How many many folks do you know who lead with their wounds? In our family we have a few. Perhaps each of us speaks “woundology” (thanks, Carolyn Myss for this term) when we’re over tired, unduly stressed or in need of an excuse for our poor choices or performance in the human arena, and “The sun was in my eyes” was already taken that day.
There are times when I feel wretched and woe-be-gone, or wake up feeling “broken all over again” (Geneen Roth in Feeding the Hungry Heart), lamenting losses from my early childhood, but mostly I’m grateful for the gifts I’ve been given and try to celebrate them - even the ones that came wrapped in bits of torn flesh. All those gifts have brought me to where I am today. Although it may sound egotistical, most days, I’m happy in my (healed) skin and I don’t have any plans to do away with myself.
My husband and I know families at camps where we volunteer whose losses are so profound that it makes us wonder if there is a beneficent God or rather a Joe Btfsplk type character with a dark cloud over his head walking beside them. (Thanks, Al Capp, for this icon of bad luck.) Yet, these same families reach their arms back to help others on the path who are newly bereaved - even while they are still bruised from life’s cruelest blow - the loss of a child. Where they find the stamina to help others while they themselves are still so raw, I’ll never know. (I hope.)
Camp certainly gives perspective to my “hang-nails,” so it is all the more surprising when we’re broadsided by a family member whose predictability can be timed. How LONG will it take “A” to complain that “B” never calls, never writes and never lets “A” know what’s going on? How MANY times can “X” squeeze into the conversation that horrible loss of forty five years ago?
Don’t worry. If you are reading this, you are NOT one of those family members.
I don’t believe you ever get “over” some losses, but I find it mysterious that some folks seem capable of “going-on” with their lives and can find meaning and be of service while others are so shattered that not only do they carry around a suitcase full of sad, but they seem to have been frozen in time - as if the past is right here, right now, in the form of laminated lamentations.
As Venus is about to “transit the sun,” I’m wondering if it is the star’s configuration at the moment of our birth, or ancestral imprints, karma, or previous trauma history or all of the above that determines how “big owies” will shape us.
One of my go-to quotes for friends who've recently lost a loved one reminds us that grief is a natural part of life; that grief experienced as a flow that ebbs and flows can set us free to get back IN the flow. We cannot afford to wall ourselves off and stay in the back water eddies.
Get ready to weep tears of sorrow as bright as the brightest beads, and like the bright beads you string to wear round your throat at the burial, gather your tears and string them on a thread of your memory to wear around your heart or its shattered fragments will never come whole again.
--- Laurens van der Post
Something about completing the natural response to loss - which is a grief process - makes us whole again.... and maybe even better than "whole." Perhaps we stand to gain so much more from every "gift" life hands us... compassion, resilience, spiritual understanding and wisdom.
It is awe inspiring to witness human resilience. When I see others thriving in the face of horrific challenges, how can I not try my very best to persevere despite my small grievances?
I’m FRESH from the absolute delight of celebrating our granddaughter’s third birthday (got home just hours ago from the north part of California). Once home, I got clobbered by phone calls from two such family members as mentioned above. The contrast is astonishing. The three year old joy maker and her mama know how to thrive and be thrilled by simple pleasures - even while faced with an uncertain situation. (The kidlette's dad is dogged by some losses. We're all hopeful he can heal them.)
Meanwhile, I'll strive to make lemonade (or make lemon merengue pie, as my beloved says) rather than laminating lamentations to make a rigid wall to keep out life. It's a work in progress. My recipe still has more bitter than sweet... but Im working on it.
My heart goes out to those who get stuck in grief - or rage or terror. I hope we all may find our way out... letting the river of tears flow and flowing right along with it to the Sea of Tranquility.
From there... let's see what happens when Venus goes across the sun, shall we?
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