Tag: blog

Plus One Year’s Eve

Well, folks. I made it. This is my 366th post in a row having officially started writing this blog one year ago tomorrow. Happy anniversary to me.

Funny how anniversaries and life just seem to creep up on you. No fanfare or fireworks. Just progression.

I started this blog as a place to gather my thoughts while I committed to writing a book. There has been a book sitting in me for years, or so I’ve been told. I finally wanted to let it out.

So did that book get written? That depends on how you look at it. I wrote enough copy to fill a book certainly. But the technical aspects of book writing were never brought to bear on this project.

A beginning, middle and end to start. No. I chose to share my thoughts and insights into a range of eclectic topics as they arose or came to my attention. In that sense, I honored my own unfolding process and not a publisher’s checklist.

It has been an opportunity to share wisdom I’ve gleaned over the years through the writings of others.

It has been an opportunity to explore and share where I came from and how I healed from it.

It has given me a chance to publicly grieve the loss and raise up some people I admired.

I have a better sense of what matters to me and what I will no longer tolerate. Peace is top item on the list of goals these days. I have turned my back on drama.

This has not been a journal. I’ve done that before. In journals, I shared my deepest fears and insecurities. I bitched and wailed and generally pursued a story line of “woe is me.” This blog was deliberately something other than that.

I distilled the key learnings and strategies that kept me going on my “woe is me” days. I shared what I did to endure and prevail over “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” I worked at learning to forgive myself.

The gap between intellect and emotion can be vast. Such is the process of learning and growth. All of us seem to be slaves to unconscious programming we work our whole lives to understand and overcome.

I have carved out a little niche. An intellectual mini-garden that I can nurture and visit frequently. I don’t yet know what my next steps are. I will write a final post tomorrow just for the symmetry of ending on the same date I started last year.

I will once again this year attend the Getting Away to Write workshop in New Smyrna Beach, Florida next week. A geographic coda to this writing exercise as I started this blog there last year.

I must thank all of you who subscribed and read what I wrote. The comments were usually spot on. Insightful and helpful. The likes were encouraging and kept me motivated. I’ll pop up again from time to time in your inbox like other bloggers.

It’s time now for coffee and morning meditation. Time to ground myself and prepare for the day. It will be deliberately low-key as most of my days are lately. Such a welcome gift.

I love living this way. Forgiving myself as well as forgiving those who trespassed against me. Marinating in the memories of a lifetime and looking back with gratitude. Enjoying the living environment I’ve created whilst living with someone I love who loves me back.

Above all else, I’m certain that my journey – like a billion other journeys taking place in the world out there at this moment – is but a single cell in the vast corpus of life on our planet. Both unique and utterly ordinary.

Whatever is ahead, I plan to enjoy the remainder of the ride to the best of my ability.

Thank you for sharing part of the journey with me.

Near Loss Experience

What is a wakeup call? When do we get them? And why?

Having nearly lost access to my blog recently, these thoughts came to mind. I was forced into a position where I had to reflect on how I would feel if a certain something (or someone) I cared about were to leave my life permanently.

In part, my spiritual beliefs have helped me understand loss better. We don’t really lose anything it turns out. People who are taken from us live on in us. No, it is nowhere near the same as sitting down with them for tea or hearing their voice.

But the voice and memories they left us live on inside us. When my Dad died, someone sent me this in a sympathy card: “Now he is no longer where he was. Now, he is always with you.” I can conjure up my Dad in my mind’s eye whenever I want to.

I think about how much time and energy we put into “protecting” our possessions. Insurance. Wall safes. Safety deposit boxes. Alarm systems on our doors and windows. Certainly all are valuable for our peace of mind (and to legally comply in some cases as it is with auto insurance.)

I am struck not only by how much I have lost in my life but what replaced it. The family of origin I lost was replaced by dear, lifelong friends. I’ve made a safe and stable home to replace the one I never had as a child. I replaced low self-esteem with consistently decent behavior that has built a solid sense of self-respect. The lost love of my childhood was eventually replaced by a solid and mature love relationship.

Are all of these replacements equivalent to what was? No they aren’t but it doesn’t matter. To start, human beings are infinitely adaptable. It is our collective superpower as a species. Those who let go of the past and accept and build on what is in front of them right now are survivors.

To feel joy in the present, we cannot constantly grieve for the past. Doing so is a form of emotional sickness. Of course, we have strange ideas about this sometimes. A widow fears sullying her late husband’s memory by dating again or falling in love.

Yet, we hear that in the healthiest relationships, spouses pray for a new beginning for their partner if they should pass. We are given the time we are given with someone or something. When it is over, it is time to let go and move on.

In your own time, of course. It is ludicrous to think that there is a deadline by which to stop grieving. Most people who have suffered the loss of loved ones never really do “recover” completely. That is part of loving.

Anniversaries, birthdays, holidays can all bring back memories. Instead of slipping into grief and depression, we could turn those feelings around and use those occasions to honor and celebrate what we once had with them. This can also be painful and may bring tears. But, of catharsis.

It is a reframing and acceptance of grief to recognize its’ inevitability in all of our lives. Go to the graveyard. Leave flowers. Or raise a glass of fine single scotch whiskey in their memory. Pour some on their grave (not too much, of course! Fine spirits should be savored by the living, after all.)

It all circles back to the need to live each moment in the present. I have been as guilty as the next person of running around doing a bunch of things instead of carving out time and settling in for a chat with a friend.

I have improved. There are phone calls I will not make unless I have a free hour to talk. I still write letters and send cards occasionally. We forget the impact of the literal written word in our high tech age.

Not only do I love sending cards, I love getting them. Someone has taken the time to pick out a card, write a note, find a stamp and put it in the mailbox. That’s a mighty loving gesture right there.

Access to my blog was finally restored after a day of minor panic and frustration. It was a wake-up call to secure my writing output somewhere that it might be safe and accessible even if the internet crashes one day. (Wouldn’t that be something? Life as we know it would come to a complete standstill.)

And even if it was lost, would it matter? Sadly not. Like my life, these musings are but a grain of sand in the grand scheme of things. They are only important to me because they are mine. If you find something in here that resonates, that pleases me. We are all – as my friend said to me just the other day – “walking each other home.”

That makes me exactly like all of you. We are all most interested and indeed, called upon to nurture and protect what is ours. While we can and while we still are able.

One day, we won’t be here to do that. If we are lucky, there will be a few folk out there who will carry us in their hearts until their lives come to an end just as we carried those who went before us.

In this way, we throw our two cents worth into the infinite and self-replenishing fountain of love and wisdom of the ages. For others to carry forward. In perpetuity.