Rhythm & Respiration

Rhythm & Respiration
Reflecting on nature-based therapy, learning, well-being and value-added life ...

Sunday, August 4, 2024

Life re-fit ... finding that new sweet spot.

 

I've learned a lot in the last few weeks. 

It's amazing how the influence of one, very in-tune and connected individual can, in one action, reset your inner sight, snapping into being a deepened perspective and shaking loose a series of understandings. Honestly, it was like an avalanche of 'I get it now' over a flood of mental pictures and memories of past moments of discomfort, vague angst and plain fear. I could almost hear the click, click, click, of the past snapping into clarity.

President Joe Biden did that for me when he chose to stop campaigning and turn his energy to finishing his term well. Solidly successful, but underrated by those not in-the-know, I believe that President Biden did what I could not do so many times in my life: recognize that, although I had honed a 'thing' to be well-practiced and excellent, I no longer fit into the space I occupied while doing it.

Who knows why that space evolves, or mutates? Or if it is others, or not just ourselves, who morph and grow, or simply change over time. But when the uncomfortable moments begin to pile up and you start to feel a drag on your psyche-soul, the space or fit has changed. There is no denying it. It is not a simple matter of needing a break or a vacation; you experience an inner scrambling to reengage with the sweet spot that life was--only a few short days ago.

And what I learned is that walking away from the 'non fit' into the open space of life is a breath of fresh air. 

Yes, it's scary. Yes, there are more questions than answers and new discomforts of another nature, but there is the hope, too. Hope of a new sweet spot, just around the corner. And there is tremendous relief and a sense of reestablishing inner bearing: reconnecting with one's essentials, recognizing and acting on soul-promptings. 

Bottom line, there is freedom in walking away from the what was and toward what will be.

I think the truth is, that when one's sweet spot suddenly isn't, it means that there is another sweet spot that only is a fit for you. Doesn't mean that this new one is 'forever' either, but rather that it is only by leaving the old fit that we find the new fit. 

Have courage (I say this to myself as much as to you, dear reader!). Take the leap out of an imperfectly-fitting cocoon. You will likely need those new wings for your new sweet spot, when it finds you. Or you find each other.

Forget the nay-sayers who want you to believe you were 'never' a good fit. Forget the fear mongers who say this was the 'only' fit. Reconnect with the essential commitments you've made: who do you love? what drives your life purpose and passion? what brings you joy? For whom, or what, are you here ... in this time on earth?

The sweet-spot-that-was served to provide you a space to live out those essential commitments. Do not confuse the space with your core being's essentials. They are not the same thing--the 'sweet spot' is simply the office desk from which to work out your purpose and essential commitments to life.

The desk is too small for you now. Be brave and step out.

Be like Joe.






Tuesday, July 23, 2024

The practice of mindfulness

 

Mindfulness as a 'work around' ...

I've been thinking a lot about the role of mindfulness and resilience these last few months. For the first time in my, comparatively long life, I've been dealing with recurring illness that has altered some lifestyle choices. I have NOTHING to complain about--I realize this! I'm still able to live in my favorite place in all the world with my favorite person and our critter-kids, and still love to put words and stories together, and still continue my life-long love of learning. I do practice gratitude--even when hauling water buckets to the horses is not the easy job it once was ... and when I must now rely on others to haul and stack hay bales in the barn. Puck, my bay gelding has grown too tall for me to mount (I think my lanky and lazy horse is secretly quite pleased about that, by the way) and I seriously gauge the level of tinnitus in my left ear before taking on any extra stress. 

Yes, life has demanded some modifications--'work arounds' is my vocabulary for figuring out new ways to do old tasks that required more youthful strength and stamina. 

Seriously. I have benches and mounting blocks spaced strategically all over our farm.  

Mindfulness has become a friend to me and my journey of resilience.


There is nothing more resilient than watching tiny rose clippings root and begin to grow their own lives. Or a chopped-down tree sending up shoots from a sawed off stump. 






And, I think the definition of resilience when you look it up in the dictionary should simply be a photo of a dandelion breaking through cement and thriving in a concrete jungle.


photo credit: https://abolg.wordpress.com/2016/01/09/dandelion/


To me, mindfulness practice is as simple and as frequent as stopping, breathing, feeling the ground under my feet, the wind on my face, and hearing through my ears and my hands, the dog at my side, the horse beside me, or the chicken scratching the soil in front of me. Mindfulness is stopping to grin at the goats peering out of their window at me. Mindfulness is admiring the vigor of a growing tomato plant. Mindfulness is anything that centers me into the present moment. From there, resilience becomes a choice, and work arounds become an intriguing puzzle rather than a relentless scramble, juggling losses. 

Mindfulness may be different for you, and I've captured some thoughts of others more in the know about the practice of mindfulness below. But for me ... 

Mindfulness and resilience are two bookends holding space for a joyful life. 




Wednesday, December 27, 2023

Of Stones and Stars Christmas, 2023

 

    

 Of Stones and Stars                                                                                                      

The boulder we inherited from Sisyphus grows by hours, days, years, but often lies deceptively flat or stair-like and scalable for decades.

At times the growing hulk even holds the warmth of sunlight and we find soft mossy edges to curl against and rest.

Familiarity has its own comfort.

But, in a millisecond of time the reality of camel backs and straw spines become cold stone fact.

When ‘that which does not kill you makes you stronger’ becomes an ominous echo of inverted meaning.

The boulder speaks in granite tones too hard to ignore.


Did you not remember that even Jesus died?


Reeling at the un-sensical pouring out of vengeance and death as Herod’s rage stains the earth yet again, I see that quiet Baby in the soft manger hay sleeping amidst a twinkling torrent of star-eyed angels; safe in temporis.

But we know this will not last and Mary’s heart will break over and over again until it is so large that only Heaven itself can hold it.

The boulder rolls on bruising out a cyclical message across the landscape of time:

Death is inevitable as night. Innocents suffer.

The thrones of earth silence voices, we learn, but not the sound of weeping.

Rock begats rock; flint sharpens flint like rage fuels rage.

We see no end to Sisyphus’s nightmare or to twisted truth, hog-tied and harnessed by influence.


But that rock. That unmanageable stone sitting like death itself, it rolls away.

Moved by liquid love dropped for Lazarus and his grieving friends, the welcoming of strange ones to supper, the outstretched open hand to stem suffering of another, that boulder lifted.

Weight shifted, borne aloft by physics of light: laughter defying gravity. For what is more joyful than Love?

The boulder ceased to burden. Unfolded like a curtain until Tolkien’s ‘far green country opened up under a swift sunrise’ and a new day arrived for all.


It is hard to see that death itself is not the triumphant answer to this essential tale of Light and Dark.


Look deeper, unflinchingly through pain and the inevitability of death, rage of power, and false naming of ‘the other:’

There. A sunbeam dances on a dandelion emerging through a cement crack.

The tree, cracked in two by the storm, sends up a green shoot.

The rains arrive and small seeds swell.


An elder hands me a bit of bread torn from a small loaf.

Exhaling, I’m able to mirror back this small sliver of grace given me by sharing the cup.

We breathe together.

The stars and stones align.



Saturday, December 4, 2021

Redemption

 

December gardens are cold and wet as the Pacific surf,

Limp as seaweed strewn across channels of rain draining into a larger sea.

Tomato plant pride, after weeks boisterous with green and laden with red, lie limp beside other pale stems, now just memories of a summer’s worth of peppers, eggplant, and squash as big as footballs.

Time deferred is time lost in a garden.

There is no hold that can be placed on growing things, no pause or backspace on the riches of seasons.

The sun, save for that one Elijah moment, moves with persistent passion in a horizon arc, our Earthship harnessed to giant tresses circling it in a pedantic yet predicable cycle of moody encounters: now warm, now cool, with now and again Goldilocks moments of perfection.

Fall rain washes the air and slakes the thirst of soil and trees. I hear the old horse coughing out the dry dust of summer and breathing in the night air, humid with life.

Winter rain plumps moss like green pillows lining sleeping logs and etching waving limbs so that slender grey-brown bark is festooned with winter-green, and further laced with drops that catch moonlight and cast a silver sheen.

We live in this moment, in this promise of redemption, in this seasonal shift.

Renewal of water-stores and bone-rest, foundational in their primacy, gracefully prepares the way for the resilience of spring and abundance of summer. But now, now is this essential moment.

Winter skies clarify star vision. There is no sky gazing like winter sky gazing where stars strum and throb above us like platinum plums, and moon beams form Lazarus ladders linking heaven and earth.

The horses and I watch the night grow large and light and through half-lids I see angels dance holding in their cupped hands the moment of Birth.

The tiny Appaloosa beats a soft rhythm with her small hooves. The old buckskin nods and snorts and my two gentle giants gaze skyward high and long. I hear the gelding’s airy whicker, the long sigh of the mare, and a stirring breeze in the tall trees.

Together we touch this moment, tasting snow sifting over us like a clean blanket from heaven.

Redemption is born.

 


Merry Christmas from Faith & Vincent


Tuesday, December 1, 2020

Grace


There is a space in the innermost sanctum of heart-mind where hope lives and joy frames the doorway to a world where dandelions and dragonflies dance.

There is a space in the innermost sanctum of heart-mind where dread dwells and draws shadows down disguising all exits. 

We seek patterns, meaning, sense, to dark dawns and thirst for sudden joy. 

But mind is like a railway track switching destinations relentlessly: In a blink, we arrive in dread, or hope, or a far-off place where lonely poets hide; 

a no-where vista set for watching mind-trains. 


 It is in this hour of hate and hope and viral fear, 

It is in this moment of time, with brilliant rainbow blazes of hope and dark depths of crawling chaos, 

 It is in this second of sunlight’s wane and midnight mania, 

That journey is sensed. 

That meaning may live in small milliseconds of movement toward hard love. 

That mind may be secondary to the journey of soul, moving with quiet caterpillar feet in tiny undulations and circular wandering with elastic pre-memory of cocoons and wings; caves and stars. 


A small river rises in the East, a surging Baptism, 

and the West wonders at stars and signs and a virgin birth.  


The Christ-Child delivered by, in, from Love moves in a soul-journey so unwise to us who weigh all things by gain and direction. 

For this journey is small and circular with elastic pre-memory of angels and glory.

This journey is neonate and fragile, yet robustly rich in the persistence of Life. 

This journey is barn-common, yet singular, unique as a snowflake or the footprint of an imploding star. 

Grace is born to us

Gift and Glory in a tiny journey of eternal proportions. '








Greetings in this Holy Season from Fox Song Farm


 Faith Richardson, Christmas 2020 

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

Taglines as therapeutic touchstones

 

Medicine stones painted by Andrea Pratt, artist

Taglines as therapeutic touchstones

Taglines have become an expected element of our economic landscape, but can be valuable in therapeutic work, too. In this era of business branding, developing an effective tagline is a necessary step in marketing strategy. I have learned, however, that creating a personal tagline that speaks to your own essence and mission or life purpose can be a powerful therapeutic tool, especially useful during times of transition. There is something about a simple, clear statement that reminds others—and yourself—about what is important to you and what you bring to the world that can provide sudden clarity on a dark day. Personal taglines can act as touchstones when life tumbles around us like a chaotic whirlwind.

So, what is a tagline? A tagline is in effect a punch line: the zinger! It is that little statement following a business name that provides a quick understanding of the company’s personality and mission. Big ones we have heard umpteen zillion times are:

Verizon: “Can you hear me now?”

Microsoft: Be what’s next.

Apple: Think different.

Nike: Just do it.

McDonald's: I’m loving it.

The skillful use of taglines are that they often shift over time and size of the company. When the company is small and new, taglines are designed more to answer the question of what a company does, or why we need them, or how they intend to improve their customers’ lives. Over time and multiple uses, the company grows and gets more known and the tagline evolves to a simple snapshot of the company—one that conveys an emotion, aspiration, or the one-two punch that captures the companies essence in a tiny package of three to five words.


The tagline for Kindle Health, my ecotherapy practice, is: I help people rekindle their joy. That, in a nutshell, is what I aspire to do in my health and wellness counseling, coaching, and writing. The tagline for Fox Song Farm, the site and context of my ecotherapy and equine-guided work is, Come home to your herd. I like this tagline as it completely describes the calm welcome that the horses as a herd offer to clients. It also holds true of the goat family and chicken flock. All seem to have a notably kind curiosity toward visitors! And, I love hearing that contended sigh as clients look around and settle, leaning against a fence or sitting in a chair on the deck overlooking the field, watching the horses and goats.

I often work with student nurses who are nearing graduation and still concerned about how they answer questions of medical colleagues, patients, and even family and friends about who they are and what they do as a nurse. Yes, even in 2020 nurses still find it difficult to explain what makes them distinct from physicians and why they have chosen nursing rather than medicine. I find that having students write 2-minute elevator speeches help student nurses begin to truly define their distinctively unique nursing perspective. Often what comes out of the elevator speech is a lovely, succinct tagline that they can use to quickly sum up who they are as a person and what they bring to the nursing or healthcare table. I love to see their shoulders straighten and drop and that sparkle in their eyes when they launch those words that just feel right. Taglines can truly flash a picture of who we are and communicate our essentials to others. They are kind of a mental business card, I suppose! I’ve heard from students how their tagline provides them with a quick touchstone response when they are overwhelmed in a situation or feeling intimidated by those around them.

As I was idly watching the horses while cleaning the barn today, I realized that I have more than enough material to write taglines for each of the equine characters living on Fox Song Farm:

               Puck: “I help people question their fears.”

               Tivio: “Hay, I’m here. For you.”

               Arael: “I see you.”

               Penelope: “Size is a mental construct.”


Puck’s tagline came almost immediately. Puck has a huge, athletic body and is in constant motion. He loves to get close to people and connects graciously, but his big size can be intimidating. Puck does tend to push boundaries and cause people to confront fear and trust. Tivio, my puppy dog quarter horse, loves hugs and his food, and yes, often in that order. Enough said!  Beautiful Arael generally appears to be in the background, which is deceptive as she is the lead mare of the Fox Song herd. She notices everything, and I value her reactions to situations and people. I learn most from watching Arael with a new client. Penelope is our miniature appaloosa. Although she is physically the youngest and smallest horse in the herd, she has an old soul and I often call her my wise woman. When doing therapy work, Penelope is decisive and determined. When Penelope ‘speaks,’ we all listen.

Well, that was fun! Want to write your own tagline for yourself, your business or career, or your own pets? Here are some tips:

  1. Keep it simple and short. Taglines are stronger if they convey one idea that is understood easily. Don’t use more than 5-7 words at most.
  2. One simple way to begin is to distill into a word or two what it is you do, what is most important to you, or your essential purpose. A simple phrase to begin this is the word, “I ….” For example, “I help …” or “I can …” or “I will …” can lead into several directions, but the focus is on YOU and what YOU DO.
  3. If the first part of the tagline is about you and what you do, your essential purpose, the second half of the tagline is about what you do for others, community, clients, profession. This simple meaning can come from a phrase … “I can …,” “I provide …,” “I give …..” Or, for me, it was, “I help …” as in, “I help people rekindle their joy.”
  4. Think about the ‘feel’ of the words you choose. What emotion do you want to convey, or to produce in someone on the receiving end? For example, the blend of emotions I wanted for ‘I help people rekindle their joy,’ was a remembering, or nostalgia, for recalling when we have experienced personal passion and joy in our lives. The choice of the word ‘rekindle’ had a two fold reason: to give the feeling of relighting a flame inside us, as well as a nod to my practice name, Kindle Health. For ‘Come home to your herd,’ the emotion was a warm, homey feeling of belonging. After you have the content of what you are all about, you can choose language that conveys the feeling you want others to experience. Although this emotional stuff feels like it would be unimportant, the funny thing is that this step often produces that quintessential bit that turns out to be the biggest contributor to your tagline. Frequently, people rewrite their tagline completely when they discover the right emotion they want to convey. By choosing the words that best portray the feeling often comes a stronger message!
  5. Not sure where to start? Look for inspiration with power words that inspire you or move you in some way. Google a thesaurus and start word shopping! Write down the words that either feel like a match to your essential self, or that move you toward what you aspire to be or do. Then, with those self-identified power words, go back to tips two and three and begin to try these out in the short sentence linking who you are and what you bring to the world.

Elevator speeches and taglines can be powerful ways of bringing us back to the existential question of who am I? and what is my purpose, or mission on this earth? Especially during times of transition, deeply reflected upon phrases can be touchstones for us. They also can help remind us of why we do what we do, even when the world does not seem to notice our efforts.


For several years, I had to put my fiction writing on the back burner as I developed my nursing career and continued my education. Then, life happened, and bill-paying needed to take priority while we experienced medical challenges in the family. Through these years, I struggled often to understand a seemingly stymied life purpose. Many, many times I went back to the tagline that I had developed years earlier while working with Madeleine L’Engle as her teaching assistant in a creative writing course.


Although we didn’t call them elevator speeches or tag lines then, Madeleine had us all introduce ourselves with a short 'blurb' about who we were and what was important to us. I had just been accepted into nursing school and was struggling to understand this new path that, although felt right, would undoubtedly take me away from writing full time. I remember standing on the University lawn where we had assembled the class and clutching my brand-new stethoscope as a visual aid, giving my little talk and ending it with: “Although these two paths, writing and nursing seem unconnected, what I am realizing is that they are both about my intention to promote healing. I heal through my hands and my words.” That tagline truly has become my touchstone through the years, especially during times when I could not find time or energy to write fiction. The core of my essence, or life-mission, remained, healing; I was simply doing it a different way for a time. As well, I strove to have my academic writing be creative and inspiring and healing in its own way. I am sure that I haven’t always met my own bar for this, but the intention has been there, and my tagline-touchstone helped keep this in my line of sight.


This afternoon a big heavy box was delivered to our door. When I opened it up, I found copies of the newly published nursing reference text that was a three-year writing project. Although this academic writing project was not ‘fun’ in the same sense as writing stories and poems are stimulatingly mesmerizing for me, again, my tagline kept me on track. I kept my intention to heal through my words. In a very real way, this nursing text is a demonstration of healing with my hands and my words.

Taglines as touchstones. For me, they have for many years kept me joyfully moving on mission. Maybe for you, too?



Wednesday, August 19, 2020

Grief agendas

Grief agenda, noun:

The inevitable, seemingly relentless course of thought, action, behavior that follows deep loss.

In a profound way for me and my siblings, the world ended for us on March 24th, 2020. I was meeting with students by Zoom, holding virtual office hours discussing a nursing students’ math requirement for pharmacology, and I received a text, and then a phone call. First my sister texting: can you take a call? Second, my mother’s caregiver phoning with attending paramedics. My magnificent mom: singer, speaker, pianist, poet, international humanitarian agency director (Ukrainian Children’s Christian Fund) and girl-who-skipped-grade-four, was found unresponsive. Olga OliviaBalabanov Lapka had quietly slipped into eternity just at the beginning of the Covid pandemic lockdown, therefore foiling any attempts we could make to have a public Celebration of Life. It was perfectly done—as my mom would have graciously accepted the gathering of friends from across five or more nations, but, deep introvert that she was and hid so well, I think she probably preferred the simple family and close friends send-off we had, rich in prayers and steeped in love, in the spring sunlight, braced by a brisk breeze, gathered where her body would rest beside my dad’s.

Olga at homeWe are still reeling, as you can imagine. Although she was 93 years old and beginning to take more frequent cat naps throughout the day, our mom was still busy in her large home office on her computer, writing receipts for charitable donations to the mission she and my dad had founded, jotting down thoughts for bulletin items, and emailing UCCF workers in the Ukraine and Germany. In her off time, Mom avidly read, wrote notes, kept up on news (TV and her daily Vancouver Sun paper), cared for her two cats, Pepsi and Honey, and brought us kids all up to speed on both current events and the antics of the racoon family that routinely invaded her back yard. She had, only a very few months earlier, stopped independently driving to attend Sunday morning services at her beloved Gospel Hall in Richmond.


Olga with Honey and PepsiWe humans were not the only ones whose lives were instantly altered. Mom's cats were heart broken.  Mom had raised these two from tiny kittens, adopted them where they had been destined to live out notoriously short lives as near-feral barn cats.  Honey and Pepsi were brother and sister, both tabbies, but Honey was orange tabby and Pepsi was a dark grey tabby. They had both grown into stately, beautiful companions with a streak of mischievous fun. Both cats were highly bonded to my mom, but Honey in particular never left her side in the few months leading up to my mom’s passing. So much so, that my sister, another ‘cat lady,’ had a thought cross her mind that Honey might be signaling something that she did not want to acknowledge—that Mom was getting ready to leave this earth. Notoriously shy and disappearing when someone new entered the house, Honey remained firmly seated beside Mom while the paramedics worked on her and stayed beside her until the funeral home attendants carried her body away. Pepsi wailed the entire night we were there, in what can only be described as a deep grieving dirge.

Mom had asked me to be the cat’s ‘god mother,’ so, after our small service, Honey and Pepsi were loaded into their traveling crates and made the journey to Vancouver Island to our small farm in the Alberni Valley. We tucked them into our guest room turned cat room, filling it with their own familiar beds, dishes, toys, litter trays and even hung my mom’s wall clock with the bird song on the hour on the wall and placed a couple of pairs of my mom’s personal items in the room. Our own king-of-the-mountain Siamese cat, Gabe, peeked in with interest as we prepared the room for our two newcomers. We always described Gabe as a lover not a fighter as he always kept to himself and out of any neighborhood cat drama. He also, at an early age, made friends with a young street rat that he tried to convince us to allow in our home. We never saw him with any ‘trophies’ thereafter; indeed, we had never known Gabe to lift his paw to anything but friendly fun. I had high hopes that the cat ‘cousins’ would integrate peaceably. 

I did not count on the scope of Honey and Pepsi’s grief, nor on the depth of Gabe’s cherished identity as ‘only cat.’ Gabe had grown up in a household of pairs: two of us and two Dalmatian dog-sisters. The horses, goats, and chickens were family groups too, but Gabe stood alone. And he liked it that way.

After 10 days in isolation from the rest of the animals, we began to leave the guestroom door ajar in the evening to allow the cats an opportunity to explore the rest of the house while the other animals were confined to another part of the house. After a couple of weeks of this, we began allowing an opportunity for paths to cross in the evening when we were in the house. It didn’t go well. Maggie, our Dalmatian was fine—she had a vague interest in the new smells but was politely uninterested otherwise. Gabe and Pepsi did a weird air-boxing routine that ended up with Pepsi running up the living room drapes to perch on the curtain rod as if it were the crow’s nest of a pirate ship. And down he would not come, even after Gabe was hustled off to the other part of the house. After nearly three days, he was persuaded to come down, spitting and kicking, and he rushed to the guestroom to fill up on food and water and ‘unload’ as it were. Soon, we saw him sleeping on our bed and seemingly unconcerned, purring a greeting to me. The crow’s nest episode was a turning point for him. Pepsi, newly christened Parry from his habit of answering everything by parrying back a cat remark, was suddenly becoming one of the family.

Honey remained oblivious to everything and seemed only concerned with either hiding under the bed or seeking a way out of the house. Honey had never made any attempt to connect with us during those 10 days enclosed in the guestroom or the weeks of evenings in the house while we quietly sat by or slept in our bed, door open. She never looked at us even while eating her meals. She refused to join in and play or explore with a cat’s curiosity this new house with strange farm smells and clucking crowing chickens just outside the window.  She never ran from Gabe nor approached him. She simply avoided any contact. We would only see her in a relentless, silent search for an open door or window. Eventually, she would find one.

One morning, Honey was gone. Her grief agenda was to go. Never connect, never look back. Somehow, her brother Pepsi, had made a different choice. His grief agenda was to be family, be loved and connected to our household, the farm, us. The goodbye between this brother and sister was complete and soundless. Pepsi stayed; Honey left. We live in a rural area with neighbors that look out for each other and are in a small valley of animal lovers. We text and call each other if someone’s animal is out or possibly in trouble, and we’ve been known to leave our beds in the middle of the night to help corral someone’s cows or horses who have wandered out of the safety of their fields. No one has seen Honey. It is summer, and there is lots to eat and drink in the fields and barns and sheds to shelter within. She may travel, need time and space, and maybe we will see her again toward fall. Or, she may have found another older soul to move in with and companion; one whose essence is not as painfully similar to mine, but one who needs her. My sister prefers to think the latter.

Grief agendas are powerful forces. I’ve watched as my brother has become more connected to family, my older sister returning to essentials, sharing grace and gratitude, and my younger sister again embrace composing, singing and recording of music, so much a part of mom’s life. For myself, writing has demanded I give it more time; words and other worlds are another legacy-remembrance of my mom who encouraged and edited all my fiction from book one and before.

When we lose someone beloved, the indelible mark we feel is life-altering. Grief agendas are written from a place within us that is not necessarily connected to our pre-frontal cortex and executive function. Grief agendas do not seem to be a choice and have more in common with a drive or reaction, in that we find ourselves in a different place than we were before the split second of grief impacted us. Grief agendas are not decisions made to improve our lives to honor the passing of someone admired, rather they are the aftermath of lightning bolt-grief that has seemingly burned us to the ground-soul of who we were. What we are left with is the cobbling together of meaning and memory on the art board of this raw, razed self.  

In a way, a grief agenda is the final, terrible gift given to us upon the departure of our loved one. Perhaps that is why we want to hold onto grief so desperately. It is the last connection that has been physically drawn on the cognitive heart of our person. To lose grief is to lose that immediate last connection. We fear the loss of the loss, because we fear a void.

doorway to gardenIf we consciously allow ourselves to be carried by our grief agenda, we learn that we are not left with nothingness. Indeed, we are left with the germinating seeds of what will grow after our catastrophic loss. Like the green after a brush fire, saplings emerge. Painfully, perhaps; unplanned, certainly. And here is where, I think, our choice returns to us. Which saplings will we prune, bolster, nurture? I find, that as I write and speak, I am a bit braver, a bit clearer, and a whole lot more heart- and head-strong about what I will write about. I am also more ruthless about the time I have to accomplish what I must. Legacy work has become essential work.

Grief agendas ruthlessly pare out the nonessential. In grief lies the gift of clarity, of what is meaningful, what stands the test of time, is purpose-filled, core-honest, but not self-gratuitous.

Ruins of the city of Charn in Narnian ChroniclesI suppose, in writing the eulogy of others we learn to listen for the ring of truth, to recognize her, the core-gift of the person we loved. We need to uncover the nugget, reach the diamond depth of understanding her astonishing uniqueness. We are distressed when we hear a tribute that feels false, that piles platitudes like straw that obscures rather than clarifies this person-gift to us. Truth, like Charn’s time-waking end-of-days bell in the Narnian chronicles, really does bring to finality our loss, but in doing so, truth set us free to resonate with others and appreciate the bitter-sweet present moment where time flowed into eternity. In writing, and listening to our beloved’s life story, we learn what stands the test of time; purpose lived that may have appeared mundane but was foundational gold. We are given the choice to groom, bend, prune the saplings freshly rooted in our own lives.

Grief agendas are in one sense mysterious and in another sense blazingly obvious. It is easy in the normal slippage of days where workdays merge and weekends are either hectic or passed in stuporous recovery mode, to overlook even the blazingly obvious grief agenda. Reflecting, remembering, reminiscing, all help us to recognize our individual agenda, or direction, that our heart-core has written. When we succumb to and follow our own grief agenda, what we find is that a core-purpose of our beloved was in fact to birth, shape, and prepare us for our own life-work.

That is the agape, or God-like love that is shared between souls; love that is lived action rather than simply shared emotion. Rarely a huge event, rather it is the living side-by-side, sharing of time and stories, walking and working alongside, struggling through everyday fortunes and misadventures. Whether transparent exchanges of communication and love are remembered or obscure fits and starts of trying and failing are more readily recalled, as proverbs state, “iron sharpens iron” and “faithful are the wounds of a friend.”

I believe that there is a healing of the raw brokenness that grief imparts by faithfully following grief’s agenda. I think that it begins with accepting the legacy gift that is ourselves.

thistleI took a break from writing to go cut thistles that have come up in our garden yard with my scythe. (Yes, the odd mental image of the grim reaper did pop into my mind, as I ruminated over this piece!) Many of the thistles had reached that pretty stage of soft purple flowers just unfolding. My love of the natural beauty of wildflowers and support for honeybees and hummingbirds always compete with my pragmatic side in these moments. But, of course, the need to lop these picturesque blooms is so that they will not be pollinated and propagate more thistles. My scythe did its work and my garden has survived this season’s thistle invasion. I watched as the honeybees simply shifted their attention to the many squash, bean, and pea blossoms—a very good result! I suppose that our choice to cultivate or cut down ‘stuff’ that piles into our days is often as simple as scything the thistles was for me this morning;  legacy work and “iron sharpening iron” living is generally about the small choices we make that fill the minutes of our days.

Parry at Fox Song FarmAs I was gardening, I noticed that Mom’s Pepsi, now our Parry, had come out to meditatively watch as I worked. He was commenting every once in awhile as this cat is known to do. I’m guessing it was the first time he had seen someone scything thistles, but he was not shy about offering suggestions. I glanced at those big grey-green eyes and saw curiosity, connection, cautious concern regarding evading a swinging arc of thistle plants flying through the air. I also saw a calm trust that all would be well even in this unprovoked battle with foliage. All will be well. 

Grief agendas, painful as they are, hold a unique wisdom. Like an ocean tide, they will recede, leaving new insights and fresh outlooks and an open shore swept clean. To use my garden as an example, the removal of painful thistles allows my choice of seedlings to grow unfettered and my fingers and toes the ability to do their work ‘ouchlessly’ when I pick my favorite Scallopini squashes and sugar snap peas.

The loss of our mother means that the world is forever changed. My everyday routine somehow feels unfamiliar and I still mentally reach for the phone to share a moment with her several times a day. My footsteps seem to echo down a lonelier road when I realize that I can never bounce ideas off her again or get her editing input on any future draft manuscripts. My loss is real, and my grief agenda has spun me into deeper reflection, more concentrated writing times, and a more purposeful turning of pages to read stories and writing that feed my soul. I find myself pouring over small notes I find in her handwriting. Yes, there is loneliness, but not that of alone-ness, rather of recognizing and re-recognizing the cataclysmic void that is left by her leaving this plane of existence. In a truer sense, my siblings and I walk forward united in the host of gifts we have received from Mom, my dad, my aunts, uncles, cousins who have left us early. From all these precious ones, and Mom in particular, we have been gifted with a love of learning and a frank curiosity about life, an appreciation of sense and a delight in nonsense, abundant and easy laughter and the joyful sharing of each other, music and story.  These gifts, carefully tended and abundantly cultivated, may indeed grow into our own legacy gifts that flow to others on their respective journeys.

Not every grief agenda leads to the same place—at least within a similar timeline. Somewhere, an orange tabby cat makes her way along a solitary path while her brother rests curled up beside me. Grief agendas are rough and raw, painful and precious. Above all, they invoke a pause that allows us to have a forthright encounter with our own core-essentials. Yes, the beloved person-shaped void remains; but the beautiful and growing gifts sown over a lifetime of authentic living continue to shine and bless us daily.

 

Mom, Aunty Galina, Joy, Faith, Hope having lunch together

 

Mom and Hope at UCCF camp in the Ukraine