After my sister's deterioration, I carried the guilt of having been unable to protect her, help her. I had always thought the miracle of a cure for her. I wanted her to wake up one day and start talking normally and behaving not awkwardly. I still do... How to describe the mysterious ways that transform our personal grief, anger... into our heart and mind?
Sometimes we have no choice but to pick ourselves up and ski through the avalanches of our lives. We have to keep moving, or we'll be swept away. We can't stop and reflect, or we'll find ourselves buried under the weight of the tragedy. After the initial shock, we have to move from surviving to thriving.
"Any sorrow can be borne, if you can turn it into a story." (Isak Dinesen)
"Give sorrow words." (Shakespeare)
"Once we truly understand and accept that life is difficult - then life is no longer difficult because the fact no longer matters." (M. Scott Peck)
I was too blinded by my own grief to see that we all suffer. I suppose because we didn't have everything, we appreciated everything.
If our expectation included loss, we would handle our lives better and fear our losses less. At least we would come to understand that when we move through our losses, they expand our mind.
My sister taught me that I couldn't make her well but I could reach deep within myself and open my heart so that I could embrace the way she is and love her spirit. I am not trying to fix her, but through her to know myself better so that I might fix the only person I ever have the power to fix - myself.
We have to move beyond our hopes and dreams to a place of acceptance. And we have to realize that true, gut-level acceptance is an act of courage. I could choose to be broken by the loss, or I can celebrate her time on this earth. W can choose to be bitter about a cancer diagnosis, or we can choose to learn everything we can about life from the experience. Life still goes on...
"Courage is a greater virtue than love. At best, it takes courage to love." (Pul Tillich)
There is power in contemplating death. By doing so, we think more about how we should live our lives. We focus more on what is more important to us right now. We are reminded of the preciousness of each moment. Thinking about death moves us closer to compassion for others and for ourselves.
(Unchangeable)
When there are things I cannot change
- the passing of time, the darkness of heart -
I turn to other things I cannot change
-the color of the setting sky, the rugged outline of the mountains -
There is something to knowing
-knowing if I weep the white stars will stay in pattern -
(Secrets)
There are secrets
Murmuring like growing things
Coming into my body
Whispering around inside like wind in the crags
Parched buffalo bones appear from the night
And make a song to the moon
Old chief of the Crow tells the sun to rise
Beckoning, a green sapling offered to dawn
The marks of the weathers
Or small human scratchings
Make wrinkles
In the permanence of canyon rock
There is a wide indian sky
A girl in the red earth
With a revealed head
She asks for some secrets
And begins to cover
Her nakedness
Paints
A clay pot
The importance of Memory!!!
"The only life we know well, the one on which we are the ultimate authority, is our own. The only experience to which we can hear witness is that which we have personally endured or observed." (Wallace E. Stegner)
We can't escape our past. We can grow from it. We can grow beyond it. But it has shaped us and remains a part of who we are. We need to step back so that we can leap forward.
"You'd think it had to do with physical strength, but it didn't. It was all in our heads."
(Anatomy of an Illness by Norman Cousins) Laughter and good emotions would allow the body to heal itself.
"What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master call the butterfly." (Zen saying)
It is the intense life experiences - both joyful and wretched - that move us the most.
"Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was often times filled with your tears...When we are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy." (The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran)
"Yes, falling in love with the earth is one of life's great adventures. It is an affair of the heart like no other; a rapturous experience that remains endlessly repeatable throughout life." (Steve Van Matre)
What a relief when finally it came to me to love her, simply love her...
Healing places are terribly important..."far away from anybody" :))) a coffee place, fire, ocean...
We lose touch with nature's cycles, which reflect the cycles of life: spring/birth, summer/maturity, fall/old age, winter/death.
Sometimes bad is good...
"Healing is embracing what is most feared; healing is opening what has been closed, softening what has hardened into obstruction, healing is learning to trust life." (Jeanne Achterberg)
Our life challenges and losses are opportunities for us to appreciate and love differently. It has something to do with trust. It has to do with taking it all in - the good, the bad, the ugly.
Sometimes we have no choice but to pick ourselves up and ski through the avalanches of our lives. We have to keep moving, or we'll be swept away. We can't stop and reflect, or we'll find ourselves buried under the weight of the tragedy. After the initial shock, we have to move from surviving to thriving.
"Any sorrow can be borne, if you can turn it into a story." (Isak Dinesen)
"Give sorrow words." (Shakespeare)
"Once we truly understand and accept that life is difficult - then life is no longer difficult because the fact no longer matters." (M. Scott Peck)
I was too blinded by my own grief to see that we all suffer. I suppose because we didn't have everything, we appreciated everything.
If our expectation included loss, we would handle our lives better and fear our losses less. At least we would come to understand that when we move through our losses, they expand our mind.
My sister taught me that I couldn't make her well but I could reach deep within myself and open my heart so that I could embrace the way she is and love her spirit. I am not trying to fix her, but through her to know myself better so that I might fix the only person I ever have the power to fix - myself.
We have to move beyond our hopes and dreams to a place of acceptance. And we have to realize that true, gut-level acceptance is an act of courage. I could choose to be broken by the loss, or I can celebrate her time on this earth. W can choose to be bitter about a cancer diagnosis, or we can choose to learn everything we can about life from the experience. Life still goes on...
"Courage is a greater virtue than love. At best, it takes courage to love." (Pul Tillich)
There is power in contemplating death. By doing so, we think more about how we should live our lives. We focus more on what is more important to us right now. We are reminded of the preciousness of each moment. Thinking about death moves us closer to compassion for others and for ourselves.
(Unchangeable)
When there are things I cannot change
- the passing of time, the darkness of heart -
I turn to other things I cannot change
-the color of the setting sky, the rugged outline of the mountains -
There is something to knowing
-knowing if I weep the white stars will stay in pattern -
(Secrets)
There are secrets
Murmuring like growing things
Coming into my body
Whispering around inside like wind in the crags
Parched buffalo bones appear from the night
And make a song to the moon
Old chief of the Crow tells the sun to rise
Beckoning, a green sapling offered to dawn
The marks of the weathers
Or small human scratchings
Make wrinkles
In the permanence of canyon rock
There is a wide indian sky
A girl in the red earth
With a revealed head
She asks for some secrets
And begins to cover
Her nakedness
Paints
A clay pot
The importance of Memory!!!
"The only life we know well, the one on which we are the ultimate authority, is our own. The only experience to which we can hear witness is that which we have personally endured or observed." (Wallace E. Stegner)
We can't escape our past. We can grow from it. We can grow beyond it. But it has shaped us and remains a part of who we are. We need to step back so that we can leap forward.
"You'd think it had to do with physical strength, but it didn't. It was all in our heads."
(Anatomy of an Illness by Norman Cousins) Laughter and good emotions would allow the body to heal itself.
"What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master call the butterfly." (Zen saying)
It is the intense life experiences - both joyful and wretched - that move us the most.
"Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was often times filled with your tears...When we are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy." (The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran)
"Yes, falling in love with the earth is one of life's great adventures. It is an affair of the heart like no other; a rapturous experience that remains endlessly repeatable throughout life." (Steve Van Matre)
What a relief when finally it came to me to love her, simply love her...
Healing places are terribly important..."far away from anybody" :))) a coffee place, fire, ocean...
We lose touch with nature's cycles, which reflect the cycles of life: spring/birth, summer/maturity, fall/old age, winter/death.
Sometimes bad is good...
"Healing is embracing what is most feared; healing is opening what has been closed, softening what has hardened into obstruction, healing is learning to trust life." (Jeanne Achterberg)
Our life challenges and losses are opportunities for us to appreciate and love differently. It has something to do with trust. It has to do with taking it all in - the good, the bad, the ugly.
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