Offering Solace

This space, as you all know, has saved me more than once. Helped me find myself when I was lost, sat with me in the muck when all I could do is sit. Helped me by letting me know I am not alone. A lot has changed, the blog based community has shifted, and I know so many of those with whom I was journeying have left the land of blogs and moved into other spaces, online or in real life.  But for me, this is home. When I think of where I found myself it is here. And when I think of you all, I think of friends who know the inner workings of what it means to struggle, with identity and challenging bodies, and plans that don't work, and many that go sideways.  Today I want to share a story that is not mine, because it sliced down into the raw in a way that I had not allowed in a long long time. And I wanted to share, for those who can listen. If you have resources and current blogs or facebook groups where Katie can find community please share with me in the comments or with her on her facebook feed (link below).  This is a candid video she shared, live, on facebook after her ectopic pregnancy burst her tube. And I want her to find the support I had. The love I've felt.  The not aloneness you all have offered me.  

*** 

So.

Life - as we all know-- is filled with the soft and the hard, the sweet and the bitter, the lost and the finding. And sometimes someone's story cracks me open in a way that reminds me of the power of telling our stories, raw and beautiful and true. So that others can heal, so that maybe we can too, so that we can speak the unspeakable, and we refuse to be held down by the weight of the untold or maybe even untellable secret wounds.

Saying that we are hurting when we are hurting is one of the most powerful ways to remind ALL of us of our humanity. Our compassion. Our fragility and grace and strength and resilience, all at once, breath by breath, miraculous.

I found Katie Lasky on facebook not so long ago and I am not sure how. But she is a gift and a voice to be heard. And shares a story to be honored.

I warn all of you, that this video is hard. And those of us who have experienced pregnancy loss, tread lightly in your own spaces and make good choices for your own hearts. 

And there are now fundraising links for Katie and her family on her FB feed. 

https://www.facebook.com/katie.lasky.92/videos/10158941679880080/?pnref=story

My real books just came.

My books, my real books just came. Not the proofs. Not proof #2 or #3 or #4.
Holy shit people, my book is on Amazon.

This, for me, is beyond huge. Getting this work out into the world feels crucial, and yet, getting it out into the world means telling my story out loud.
Funny thing about this: folks say YAY! what's your book about?
and I choke.
I am happy. I am sad. I am complicated and complex. This is a heart wrenching and yet cathartic and healing thing to do, to offer, to expose.

So. I am being gentle with myself, and hoping that the book finds its way into the hands that need it, and that my words, my journey, somehow offer solace to someone else.


***

A Field Guide to Grief: If you’ve lost your partner to suicide

Available now in paperback, or Kindle
by Kate Johnson
Link:http://amzn.com/1511433442

 

Losing a partner or spouse to suicide is shattering. This small book speaks directly to the survivor, starting from the beginning of the grief journey. Offering compassion and acknowledgment, survival tools and suggestions, these are kind and wise words from someone who’s been there.

 “if you have lost a partner to suicide, you will find a new friend named kate in these pages. out of the hard-won wisdom of her own loss, she offers you this field guide. a field guide, truly, as the pages feel like a field… breathable, open, + paradoxically peaceful. the rhythm of it all works beautifully between the ebb of uncluttered white space + flow of helpful words… a needed + good book for anyone walking through this heart-rending loss.” –rachel awes, psychologist, author, + art playgroundist rachelawes.com

“…a lovely resource for folks who are fresh into big pain. I’ll be happy to recommend this [book] to my clients.” –Dr. Martha Jo Atkins honors the deeply spiritual experience of death by providing compassionate witness to the dying, and support for healing transformation to the bereaved. marthaatkins.com

My note to you: This is a difficult book. A sad book. A real book informed by love and understanding that in grief, there is no time to sift through case studies and anecdotes. I get right down to the core. It is about acute grief and navigating the immediate experience of loss. It is about living with grief and living with loss and the loss of identity. It is about self protection and permission. It is about survival. My own experience was one of breath-by-breath choices, to keep moving forward, to not lose myself, to choose to heal and go on, over and over and over again. If you need this book, I am so sorry. But if you need this book, I am so glad you have found your way here,  and I hope beyond hope that my words offer you solace.

 

If you are not in grief and want to support me by buying a book, please do (and thank you!). Please consider donating it to an organization or individual who works with folks in acute grief. A funeral home, for example… I could have used this book the second day if not the first. Someone else may too.

unexpected tenderness

Ok-- so-- first, the hair loss. Ratios of my thyroid levels indicate something wacky between the whole Make T3! call to action by the TSH and the T3 levels themselves.  So, selenium as a facilitator and we shall see. I am not optimistic my hair will grow back, but that's what hats are for.

In the meantime, so much else has happened that it is hard to even get riled up about it.

I had my first mammogram call back, after my first mammogram in 4 years. I had a lump last year, followed by an ultrasound, followed by an all clear and the lump vanishing. But I had never had a call back on a mammogram before.

I'll start this by saying, I'm ok. The reading was ok- and I go back in 6 months. But here is what I wrote while I waited:

I'm in the waiting room at radiology. Waiting waiting for a call-back mammogram. I am thinking if all of the waiting rooms. All of the waiting. The fluorescent lights. The linoleum floor. The cold air and scratchy cotton. I am thinking about turning points, decision points, change of plan points. I am thinking about love and connection and feel an unexpectedly tender love for my body.

Now, I have not felt much tenderness toward my body, ever.
It has caused me untold grief with colitis, acne, the whitest skin on the planet, bruises, bulges, infertility, the birth saga with uncooperative cervix then c section... anxiety, hair loss, blah blah blah blah blah....
it has always been it. not me. it.
a separate container for my Self to ambulate in, to use the sensors with great gratitude, but also a separateness, often hostile, or annoying, or shameful.

Suddenly, in the harsh light of that waiting room, I cradled myself in my arms, truly whole maybe for the first time ever. A surprise integration. Suffused with love. And I have a feeling of wholeness that is different now. I'm getting to know it. But the love and tenderness and gratitude are profound.


And, in other breast related news, we weaned. Not in any way I would have wanted. In fact, I don't think I can even talk about it.
I bought a beautiful bra to celebrate the parts of this worth celebrating (there are plenty, I know).
I don't want anyone to say "About Damned Time!"-- just don't.
You can't say anything I have not already thought or heard or worried about.
Here we are, finally, totally not baby led, or toddler led, or pre-schooler-led. Good lord, left to her, we'd nurse until the cows come home, and since we have no cows, that is a long, long time.

Now we're moving on to addressing the sleep deprivation in all of us, and trying not to make things worse by trying to make them better. Not succeeding yet. Della, in fact, is asleep right this very moment having huffed off into the other room when my beloved mom touched some toy she wasn't supposed to. So Della stormed off, lay down, and conked out.  11am.
Life, love, the pursuit of sleep.
We are in the midst of it.

like a window

grief opens grief like a window

like a can opener

stirs silt from the bottom

shakes loose parts newly or incompletely mended

rattles around, making noisy messes, reminding me acutely of things that hurt to remember.

As I think about the brilliance lost in Robin William's heartbreaking choice, I think too about the losses we all share, those who have loved someone who has made this nearly unthinkable decision. And while I am so very sad for Robin, that this felt like the only choice he had left, I am more sad for his family, those who loved him, all of us who felt somehow connected to his wry smile, his tenderness, his humanness.  It exposes our collective vulnerability somehow.

After losing a beloved to suicide, 11 years ago this past weekend, I have finally gained solace of a sort during hard work this past year... a hard won healing. Tender always, but a new sense of something like peace, I guess... a still point of understanding I did not have before-- before, suicide was simply unthinkable, unimaginable, and my loss, the world's loss of my beloved, was totally beyond my comprehension.

Now, after experiencing being taken down by anxiety into an underworld of desperation-- I understand things I did not understand before.

I sought help, took it, take it, seek it. And thanks to this intervention I have returned home to myself.

But I understand now, desperation, in a way I did not.

I understand just wanting to make the pain stop. And simply not being able to stand it. Feeling lost, taken over, alone.

And I wish for all who feel lost, to reach out, get help, allow help in. Please.

In this moment, I sit with this sadness, with the echos of my own loss, my own grief, and let it (as best I can) move in and through... knowing, after all this time, that it will move like water, downstream, if I allow it to pass through my knowing, my heart, my memories, and not try to hold on for the sake of having something to hold on to.

Journeys: buddha and ammo boxes

Driving up route 145 north out of colebrook, you'd pass Dostie's furniture on the right.  A long low building sided in vertical boards of a medium blue. Tune up shops, trailers and homes fall away quickly as the road heads uphill faster than you can downshift. 

The drive takes you up one of the most beautiful winding drives in New Hampshire, up and up and up. Up through Stewartstown to Clarksville toward Pittsburg.

For the past half hour, before I lost signal, I'd been listening to NPR, coming in tiny aggravating bits, a TED show on storytelling. I hear enough that affirms what I know, how stories inform us, connect us, express our humanness... and even though the sporadic signal is long since gone, an npr-ish narrator remains.

Driving up route 145 out of colebrook...

but it is me,

I am driving,

and I am driving to the cemetery.

This story was supposed to begin like this:

3 ammo boxes, a buddha and some bells.

An empty bag from Dunkin Donuts.

An empty car seat.

A baggie of stale cheerios.

A small painting of a winter sky.

A well-past prime brown eyed susan.

I am in good company I guess, confused company. Bit and pieces that express my life in this instant. This journey today has been a long one, and it has been a long one, and it will be a long one. I realized a while back that grief is a long term partner. It is patient enough to wait out any amount of denial and diversion. It comes up, coughs politely into its hand, just often enough to not forget. Occasionally it moves a doorway so you slam into a wall that was not there the day before, but that, these many years later, just happens sometimes.

I am here with two boxes of Jeff's things. Things I could not throw away but cannot keep. Things that were personal, intimate. Things that were his. I've added some symbolic things too, a fountain pen, an abacus, 3 fly fishing flies (a wooly bugger, blue winged olive and a royal wulff). I've added a knot of keys from an old truck. 3 stones. And a note I wrote with a very shaky hand the night before.

The things are in two ammo boxes, a momentary act of brilliance on my part, waterproof,  compact, and speaking directly to Jeff's love of old military equipment, and utilitarian design. He used to have one in his truck for change and the notebook where he fastidiously recorded every gallon of gas purchased, every oil change, every mile driven.

The third box came with my ebay purchase, and I will give it to Peter, the Sexton, whose history in the armed forces has just been revealed to me.

The buddha is in place of a marker I cannot afford.

And the bells, I am not sure what they are for. Movement maybe, movement. Change. 

And the flower, if all goes well, will come up again and again and again, spreading its pot bound roots deep into the nearly impenetrable soil that has been loosened, in this moment, by 2 and a half hours of Peter's patient digging.

Peter is a farmer and an angel. He has dug a million holes. Fence posts and grave markers. The hole where we stand is just one of those million, but the angel in him says that this is the only one that matters, the only one that matters this way, today.

We put the boxes in the bottom and slowly fill the hole with handfuls of soil and rocks while we fill the air with conversation that stretches nearly as far as the sky.

We talk of town politics and god and vietnam, of guns and hospitals, of his wife, and love, and hope.

We talk of things we agree on and things about which we disagree, but I can see how he sees it, if I were standing in his shoes.

He raises heritage chickens and I am raising a spirited child, and his kids are long grown.

We place the buddha and the plant. He places the carefully cut sod.  I arrange rocks to hold the bells which do not meet with my hopes for either clear ringing movement or of heavy-bottomed groundedness. Oh well. There are a million things, I know, that are better in theory than in practice.

And then, my nose fully burned, and my hair blown wild by a wind that has kept up with our conversation, we make our way back up the hill. He finds and hands me a turkey feather. We talk about skunks and the divots they've left everywhere in the grass.

With a hug, we part, and I walk to my car, stinking of the stale beer I spilled from a can I picked up as trash when I first arrived...my eyes seeking sign of cousins of the bees that flew in fast, as soon as my doors opened, and would not get out until ignored fully, with all the doors open, while I moved boxes and buddha and bells to the site.

It has been an hour and a half. And it has been much longer than that. And I am still 4 hours from home.

The light has changed, and now the hillsides show more glorious color-- the air has cleared maybe, and the wind is no longer tossing every leaf upside down.

145 is more beautiful north to south and I creep along, happy that no one is behind me, as I look out over acres of mountain sides, flush with fall color, and the black spears of some sort of evergreen.

I drive home through rain in franconia, hard enough to look like dark coming on.

The down and down and toward home.

Just as it is truly dark, I get out of the car to throw out my donut bag,  and my legs are wobbly from the journey.

It feels like so much longer than  a day.

I look up at the windows of our apartment, the twinkle lights strung perfectly imperfectly across the glass. It is like coming back from the moon, I imagine, welcoming and strange. And I am both lighter and heavier than I was when I left.

Journeys: the way this has gone

Driving up north on Route 3 is a slow rewind through spring.

Back to buds and near bare branches

back to just the gentlest haze of color on the hillsides

snow in the shadows

last week I drove up, 4 hours each way through fog that broke open into ragged-bottomed clouds, the bluest sky, then the hardest rain.

I was looking for a cemetery that I did not find.

Instead I found myself pulling off the road without choosing to, into a gravel parking lot, taking a right turn at the bottom down a dirt road.  Into a smaller space, where my fingers turned the key, opened the door and then I was walking thorugh the woods on a path from my memory

through it, I guess

drawn by it

to turn down a path obscured by a fallen log

through the scent of lemony evergreens (hemlock?) 

the first time I ever walked those paths without a fishing pole, without Jeff.

down to the river, down the bank,

hands into the cold water by the falls.

A large water bird flew down the river, fast and low. Black and white and silent.

The day pulled me apart in ways and places I did not expect, and had me laughing, and swearing, as I went down each of a hundred roads, over a bridge (YES), up a hill that turned just so and opened up (YES, said my body, HERE) only to find that no, it was not the right place. the lump in my throat gathering so much unexpressed and inexpressible

sadness

frustration

loss, and lostness

I drove and drove and drove. I drove for two and a half hours, down roads, up roads, across bridges.

Rain so hard I could barely see.

Rain so hard it turned the dirt roads to muddy slides

I felt my tires slip a million times and each time felt a very different depth of alone-- I was not anywhere that anyone would find me and my signal had been lost 2 hours south.

Then I simply ran out of time.

Drove home.

Could not have been more exhausted.

***

Yesterday, I drove up again. Armed, this time, with different information. My first trip triggered memories, memories of a specific stone, one that was insanely easy to search for on google.

I went with a map, with a plan.

Back through the craggy mountains at franconia notch

back by the old man in the mountain, who fell the year Jeff died.

back up and through and beyond into the strange wide open that is the great northern woods.

I drove to the cemetery on the map. 

Found the stone of memory.

Left the twig of hemlock taken from the fishing spot. Left the pinecone. The stone is of Mettalak, the last of a tribe.

But it was not the cemetery. It is not the one, all those many winters ago, where I stood by the side of the road and threw snowballs laced with ashes over a snowbank too high to climb.

It wasn't. 

So said my body that felt no sign of him, did not feel him in the way the road had been worn down below the grade of the stones. 

So said the sign that noted the road is closed December-May 10th. 

I could not have driven that road.

It was february and the road would have been impassable.

There has been no simplicity in this journey. And that moment, there was an opening back into curiosity.

The wind was howling and the amazingly bright clouds were moving so fast their shadows felt almost tangible.

I got back in my car, and decided to drive back in a different direction, taking different roads, wondering if I would trigger more body memories that could help me navigate. 

Eventually I turned back onto pavement, and I immediately realized I'd turned the wrong way, and I heard, no it isn't. So I drove a mile at most, back to a cemetery I had found last week. One that said yes in every way except the lack of the stone that I had remembered.

But this time, I knew it was the right one. 

I got out and walked.

I looked on the ground, for what, fragments of bone? my wedding ring? I put a stone in my pocket.

I got back in my car, and turned toward home. 

It is high there, and the mountains fall away in all directions, and the light and shadows were moving so quickly with that wild wind, there was more than I could see.

Dark pines are nearly black against the spring green of new buds,

and the hillsides, that amount of open, 

I pulled off to let a truck pass, and to my complete surprise, cried a different way than I usually do about this. It was about the beauty, I guess, and my luck at the gift of just being able to witness.

Witnessing the shadows moving so fast, the light, on that hillside, that one. The one with the bright spring buds, the ones with the dark pines.

remembering how to walk.

Each season, my eyes learn something new. This spring, I learned that the papery leaves on the beech trees that last, miraculously, all winter-- get pushed off by these long spiny spiraled furls of new leaves. The old leaves are parchment. The new ones begin as dark red tips on gray brown twigs.

I walked. I walked in the woods.

In the old days, this would have been nothing to remark on. The walking I mean. The beech leaves would have been worth remarking any day.

But the walking. Remember how i used to walk? I hiked every day, or most days. I spent time outdoors every day. Sometimes in the garden. Sometimes in the hammock. But outside. looking long and far (sky and stars) or close at flowers and roots and dirt.

I walked and breathed fresh air and felt my muscles push me uphill, and slow me down on the descents.  I walked and walked and walked.

I walked.

I have missed it. OH how I have missed it.

Della and I climbed into the thicket beside the big overgrown apple tree, up behind the garage thingy that holds the tools for maintenance here at our apartment building. We made a hole through the branches of the tree, the branches of the bushes next to it, and suddenly were under the tree, a mystical umbrella of branches and sky. Oh loveliness.

Then up behind the tree into the woods.  Woods with tiny tiny pinecones. Woods with fallen branches to step over. Woods with fallen leaves. Woods filled with deer poop.  Woods that smelled like woods and dirt and life.  Up the hill toward the clearning I could feel by the light.  And to the edge of the back side of the golf course! What a surprise that was. I did not know that is where this property ended.  The rustic local course that feels like it is far away. I realize now, the roads fold back, and the clearing makes sense now that I know it. But it felt like a surprise, like I was expecting sheep up there. Not greens.  

We turned back and came downhill again, back under the tree, through the branches, and back into the small slice of grass before the parking lot.  It was a small walk, but a very big walk. I spent so much time thinking about it. How the woods have been there much longer than I have lived here (of course), and of course I look at them and look at them and look at them.  But then, that day, something shifted. The light maybe. My perspective. The woods, I realized, could be hiked through.... it was like an epiphany. And it felt *possible* for the first time. A walk! Yes, with Della. Yes, holding hands and lifting over logs and under branches, and no don't pick that up it's poo. And yes....

And up there, a beech tree. Parchment leaves littering the ground underneath, with a few still on the branches...and new furled leaves waiting.

***

Totally gratuitous Della photo and me, smiling, and leaning wayyyyyy over to compensate for the DellaGrande.  From friday at my Mom's.

light, in three parts

Am sitting with sun coming in
tea warming me after an unexpectedly COLD shower (ug)
and just am trying to gather myself together.

I was going to be taking a goal oriented trip today, a solo trip. A long-ass drive trip. An all-day-in-the-car trip.  An at least one-part-shitty, one-part-maybe-healing kind of trip. But then I realized I was not ready, not really, and I am trying to be ok with that.  I try not to dwell here on shitty history, but sometimes it just is what I am dealing with. This year will be the 10 year anniversary of Jeff's death, and I realized, somewhat to my own surprise, that I was maybe ready to do some things I was not even able to think about a short while ago. One is to find a place to have a marker. A touchstone in the most literal sense. And this must be in the upper reaches of the state, in a place I know he loved. And I was going to go today to meet with a cemetery sexton to talk plot selection, etc. And it turns out, not surprisingly, that the place I picked from the map, upon further reflection, is not the right place. And yes, there is a right place. I have been there before, just long ago and far away. I will remember it when I see it. But I need to go, first. I need to go and look and feel my way toward the place I am remembering. And that will suck differently. Then I can talk plot and narrative arc and denouement. I was to leave well before dawn today to get there for a meeting time, then home again I hoped by dinner. Instead, I am here.

Here.

My beloveds are off eating pancakes, and I am needing to work since I can (I cannot when Della is here, our place is too small, and we are too interactive), and instead of diving into work I just played a bit with something I've been wanting to learn to do-- text along a curve

And I am stoked since it just simply worked.
Yes, I am an engineer by training, but I know no one more persistently thwarted by technology. So when I have success, it is like the biggest surprising YES ever, since my view of technology is that it should either be completely transparent (JUST WORK), or delight me. And this view persists, oh how it persists, in spite of my repeated experiences to the contrary.

So while I gather my expectations for the day while practicing more than a bit of self compassion, I wanted to write since I have been missing words here for a while. Sharing lovely images of Della is wonderful, (see below where Doug helps her look little for just a little longer), but words heal me differently and sometimes I forget that it is important not to hold it all back and down and hope it just magically resolves. There is healing when I let the light in.

another from easter

Surfing the longing

So here I am, luckiest person in the world and I *STILL* twinge uncomfortably with news of someone's pregnancy. WTF? Can I just grow out of this please? Can I just be happy for me, for them, for all of us who are so lucky?

Oh yes, I wish it were different. I wish I were totally emotionally unhooked. I wish I knew that there is no conservation of fertility law, where someone's pregnancy means someone else will wait. I wish I knew with every certain fiber of my complex being that where I am is exactly where I want to be.

Months ago, Mel wrote one heck of a piece on traveling with her ghost child that left me teary and stunned.

I remember at the beginning of the whole IF journey doing some hard work with visualization, and imagining very clearly two children, two "spirit babies"-- a very spunky girl (boy howdy was that on target), and a very shy boy a few years younger who kept hiding behind my legs.

And I think sometimes, a usually very quiet part of me feels that he is missing... somehow, somehow... that somehow there is a piece of our family story that I imagined coming true. Othertimes, oftentimes this is not at all in my awareness; I am fine fine fine with no longing at all.

Believe me, we have our hands and hearts full.
We have the most amazing child in the whole universe.
We are blessed beyond measure, beyond imagining. I am not actually missing anything. I am full to overflowing. Logistically, financially, physically, energetically, it would be *so incredibly challenging* if we had more than one little one.

And yet, there is this whispery recurrent ghosty longing.

If we map this longing, I bet dollars to doughnuts it is a 28ish day cycle, landing smack dab on trigger day. I'm just sayin'.

So it comes and goes. Whispers and wanes.
Like grief I guess.  Yeah.  Just about exactly like grief.

3:3, percussive reset

Well then,
now where were we?

Ahh yes, percussive restart.
Barforama
Yes, it got me too. I thought I would *die* and I wish I were exaggerating.  Worse than labor, and kidney stones. I felt well and truly poisoned, and very very close to passing out many times.  But. Done with that and expecting a rapid recovery. Della is much better, although still off her food, and Doug, who was last to get it and had a different version, is tired as can be but is ok.
Somehow, we are ok.
Tired tired tired with no stamina, but ok.

But The Dread was exhausting and draining and the experience was intense and frightening,
and now, it is over and I feel nearly giddy
and would dance a bit, you know, if I could imagine lifting my feet off the ground. I'll jiggle and weave a bit now, sitting. It feels safer.

On a very plus note, after a few months of increasing discomfort and panic, culminating in a trip to see a new counsellor for some EMDR once I identified my triggers as triggers...I took action.
I made some hard choices as the year wrapped up about how I can best and realistically deal with my financial situation and feel relieved. I realize there might actually be a balance between what my brain knows sometimes and what my heart needs, and this time I feel I found it.

I also did some creative collecting this weekend-- a few opportunities to gather some images as fodder for my paintings.

It was fabulously foggy, with snow, and wet bark, and mmmmmmmmmmm
texture of corn fields, and dried weeds.

yes, I know I am nutty, but this stuff actually feeds me.

And for once? I allowed myself to be fed, to take the time to notice, take it in, and actually grab a few snapshots so I can evoke some of the same mmmmm in the future.

So-- yes, barfing and decluttering and trying to find some balance, and choosing pretty carefully (in this moment) what to put back in.

I really missed my campfire gathering, but felt I made progress this weekend finding my way back to what I know.

Hard to realize just how easy it is to lose sight of things that work when things aren't working.

shifts

The sudden onset of CM this past week, the kind you dream of when trying to conceive in your 40s, is making me feel, well, like shit actually.

I have not had a period since Della, except what I thought was one right after she was born (about 6 weeks after).  Somehow, indications that it might be imminent made me feel so incredibly sad, not PMS blue, but existential sad... a mark of leaving this particular part of my journey maybe, very reluctantly leaving her babyhood, the specter of re-entering hormonal wackitude....

My periods have always been painfully intense and troublesome and I have not missed them one bit. But more than that, I have not missed the hyper awareness of The Cycle and my focus on where I was in my cycle at any given time and what it could possibly mean for our attempts at family building. I have not missed that perpetual obsessive awareness, that compulsive and acute awareness. That particular way of marking time, especially the cliff-drop connection of time passing to mid-40s infertility, well,

yeah.

I have not missed it at all.

So.

I've also been having trouble with my guts again, after a long stretch of miraculous calm.
The Miraculous Calm came about after quitting gluten and dairy.  I have had so few episodes of IBS in the past 3 years I could count them on two hands. But lately, things have shifted so I have been having more and more trouble.

This has knocked me down more a few pegs too-- nothing has impacted my life in a more limiting way than IBS. No, not my introversion. Not my fear of public speaking. But my IBS. It sucks rocks.

Of course, the return of the mucous, and the return of the IBS may be related-- hormonal shifts cause all sorts of collateral shifts in other body systems and functions.

But I immediately cut my diet back down to the bare minimum. Anything I suspected as a trigger is gone for now (except my one cup of pretty dilute tea). So no chicken, no turmeric, no carageenan. None of my beloved Udi gluten free bread (it has traces of corn in it, a known trigger for me).

Yes, things are *calmer*, but I am hungry.  Hungry mostly to be able to stand down, and to once again believe and trust that I am back into a remissiony stage of this thing.


In a further attempt at rebalancing, I got myself to my beloved acupuncturist this week for the first time since Della emerged.

Taking action like that made me feel that I was doing something to make a difference, to take back control. The IBS blues shifted ever so slightly, and I seem to be tolerating my new digestive enzyme supplement well (always a surprise; I suck at supplements).

But the CM blues, those are in full complicated swing, and differently symbolic, hugely messed up and tangled with IF and my age and.... so those I need to learn to be compassionate about, even while I want to kneel on it and force it to shift via the sheer force of intellectual override.

I'm starting to suspect that intellectual override  = unicorns
I'm just sayin'.

Mindful Healing, Day 20 Truth

So, yes, this month of Mindful Healing is not going to be a whole month after all, not a month of posts anyway. It turns out that (*SURPRISE*) thinking/talking/writing about grief and healing is profoundly difficult.  It has positive power (yay transformation!), but also an unavoidable power to keep me pulled down, when really, I am wanting to be pulled up. No, not like a flower, more like a sock.
So.

Here we are.

I want to offer this to you:  healing can come from focus, but it can come from rest. It can be all about intensity, work, process... it can also be about letting it be, leaving it alone, stopping the incessant poking.

Of course, this is how I got into my encapsulation problem, where I created pockets of brand new grief, tucked in there, covered in scar tissue and optimism, created by the false hope that avoidance would result in some miraculous behind the scenes healing.
So I am not advocating avoidance.

But I am advocating being true to yourself.  As I am about to be right here, right now.

We survive our losses by whatever means possible. Breath by breath by breath by breath. I made myself eat. I slept when my body and mind allowed. I moved. I got clean, got dressed, went into the world. No, not every day. No, not always well. No not always.
Often and often with surprise, memories kick in for me, like stepping on a hoe. It is sudden, it is intense, it is difficult. And then there are anniversaries that are tailor-made for emotional slogginess. And oh, this year I wanted so much to do something, anything, that would make this time of year less shitty.

This year I made a promise to myself to do something differently, and I did. And it has been wonderfully and surprisingly healing. It has, indeed, been mindful. It has been transformative. I have come up with some new grief management skills that I will use forever more.

This morning, I woke to a starry sky at 4am, cold clear air.  A need for socks and a sweater. And a feeling, deep down and true, that I am done with this for now. This particular inquiry. I need to stop poking, however productive it has been. I need to let it rest. Let me rest from it as well. I survived the anniversary, and I am ready to not be working on it with such intensity, however mindful, however gentle and well-intentioned.

So,
there you have it.



Now, back to our regularly scheduled program.

Mindful Healing, Day 15 your story

For those of you along for this journey, I wanted to write about telling our stories. Specifically, the twin challenges of working/living/loving alongside those who know your story, and those who don't.

It sucks rocks to have to tell your story to someone new. It sucks to watch their face register the pain of the new information, it sucks even to feel the compassion. And oh, how it sucks to tell it.

It also sucks to have folks who have known you through your loss continue to feel like you are broken,  or in need of protecting, or to feel that somehow they continue to see you through the lens of your loss. It makes it very hard to move forward.

But it also is hard to feel broken, feel in need of protecting, and in the midst of living through the lens of our loss, while others feel it is time we move on, get over it, focus on the positive things that are happening in our lives.

It sucks rocks to be someone with this story.

But try to remember, there is power here too (hidden maybe)- power to connect, power of compassion, power of sensitivity that others don't necessarily have...

No wise words here, just yes, I get it.
There are no secrets here. No tried and true. Just suckitude.


***
We awoke this morning to a vibrant glowing orange sky.
As we watched, it got brighter and brighter, then lightning, thunder, and a slow turn from orange to gray as dawn truly turned to sunrise.

This week of travel and no daycare has resulted in sporadic time for anything external-- full time Della means no time or chance to post.
I'm rolling with it, since this time is a gift.
Time in the car means time to think. Time away from the computer feels like half relief, half panic. So many things piling into my inbox that need the kind of attention I don't have to offer in this moment.
Learning to let it be, oh my, is so challenging!
But the thinking has been fruitful, and the time with Della is intense and wonderful.
I will resurface next week.

Mindful Healing, Day 11 Transformation

By date, this is my hardest day.

But this year, by the mere (and mighty) act of deciding to transform this month into something positive, something mindful and intentional, not something that I am at the mercy of moment to moment...well, something shifted, something transformed, something happened to loosen a grip on my heart that has been holding tight for 9 years.
9.

I do not know what in me has finally allowed this transformation to occur-- maybe it was time passing, maybe it was being tired of feeling so at the mercy of memory and regret, maybe it was just luck that I stumbled on some combination that is allowing me to put forth positive energy while, yes, still remembering.

I'm still actively shoving things aside, don't get me wrong.
But each time my heart wants to put a timeline on this day versus that one, or wants to replay things I know to be true, things I saw, things I heard, I am finding it *easier* to jump off into a memory I believe to be positive. One I can hold that is not about me, not about the loss, but just a good memory. I know I am lucky to have one. I know I am lucky to have this work.  I am lucky to have this outlet, this one, here on blogger.  I am lucky that I can talk about this at all. I am lucky in a million ways.

But for me, the past nine Augusts have always felt like minefields.  Ones I knew to be strewn with mines, not just the possibility, but the certainty. It was a question of when, not whether.

This year, through this act of mindfully cultivating healing and self care each day, gentleness, compassion, all I can say is wow.

It has been transformative for me.

I questioned and question whether this is the right forum for this particular series, but I am connected to no other population that has experienced nested losses quite like this one. I hope that by writing it out, reminding us all to extend ourselves some latitude, gentleness, compassion, and awareness of how complex loss can be, maybe some of you are feeling a little more healed or at least feel that incremental healing is possible.

That would be my wish.  That we all can heal a little bit more, and let positive transformations happen, even (or especially) when they are totally unexpected.

Mindful Healing, Day 10 Breathing

There is a deep fatigue in loss, isn't there? There is so much to carry.

Sometimes, things spiral. Memory, regret, longing.

What if, for this moment, and maybe the next, we just try to be mindful of our breathing. We don't have to try to do anything else. We don't have to be anyone else. We don't have to pretend or imagine or regret. We don't have to wish or long for...
We can just be.

A few days ago I posted a short audio meditation as an assist for "I am here, in this moment" (under 3 minutes long).

I'm going to post it again here, because really?  The only way through anything is breath by breath by breath.
And not every moment has to be filled with heavy lifting.

Today I invite us all to return to this moment, to breathing in this air, to breathing out this breath. 

Hosted by kiwi6.com file hosting. Download mp3 - Free File Hosting.

Background music is Healing Relaxation With Tibetan Singing Bowls

Mindful Healing, Day 8 Identity

As part of our healing process, it helps to admit that with our loss, came the loss of one or more identities, roles, personas, facets of our selves as we were, were becoming, or hoped to become.

There is such power in projecting forward our hopes for ourselves and our lives and our loved ones. We connect to an outcome, or the status quo. 

I introduce myself-- I am Kate, I am a ____ usually filled in with workstuff

but really, aren't we all a million different things?

Some of these are contextual

some are permanent

some are transitory

some are things we can have or achieve again 

and some are not

Like innocence, loss of identity can be staggering.

Who am I now? is such an existentially frightening question.

In the moments after loss, this can be profound.

But it turns out, for many of us, there are longer term implications too. 

We will forever be the person who experienced the loss.

So, I invite you to join me in an intention-- 

just for today I will honor the lost parts

and I will hold myself gently in cupped hands, light streaming through the seams, glued imperfectly... no, not back together, but into something new.

Mindful Healing, Day 7 Innocence

With loss comes loss of innocence.
Suddenly, there we are.
We cannot unknow it.
We cannot undo it.
We cannot not have it have happened.
We cannot ever be the person we were before.

Wisdom comes, yes, but the expense. Oh, the expense.
Fear can come too-- fear that something like this could happen again. Conscious fear, unconscious fear, ride shotgun, whispering worry.

But it cracks us open to a different kind of compassion. A different way of knowing. A different way we can connect to other people.

It is one of the things that makes this medium, this internet, so powerful.  We connect over countless miles, different cultures, different languages, over losses that are somehow shared experiences. Not replicas.  But over the solace of hearing
Yes, I have been in that trench.
Yes, I have fought that fight.
Yes, I have been wounded too.

There is such a profound potential for connection, for offering and receiving compassion.

Just for today, imagine extending yourself the same compassion you would extend a stranger-- gentle understanding, room for whatever is coming up, support, kindness.

I think of the stones that line my shelves, the ones worn smooth from untold waves, of salt and sand.
The ones I picked up warm from the sun, piled into my pockets for comfort.
Their velvet softness a response to a billion minute collisions.

Mindful Healing, Day 6 Collateral damage

No loss is simple.
When we lose something, there are often many other things we lose along the way. Faith, hope, expectations, dreams, a future we envisioned, peace, identity.

Today I invite you to acknowledge that there might be unresolved pieces, futures and dependencies you might not even know you had started to create, build up and build on. I invite you to acknowledge them even if you don't know what they are.

This is not about intention, or lack of intention.
This is not about setting ourselves up.
This is not about foolishness or delusion.
These pieces-- doesn't it make sense that they are the natural byproduct of hope?-- ideas and emotional connections cast forward into a future with some expectation (however unconscious) of how things might be or become.

This is about all the things that come along for the ride when we begin down a path.
Yes, our fears are along for the ride too (go check out Sprogbloggers most excellent post).
But this post is about all of the things that line the sunny side of the road, all of the good things we imagine that will be.

The fact is, I know of only some of my pieces of hope. But I am still, all these years later, realizing just how many there were and are.

So how do we best deal with this unfinished business? This hope, or that one, that we suddenly realize or eventually realize is tied up to what we hoped would happen? These bits that are not central to the loss, but are often central to who we are and who we let ourselves become?

I think the best we can do is hold ourselves gently and offer heartfelt compassion to both who were were then, and who we are now. We did and we do the best that we can.

I think that we need to be more gentle with ourselves when we catch ourselves in our whatiffing. In our whatmighthavebeens. In our ifonlyies.  In our perhaps unfolding awareness that our loss means the loss of so much more.   Be gentle--Your future, as you envisioned it consciously or unconsciously, shifted out from under your feet. You may feel out of whack in ways that you cannot explain, or in ways you cannot articulate.  These places of unmet hope, of unmet expectations need healing too.  They may need a bit of attention, perhaps even a bit of grief, a bit of letting go, even if we do not know all that they are, or all that they impact.

Be aware that there might be an undercurrent holding you to these nested losses, that these too might be links we hold as connections to what we lost. So it is not necessarily as easy as brushing dust from our hands, saying There, enough of That.

I offer this intention and invite you to do the same:  

Just for today, even if I do not know all of the details of all of the repercussions of my loss, I admit and acknowledge that there were plenty.  

I will accept (for today) the fact that some I will know, and some I will never know.

But no matter what, I will be gentle with myself as they come up, and release them as best I can. 

I will also meditate on releasing all of the tangled bits I will never fully know, imagining combing them out, perhaps twining them around my hand, imagining placing them lovingly in a basket tied to a balloon, imagining releasing them. 

Mindful Healing, Days 3-5 First do no harm

I'll be mostly offline until Monday, so I'll offer all of us this seemingly simple assignment for the next few days:

Let's be gentle with ourselves.
Let's be mindful of when we are doing more harm than good. Even if the harm is disguised as habit.
Let's try to make choices that lighten and simplify...
and let's give ourselves permission to not make decisions that we are not ready to make, to not make plans, to not say yes, to not say no.  Let's give ourselves permission to buy time, say, we'll see, to wait until we know more or know more clearly what we truly want or what we can truly handle.
For the next few days, imagine that we are a close friend. How would we treat us? What words would we choose to speak? What support would we offer? What diversions would be create? What laughter would we find? What gentle touch, what compassion, what kindness would come?

Give yourself that.
Go on, try it.
I'll try too.

See you monday.

Mindful Healing, Day 1 Shame

Jumping right in to my month of mindful healing with a toughie since it is what was rattling my cage as I awoke this morning:
Let's talk about shame.

Yikes, right?
Now wait, don't click away; this may be gentler than it may appear.
It does not require you feeling any additional shame.
Or doing any deep delving into discomfort or cause and effect.
Or replaying.

This is about acknowledging that, for many of us, grief is tangled up with guilt and shame.
And most of us know what our shame triggers are, or at least are familiar with some of them.
And this is about releasing the grip that shame has on our hearts. Even if it just releases a little, wouldn't that additional space be a great thing?

***
Ok, first and most importantly:  If you do not feel safe, don't do this.
Let me repeat,
if this does not feel safe, just don't do this.
Don't even read it.
Screw it.
This is about healing, not hurting.  And if this hurts? There are better ways to use your time toward healing your heart.

Promise me, heck, promise you, that you'll stop if it sucks, ok?

Option 1: Quietly speaking the truth so that your heart can hear it.
Try saying out loud (even a whisper into your cupped hands counts):
I acknowledge my feeling of shame, but I was not and am not responsible for what happened.

Then imagine letting it go, imagine the words sitting cupped in your palms and then blow them away as if they are dandelion seeds, and imagine them floating away.

You do not need to repeat any details at all about what happened, you already know them by heart.
Just whisper and gently, compassionately, release the words.

If it feels right, you can do this again and again, feeling the weight lessen each time (the first time is hardest).  You may find yourself speaking louder as the weight lifts. Or you may find this goes deeper and deeper and once is PLENTY.
Trust yourself.

You can repeat this for other facets of the shame-- be careful and mindful to use language that supports your highest and best.


Option 2: If you'd rather do something more tangible, write it down.
Again, write the acknowledgement of the shame, and then state the reverse of the thing that is causing shame. EVEN IF YOU DON'T BELIEVE IT (yet). Use "for what happened" in place of the event, don't replay it.

Then, shred it. Light it on fire. Release it/transform it in some way that allows it to not be buried or hidden (for example, don't paint over it)-- truly let it be gone.

It is important to acknowledge it, but it is also important to not dwell.


To close, be very gentle with yourself.  Open your eyes, engage your brain in the here and now, and really look at something way out in the distance--trees, clouds, sky, things that are big and real and current and humbling....
really see what you are looking at, this sky, this cloud, that tree...
put your hand over your very big loving heart, fill yourself with as much love as you can muster and whisper (inside your head is fine):
No matter what I may think or feel, I deserve healing. I deserve wholeness. 

Ground yourself in the here and now. Wiggle those toes.  Breathe deeply, taking in this moment.  In this moment, nothing is happening but compassion and healing.