Participating here is an act of trust between blogfriends who know each other and between people who have never met. We send our needs, our cries for help, our poems of loss and recovery, our honest emotions, out into the blogosphere. We trust that someone reading our words has been in a similar place and truly understands. We trust that someone out there will offer a kind word and stand beside us as we rant and rage about the unfairness of it all. We read without judgment and offer presence, not advice.
We share our experience, strength and hope.
Welcome, fellow travelers on the grief journey
and a special welcome to anyone new to The Grieving Room.
We meet every Monday evening.
Whether your loss is recent, or many years ago;
whether you've lost a person, or a pet;
or even if the person you're "mourning" is still alive,
("pre-grief" can be a very lonely and confusing time),
you can come to this diary and say whatever you need to say.
We can't solve each other's problems,
but we can be a sounding board and a place of connection.
Unlike a private journal
here, you know: your words are read by people who
have been through their own hell.
There's no need to pretty it up or tone it down..
It just is.
Since the arrival of my lovecatcher quilt ♥ I have noticed a change in the tone of my grieving.
There have been a few occasions when I know it helped for sure. I felt the emotions rise, went into my room and wrapped myself in the quilt, or read a few messages, and felt it take the edge off the raw sadness. Having this tangible sign of hope so close at hand has made a difference.
At the same time I am also experiencing the first fruitfulness of an effort to clear away things in my life that have been keeping me from taking better care of myself.
I have felt completely overwhelmed by my schedule in recent months and with a little bit of reflection and honesty I realized this feeling of being overwhelmed goes back almost 15 years. Graduate school, long distance eldercare, mom moving in with me...
and then the hard years of crawling around each day buried under the lead blanket of grief... a grief that sapped all my physical and emotional strength, and kept me from seeing and connecting to the good things in my life.
In the last few years especially I had wiped all the white space off my calendar in an effort to fill up the empty hours that stretched before me after mom died. I spent more time working, since my work is very fulfilling. As for non-work hours, I filled up the other nooks and crannies of empty space in my life as much as possible so that I would not have too many unstructured moments when grief might creep in.
But that coping mechanism was only adding to the problem. I was always overextended and exhausted. I didn't have any down time to spend with friends, pursue my dreams, or do more than the very minimum of self-care.
So now I have decided to take the opposite approach. Time to create space for something new to happen. No longer afraid that free time might mean grief flooding in to fill the empty hours, I am taking a chance that clearing away some things and creating more white space on the calendar and breathing room in the day will allow more light and love and goodness and grace to flow into my life.
A wonderful spiritual director once said: "If you want a happy and well balanced life you have to say no to some things that you really really really want to do." That wisdom has been gestating within me for many many years until finally dawn broke over Marblehead.
I am seeing immediately that he is right. Results from this clearing away effort have been very nourishing in just these first few weeks. I have more time now to be with friends. More time for doing things that refresh and energize me. More time to think of ways to invite joy into my life, instead of dragging myself through the minimal requirements of surviving from day to day. More time for stepping up my self-care in unexpected ways--I have even been able to get rid of some physical clutter!
And I already feel more healing energy starting to bubble up inside me as I clear away matters that I did not realize were obstacles until they were gone. Things I really really really wanted to do, except that not doing them is creating space for... things I can't anticipate fully. I just know that since things have not been working well for a long time I need to try something new. I need to create space for a new thing to come.
I even have time now, when I need to, to sit in mom's big red chair and wrap myself up in a quilt full of loving messages from blogfriends who want to help me heal.
It's just a glimmer of hope, just one small candle, but in comparison to the bleakness I had settled for for so many years, it is flickering brightly.