This week has been one of visiting family. My Dad turned 80 this past week and we got together to celebrate. I got to see some family I had not seen for some time. After the big party my parents and I headed out to their new seasonal spot on the Island called Rock Bay and yesterday I went with my Aunt to Cathedral Grove. These are beautiful places with babbling brooks, ocean water and big beautiful trees. There is something about nature that helps me to reflect, relax and rejuvenate and look at life from a different perspective.
From this perspective I can see the big picture of how I have been going down a completely unknown path since last October. A big part of this journey has been exploring new modalities of healing and facing some real fears. Travelling alone certainly was a fear of mine that I seem to be more comfortable with. I have always been a little uncomfortable meeting new people and lately I have found out that not only is meeting new people okay, it can actually be fun! I have been researching and learning a lot about grief and loss. As I speak with others, I internalize what others who have experienced great loss have to say. I am learning not to be afraid of forming my own ideas about grief as I go. As I work through my own grief process, what I know to be true may change but my internal compass has always been yearning to find the way through the grief and find the way to happiness and joy. I have been facing my fears and doing things despite them. It is a choice that I have made in my quest to make my way in my new life. It hasn’t been easy.
We are all bound to experience a loss at some point in our lives. It doesn’t matter what kind of loss we feel, it is personal to us. It is part of the journey of life. There will be pain, that is inevitable. Some of the pain is almost unbearable. This kind of pain is what we all hope to avoid in life. Seeing and feeling the pain is what we fear when we witness others around the world who have suffered considerable loss. We can’t even imagine what they are going through and our hearts go out to them and we feel powerless and also we feel fear. We fear the pain, the heartache and the despair. No one wants to go through it themselves because we know it hurts.
The loss I have had to go through has been painful. There is no choice in the pain. I cannot stop it from coming and when it hits it takes my breath away. Each time it happens I find a new way to move through it. I think we can all benefit from learning ways to move through our pain and learn not to fear it. We need to learn how to support each other by connecting with each other and facing the pain together even though it is frightening. We need to be very kind to ourselves and each other. I still avoid the pain sometimes even though I know I need to face it. It is normal. This is something I am working on. We also need to learn to let go of the pain. Letting the pain go can actually be scary too. Letting go of the pain means moving on. It means letting go of our past and creating a new future that is unknown. That my friends, is a hard lump to swallow for me because this is not how I wanted things to be but I know that creating a new future is a choice I must make if I want to heal and grow.
There is a saying. Pain is inevitable. Suffering is a choice. I believe we absolutely create our own suffering. As harsh as that sounds, it is true. Our minds and our thoughts are very powerful. Our thoughts create our emotions. When I lost Blaine there were so many thoughts that went through my mind and so many emotions to go with them. At first I had very little control over my thoughts or my emotions. I was processing all that just happened and as the days went along I thought a lot about how it all happened, evaluated what I thought I did right or wrong and what life itself had done to me. Sometimes I wondered if Blaine and I had just chosen to do something differently, if there would have been a different outcome. Sometimes I still think about that, but not as much. I have concluded that there was not much else we could have done and anyway, even if we could have, there is not a darn thing I can do about it now. I can’t go back in time. If I keep dwelling on that thought over and over, I am causing myself suffering. I can choose to let that thought go.
If I start to notice my own thoughts I can sometimes actually change them and avoid some suffering. For example, the other day I recognized that my mind was going back to the day that Blaine passed. I could remember every detail. I remember what he looked like, what it was like to say goodbye, the emotion, the surroundings, all of it. I can remember it as if it was happening right now. As I think about it, along with it comes the emotion again. I can almost relive the entire experience, kind of like when you watch a movie. It’s not real but yet you get caught up in the emotion. I have started to recognize that revisiting this over and over in this way is a choice. I can determine whether that thought is actually helping me or not and if it is not, I can actually stop that thought and replace it with something else. I can change the way I perceive that day. I can look at it in a different way. I can think about the fact that he is not in pain anymore. I can think about the fact that I am grateful we got to have that time with him. I can think about how wonderful the nurses were, how awesome my kids were and how proud he would be of his family and on and on.
I often think about our trip to Jamaica. We got back just in time for Covid to hit. I can think about how happy we were there. I can remember how much fun we had ravelling together and how beautiful it was and I can feel the joy we felt as we checked into that beautiful resort. I have a video of it too if I would like to relive it. This creates an emotion. Is it sad? Yes it can be. I can think about the fact that we won’t ever be able to do that again. It is okay when I feel that way. I am allowed to be sad about that. But in time I know it could also be a happy memory if I choose it to be. That is all my choice. I cannot change the fact that Blaine is no longer here but I can change how I think about it. Now I am not going to say this is easy at all but I believe it is quite doable in time. The first step is recognizing the thoughts you are having and then next decide if you want to keep revisiting those thoughts in that way or if you want to change them.
I don’t know if you have heard of Eckart Tolle. His book, A New Earth, was one of the things that really helped me with my thoughts when Blaine was sick. He also wrote a book called The Power of Now. He talks about controlling our thoughts by living in the present moment. We tend to let our minds run to the past or the future. Most of us spend our days thinking about one or the other. It’s kind of like running on autopilot. Do you ever wonder why time passes you by? It’s because you aren’t actually living in the present moment. You are busy thinking about what happened in the past or trying to prepare yourself for the future. By doing this, you are essentially missing your life.
Now I realize you have to think about the past or future sometimes. Our lives do depend on being able to prepare for tomorrow or remember things that happened in the past so we can learn from them but when you pay attention to your thoughts you will start to recognize whether your thoughts are actually productive and helping you or if they are not. If they aren’t helping you then you might try to change them. If we focus on the present moment and pay attention to what is happening inside of us and around us in that moment, something changes. You can practice living in the moment by thinking of things you are grateful for in that moment. Say them out loud or write them down. You can practice just noticing things in the room or sensations in your body. You can practice taking deep breaths. You can pray. You can write down your thoughts. You can also do kind, fun and helpful things for yourself or others at that moment. What you decide to do and think is always a choice that you can make.
One of the things I did for an exercise with my grief coach was I set an alarm for a few choice moments in the day. Each time the alarm went off I wrote down what emotion I was feeling and then what thought was going on in my head at that time. Was I thinking about something in the past, in the future or was I actually in the moment? It was an interesting exercise. I welcome you to try it if you like. Check and see where your thoughts are the majority of the time. If you are causing yourself some suffering by letting those thoughts run wild in your head don’t worry. It’s okay. We are human and this is what we tend to do. Just remember that if you pay attention to your thoughts, you have an opportunity to change them. You have the choice to be kind to yourself in every moment. You always have a choice.
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