Tag: living

Peace, Love, and Grief – From Seeds to Seedlings

I have been here a while.
I am alone.
I have learned to be okay with that.

Here, it feels warm.
Here, it feels safe.
Here, I can just be…
No worrying…
No crying…
No feeling…
No life.

I must find my courage.
I must break out of this shell of isolation,
And like a seed,
I must push out of the comfort of my own creation
And move toward the sun…
To places unknown.
~ Linda, January 2024

Losing someone is not easy, whether that loss is due to death or relationships deteriorating. Losing someone with whom you shared every aspect of your life and thought you would continue that for the rest of your life is even harder. Readjusting your vision for the future can feel overwhelming. Staring ahead at all the years in front of you, without that person by your side, can feel like an impossible path.

When Bruce died, I completely imploded. My world and everything I thought I knew about my life crumbled in an instant. For months, I wandered through my world in a fog. I did things out of muscle memory, but I wouldn’t call it living.

I was eating and breathing… sleeping and exercising… paying the bills and going to work… but that was it. There was no joy… no excitement… no hope. The only things I felt were sorrow and abandonment… grief and loneliness. Sadness became my constant companion.

I did all the things that were supposed to bring healing. I went to therapy. I went to support groups. I journaled. I expressed myself through poetry, art, and gardening. I created scrapbooks of our life together, including all of our correspondence through the years from emails to love notes to cards.

I did “all the things” that were supposed to help… And as I completed each one, I checked it off “the list”. Still, I struggled to move forward and actually start to live again.

Thankfully, Bruce left a wonderful legacy behind of spirituality and healthy self-love. For years, I have worked hard to follow the trail he blazed ahead of me. I started reading the books he read. I began listening to the speakers he admired… I started following his example of a morning meditation/grounding time… And after a while, things slowly… very slowly started to shift.

I still avoided crowds. I still didn’t want to seek out new friendships. I was still more comfortable alone. In an effort to never experience this kind of pain again, I stayed inside my own self-induced isolation. The solace I found there felt safe – lonely and not exciting – but safe.

This last year, though, I came to realize something new. While I may have needed this self-isolation in the beginning as I was trying to find my way through this hurt and grief, somewhere along the line, it became unhealthy.

Like a seed in the earth, I felt safe and warm in my own little space all by myself. There was a certain amount of growth and change (germination, if you will) that needed to happen there. However, I was not meant to stay there indefinitely. For life to continue, I had to push myself out of that comfort zone, toward the unknown. As I came to learn, when the timing was right, that journey… that push to the unknown landed me in the sunshine… nurtured by the love of my family and friends, I am flourishing and growing once again.

It hasn’t been all roses and sunshine. (See what I did there? Lol!) But I don’t regret a single step. This is life – the bad, the good, the boring, the exciting, the sadness, and the joy… All of it… Every crazy unknown step… After all, it takes both rain and sunshine for any of us to finally bloom and share the true beauty of our lives with the world around us.
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Grief changes us. This journey is not an easy path for anyone. That is why I share the mistakes I have made, as well as what I have felt and learned along the way. Even sharing our stories of love and life can be helpful on this journey. We know learning to function on this new path is hard, and it is easy to lose our way or forget that we don’t have to do it alone. I don’t think any of us chose to be here… I know I didn’t. Yet, this is where life has landed us for now… This is where we are. Our lives are now filled with challenges we never imagined and emotions that feel overwhelming at times. So often, I think I have it all figured out, only to find that isn’t true at all. Despite the years since Bruce passed, my life is still filled with challenges, as I am sure yours is too. Learning to take it one day/moment at a time is all any of us can do.

Thankfully, I know I am not alone… None of us are… We have each other. It is our love for those we have lost that brings us together into this space where we can share our experiences. I believe the sharing of our stories is so important… I believe it is healing. Do you have a story to tell? I believe we can find courage and strength in one another’s stories. I believe we can offer each other empathy when we open our hearts to one another. I don’t know about you, but it makes me feel better knowing there are others out there who understand what I mean, and what I feel. It’s nice to know I’m not alone… Maybe this strikes a chord with you too. We would all love to hear your thoughts or your story. If you would like to share your experience or if you need a helping hand or maybe a virtual hug, let us know. We are here for you.

Please do… This is our community. To share your thoughts and experiences go to the comments and leave your message.*

This is a weekly blog, for daily affirmations we have a Facebook page of the same name. Join us daily at www.facebook.com/peaceloveandgrief

* Be advised that all comments are subject to approval prior to posting. Any comments determined to be spam or not in accordance with the mission of this website/blog will not be approved or posted. Furthermore, any comments determined to be hostile in nature will be reported to the proper authorities. Thank you.

Peace, Love and Grief… Surviving Versus Living

“Last night was rough. Woke up numb this morning. Praying God will hold to his promise and heal my pain. Where is God? I am abandoned. I have been angry, I know… I am trying. I remember once when was so mad at Bruce. He just reached out and hugged her. At first she resisted, but he wouldn’t stop hugging her. Instead he said, ‘You need this hug. You need to know I love you.’ … That is what I need from God…”
~ Linda, Feb 2013

Surviving versus living… That is where I found myself after Bruce passed away. I believe that conflict eventually becomes the choice of every grieving person. In the beginning, I remember the pain was so intense it took everything in me just to keep breathing. Getting out of bed and moving through my day was a moment by moment miracle. The basics of survival, like breathing and eating, which normally are done without much thought, not only required thought, they required will-power. It took everything in me just to survive.

I felt so very alone and isolated. None of my friends or family had been through this… I didn’t know who to turn to or how to ask for what I needed. Yet, I knew I was not the only person to have been on this path. I knew it because of the quotes and Bible verses that kept popping up around me, such as:

I am bowed down and brought very low;
All day long I go about mourning…
I am feeble and utterly crushed;
I groan in anguish of heart…
For I am about to fall,
And my pain is ever with me.
~ Psalm 38: 6,8,17

Maybe it sounds weird, but it brought me a bit of comfort to know others had gone before me on this path. Others knew how deep this pain could be… Maybe I was not so alone after all. Because of my faith, I also found promises of hope in verses such as:

My sorrow is beyond healing.
My heart is faint within me…
Is there no balm in Gilead?
Is there no physician there?…
‘For I will restore you to health and I will heal you of your wounds,’ declares the Lord.
~ Jeremiah 8:18,22 and 30:17

AND

Then you shall call and the Lord will answer,
you shall cry for help and he will say, “Here I am!”
~ Isaiah 58:9

And yet, I still seemed to feel utterly abandoned and alone… I still felt like I was merely surviving for a very long time. I did a lot during that time in an attempt to heal… I attended a support group, started journaling, continued running, did a lot of reading and expressed myself through painting and gardening. Yet, even through all of that, I just couldn’t quite get past merely surviving.

It is said that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. Well, I must agree. I believe I did all of those things in preparation for my teacher…

It was ten months later when I started making the turn from mere survival toward truly living again. What was the trigger? Someone (a stranger) reached out and as my mother would say “entered my life to become ‘God with skin on.'”

It started simply as a guest speaker at our office. As a business and life coach, she started the session by asking us to decorate a banner with words stating our purpose, why we were there or how we felt about our life. I simply wrote, “survival.” As soon as she spotted it, she came behind me, drew a big heart around my one word and wrote “support.” With such a simple gesture, she had become “God with skin on” for me and given me that “hug” I had begged for months earlier.

Then, she offered me the unconditional support I needed by taking it a step further…

She quickly became my coach, and because I was ready, my teacher. It’s funny but we rarely talked about my grief. We talked about Bruce, my family, work… We talked about life. She reminded me that I was not alone. She reminded me that I needed to look for God in all things or I would never see God in anything. In less than 6 months, she taught me the difference in survival and living.
She re-introduced me to life… my life… and I am forever grateful.

At this point I want to be sure I am perfectly clear. Grief is real; it is individual; and it is not selfish. To avoid the time needed to work through your emotions and self reflection is not healthy… It is absolutely necessary. However, when the time is right (and it will be different for each person), the healing, (the movement from mere survival to living life), can begin.

So what makes the difference in living versus merely suviving? It is finding the divine energy within each of us. Then, using that source to become a divine reality for someone else by simply being the love and acceptance we are seeking from the world around us.

In other words, it is using the love within us to move from a place of “self” to a place of service.

Polish your heart
so that it reflects
God’s love
to the world around you
~ Linda, February 2016

What about you? How did you find your way on your grief journey? Did you ever feel like you were merely surviving? How did you come to terms with it? Or do you still need support in that area? Would you be willing to share your story or your thoughts?

Please do… This is our community. To share your thoughts and experiences go to the comments and leave your message.*

This is a weekly blog, for daily affirmations we have a Facebook page of the same name. Join us daily at www.facebook.com/peaceloveandgrief

* Be advised that all comments are subject to approval prior to posting. Any comments determined to be spam or not in accordance with the mission of this website/blog will not be approved or posted. Furthermore, any comments determined to be hostile in nature will be reported to the proper authorities. Thank you.