Just Be Sure To Notice The Collateral Beauty

Have you ever lost a loved one?  If you have, then you know the devastating sadness that accompanies our every waking moment afterwards.  You know the daze in which we spend our days and nights, questioning God, the Universe – that incessant question of…

Why? 

Following the Why?

Trails the How? 

How will I go on after losing this special person in my life?

We all pass through grief in different way, in different times.  Some of us cha-cha through the stages of grief, moving forward and backward as we heal.  Sure, they say time heals all wounds, but wounds change us in ways we could have never imagined.

I recently watched the movie Collateral Beauty which has profoundly impacted my life.  I highly recommend it to you.  Here’s a clip of  Collateral Beauty Explained.

May in watching the clip you find peace and healing as you grieve and may you open up to the profound connection to everything in life.

Shine On!

xo

Gratitude

There is a calmness

to a life lived in gratitude

– a quiet joy.

~Ralph H. Blum

Gratitude for what is, what was and what may be.  This is how I live my life.  I am grateful for all the experiences, even those which have been sad, devastating and hard, as well as those experiences where I have searched and found the ‘good’ in what initially I viewed with suffering in my heart.  We have all heard, ‘time heals all wounds.’  But is that really true?  I am undecided, but yet, I feel that there is a choice in how we view the wounds as time goes by.  We can choose to have the wounds define us or empower us.  We are free to choose and it is in our choice, we continue to find peace and calmness in our lives.

So today on Thanksgiving, may we look upon the day with gratitude, love, calmness and joy.  View our world with peace in our hearts and allow healing love to surround us.

As always, I am grateful to be here with  you, to connect with you and to find the joy in the moment with you.  Let’s share gratitude for The Presents of Presence together!

Shine On!

xo

 

 

Saying Goodbye To A House

Saying goodbye has always been hard for me.  It’s always been that way my whole life.  To let go is a right of passage and even though I’m letting go of a home which was never mine, it’s just making me sad.  I guess it’s the final part of an era in my Aunts’ lives and it’s breaking my heart.

I can’t figure out why I am so sad for honestly I am so very happy that the closing is scheduled and we have successfully gotten it into selling condition after all that we had to do.  But there’s a small part of me which can’t stop crying for the bereft feeling inside that I can’t label.

I wrote this a few weeks ago and simply couldn’t post it.  I was intensely sad to let go of an era ~ not so much for me, but for my family.  But now it’s a few weeks later and I’ve got some clarity.  Isn’t that always the way ~ get into the observer mode in your life, let a little time pass and voila, you understand all the tears, you can deal with the grief in a better way and you can let go of whatever it was you were holding onto back then.

Time heals by lessening hurts.  Although I don’t think some hurts ever truly heal or for that matter, some emptinesses never can be fully filled.  But we can move on, we can take baby steps towards healing and we can fill the emptiness with healing love.

Shockingly, I think it helps when people have Alzheimer’s Disease and Dementia in some cases like this one.  They simply don’t remember the life they had a few months ago.  There doesn’t seem to be any hurt or sadness in the present moment, there is only presence, love and happiness.  Sure we’ve had times whereby my family members get confused with the past and present, but a gentle change in direction of conversations or a redirect in a kind way, helps immensely.

Shine On!

xo

Does Time Heal?

 

“It has been said, ‘time heals all wounds.’ I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone.”
― Rose Kennedy

How’s this for a quote?  I liked it at first I must admit.  But then, as I allowed the words to sink in and thought of my own wounds from living more than 40 years, enduring breast cancer and losing loved ones, I felt like it was a bit controversial too.  Perhaps I am being over-sensitive today.

What do you think?

Does it depend on the wounds ~ the type, the severity, the age?  Or is it an all-encompassing a wound, is a wound, is a wound?  Or does it depend upon the person who is wounded?

I have wounds, scars which train track across my body.  Scars from breast cancer surgeries, from pregnancy, from life.  The physical ones that you can see if I were to show you.  I have pains from those scars and surgeries that never quite go away.  A dull throb that even though I am aware of every minute of everyday, I have gotten used to ~ the pains have lessened but have never gone away.

I have mental and emotional scars as well.  I think we all do.  I’ve found that in forgiving, I am given peace in my life, in my spirit, in myself.  That was a gift to me.

It’s kind of like the sadness which can permeate life.  I’m sad for all that I have lost, but again, the pain has lessened, but it has never gone away.  I do my best to keep it in check and I believe I overcome it most days.  Gratitude for the blessings in life helps immensely.  Accepting and transitioning to the new normal after a tragedy helps this process as well.

But it’s never fully gone.  It can be a gentle reminder or it can be a gaping hole in your life.  You choose how you deal with your own wounds.  It’s one of the perks of being you.  You can allow the wound to fester, to infect and to override any happiness in your life.  Or you can allow it to settle into your being, a gentle or not so gentle reminder of what you’ve endured, the power that you have within you, that inner strength that has led you to continue on living this life.

We all have challenges.  We all carry wounds.  We can allow those wounds to barricade ourselves into a caged life of loneliness, fear and sadness or we can reach out beyond our wounds to connect with others, to understand that simple connection of life and to grow with it, to turn the wound into a positive, into a way of digging deeper in to our soul’s purpose and to align ourselves with love.

It’s up to you.

You are not your wounds.  YOU are deeper than the wounds you’ve suffered. 

YOU are LOVE.

Shine On!

xo