this forum. 

 

 

 

 

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