change

Are You Resistant?

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I was talking to a friend who told me how important it was for her to make people happy. She always appears happy to me, but I discovered today that deep down she’s not, and she doesn’t really want anyone to know. This led us to a long conversation where I realized I was like her when I was her age.  I always wanted to be considered “good,” and to me that meant no mistakes, no public sadness. I would always strive to do whatever I was doing better than anyone so I could be proud of myself when I didn’t think anyone else was.

What I realized was that I was always getting in my own way. Do you do that? Do you prevent yourself from having or doing exactly what you want by doing something to make whatever that is out of your reach?  I have known people who wouldn’t buy pretty clothes because they thought they were too fat, too skinny, too tall, or too short. I was always in that too tall group.  I grew to be six feet tall when I was in seventh grade. There was one boy taller than me in the whole school, and I was taller than all the teachers and the principal too!  I dressed very conservatively hoping that I wouldn’t be drawing attention to my too tall self.

I love it now when society in general seems to have changed their ideal of what women should look like, and we can find pretty, flattering clothes no matter what our shape is. Now if we could just do that with the inner us.  Have you ever talked yourself out of something because you made up the idea that whatever it was, was too good for you? I see people do that all the time. They’ll say, “If only I had more time, I’d ___.” You fill in the blank. You may say something like I would go to the gym, or the beach, or the pool knowing how much better you’d feel if you just went where you wanted to.

When we are dealing with grief, getting in our own way is not unusual.  You may want to go out to eat, but you convince yourself that you just can’t do that alone.  But you know what? You can! I did. I admit that it took me awhile.  I was concerned that people would look at me or talk about me. I fixed that by taking a good book with me so I wouldn’t notice what other people did or said. But it didn’t take me long to realize that nobody was talking about me, and probably weren’t paying attention to me at all. That was a big step for me, realizing that what other people thought or said about me didn’t really matter to me.

With this new wisdom I realized I could go where I wanted to go and do what I wanted to do. And I did!  If I wanted to take a class, I did. And I discovered that friends wanted to also but didn’t want to go alone. I ended up having one friend go to ceramics class with me and another went to a Native American arts class. We enjoyed these classes! I got brave and went to a quilting class at a nearby shop where I didn’t know anyone. I discovered there were others there who also came alone, so I ended up with a whole bunch of new friends.

I had been sitting alone feeling sorry for myself a long time before I started doing these things.  I was getting in my own way, talking myself out of doing things. When I thought about it, I knew that I had been putting off doing things for all the wrong reasons. Just because my husband died, I did not have to sit alone and cry for the rest of my life.  There came a time when I was ready to start learning who the new me was in this uncharted territory, and that I didn’t need to worry about what might happen.

I was just thinking about all my loved ones who have died getting together to watch my progress, and they are amazed and happy that I learned how to get out of my own way and step forward in the place I live know.  I am confident and go forth with Joy! Get out of your own way, and you can too!

 

You can join the Grief and Happiness Alliance which meets weekly on Sundays by clicking here: https://www.griefandhappiness.com/offers/ytK7eLBa

You can order Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief by clicking here at Amazon.

You can listen to my podcast, Grief and Happiness, here. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/loving-and-living-your-way-through-grief-with/id1509589686?i=1000535381763

I would be happy to put you on the reminder list for or Writing Together Through Grief occurring on Saturdays each week by sending an email to me to [email protected] and giving me your email address.

Join my Facebook group here.

Unconditional Love

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Most of my life I had no idea what unconditional love was. I hadn’t thought much about love in general. I knew my parents loved me, but many times it seemed conditional. The first time I thought I fell in love, I realized that we could only be in love if I was perfect in his eyes in all things, and I wasn’t.  I learned from that the importance of being and doing what someone else expected of me. All that did for me is help me lower my self-esteem.

When my first baby was born, one night nursing him in the middle of the night, I realized what deep, true love really was. He was so little and so fully dependent on me. And I loved caring for him.  I also realized at that moment how my mother must have felt about me, but she was never able to demonstrate it.

I went through life thinking I could find true love if only circumstances were different. If only I was prettier, if only I got better grades, if only I had a magnificent job, if only I married a doctor, if only I was shorter (I grew to six feet tall when I was in seventh grade). All of those if onlys didn’t help me a bit.

When I met Jacques, I learned so much more about love. He loved me just the way I was, and I loved him that way too. I discovered along the way that we developed what I consider now to be a bad habit of judging people, and when you are judging others, you really are judging yourself too, and I fell back into that “if only” place I thought I had left behind.

We were both teaching college, and we’d say if only our students would pay more attention or take their education more seriously.  We both did lots of theatre and we were always complaining about actors not memorizing their lines or missing rehearsals. That judgement of others got in the way of us living our best lives.

I started learning about unconditional love from Ron. If I started to complain, he would say, wouldn’t it be better to do something positive about an issue than to get upset about it? That was hard for me at first, but I eventually realized that it is not my place to judge anyone else. When I learned that, the gateway began to open for me.

I finally started taking responsibility for myself. I stopped finding fault with others. That enabled me to make a huge shift. I started to love people for who they were. I choose to spend time with people I enjoy being with and I don’t judge them. And I don’t judge myself.

Why am I writing about all this right now? I have been observing the state of the world. So much of what is happening that is negative comes from judgement and hate. We could all learn from the song Hal David and Bert Bacharach wrote and Jackie DeShannon sang in the mid-sixties, What the World Needs Now:

What the world needs now is love, sweet love

It’s the only thing there is just too little of . . . .

No not just for some, but for everyone.

Imagine what our world would be now if we all chose to love one another instead of judging them. What if we are all at the beginning of a huge shift in the world? We can be if choose to.

Start right now. Remember the deepest love you have experienced or that you would love to experience. How does that feel? Take that feeling and pay it forward. If you realize you are judging someone or something, forgive yourself, forgive whoever you need to, and then start spreading that beautiful, unconditional love. May it circulate all over the world and beyond.

 

You can join the Grief and Happiness Alliance which meets weekly on Sundays by clicking here: https://www.griefandhappiness.com/offers/ytK7eLBa

You can order Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief by clicking here at Amazon.

You can listen to my podcast, Grief and Happiness, here. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/loving-and-living-your-way-through-grief-with/id1509589686?i=1000535381763

I would be happy to put you on the reminder list for or Writing Together Through Grief occurring on Saturdays each week by sending an email to me to [email protected] and giving me your email address.

Join my Facebook group here.

Stuck

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I spend a lot of time on my computer with all the work I am doing, and the more I do, the bigger mess I have. A friend noticed one day how many tabs I had open in Chrome. She said she’d never seen so many open at once! Now I know that’s not a good thing, especially when my computer gets confused and shuts down. I know I can do better; I just have to do it!  In the words of Henry David Thoreau: “Simplify, simplify, simplify.”

Now that I have identified this issue, I am working on it. I started bookmarking tabs I want to return to instead if keeping them open forever. I have stopped keeping so many documents open at once. I clean off my desktop. And I keep all my email accounts cleaned up.  What a relief!  You may be thinking, “But I don’t do all that stuff on my computer.” So where do you have things piling up in your life?

I used to have a giant to do list that kept getting bigger. So, I made a spread sheet to simplify it all.  I am amazed at the relief I feet of not expecting myself to get everything done all at once. I find when I set priorities, I can comfortably do what I want to instead of stress about not getting things done.

I recently did a challenge where I released 27 things a day for 9 days in a row.  I when first heard about it, I thought wow, that’s a lot. And even so, I decided to do it. And you know what? It felt really good! And I did the whole thing. And what surprised me most was that I am still releasing things every day, though not necessarily 27 things each time. The less stuff I have, the lighter I feel.

How would you describe your life right now? Too many items on your to do list? Too much stuff in your drawers and closets? Too many dreams of what you think you would like to do? Examine what is holding you back or weighing you down. In reading this, you had things pop out to you that said, “Hey, that’s me!” Do you want to stay there?

With my computer, when I get too much stuff going at the same time, it has enough sense to shut itself down, and to reboot.  Is it time for you to refresh and reboot? We drag so much along with ourselves as we grieve. Maybe you feel guilty for something you didn’t do or say before your loved one died.  That doesn’t serve you. Forgive yourself for whatever it was, and then release it. Maybe there are a lot of books that you are not interested in that your loved one left behind, ones that you will never read. Give them to someone who would love to have them, or to the friends of the library.

What feelings, possessions, or habits are lingering in your life that you can release? Chances are, you won’t miss them at all when they are gone. And you will feel lighter and happier along the way! So do a reboot on your life: refresh and renew!  You will be so glad you did!

 

You can join the Grief and Happiness Alliance which meets weekly on Sundays by clicking here: https://www.griefandhappiness.com/offers/ytK7eLBa

You can order Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief by clicking here at Amazon.

You can listen to my podcast, Grief and Happiness, here. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/loving-and-living-your-way-through-grief-with/id1509589686?i=1000535381763

I would be happy to put you on the reminder list for or Writing Together Through Grief occurring on Saturdays each week by sending an email to me to [email protected] and giving me your email address.

Join my Facebook group here.

Don’t Wait!

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My amazing granddaughter, Katie Thiroux, is a fabulous Jazz Singer and upright bass musician and is loved by all-time jazz great Quincy Jones who calls her “Katie-Toes.”. Quincy told her “Be prepared for the opportunities you want. Don’t wait.” Her response to this sage advice is “It’s not about perfection, it’s about being ready IN THE MOMENT.” What a wise woman she is.  She has followed her own advice and has performed all over the world in amazing venues, her podcast, The Hump where she interviews her favorite jazz artists every week, is crazy popular, and she teaches wherever she goes.  I love that she says, “I received amazing opportunities growing up and I am thankful to be in a position to give back, it’s my duty, dig?”

How inspiring is that! I love to follow her example.  This year I am participating in Marci Shimoff’s Your Year of Miracles. One of our activities is to create a theme for the year.  Mine is “Inspired Fulfilled Opportunities.”  I have been paying attention to this intention I set, and I realized I am inspired all the time, but this inspiration is wasted if I don’t pay attention to it. And my inspired intentions easily come to fruition when I commit to acting toward them. And recognizing the opportunities that come my way, I pay attention and act on them and voila! There they are! Isn’t that grand?

Much of my life, I wasn’t paying enough attention to inspiration. I would reflect and say, “If only I had done that when I had the chance.” Do you do that, regret actions you didn’t take? That’s the first step: recognizing what you didn’t do. Now that you can see that, you can change that behavior. If you think something like, “I wish I knew how to draw pictures, or sing, or play the bass,” what happens if you don’t take action? Nothing. That’s right, no action, no benefits. Now that you recognize that, when you say “I would love to be able to (fill in the blank),” you know exactly what to do. Take action on your desire. That’s the only way you will get it.

My friend invited me to help him with a grief retreat that’s coming up.  I’ve been thinking for a couple of years about how much I would love to be in on the planning of a grief retreat to be sure happiness is included, and I got asked to do just that. In the past, I could see myself talking me out of doing this. Not this time! We are going full steam ahead to help create an amazing retreat at Unity Village in October!  I hope you’ll come! Actually, I know you will come if you follow your inspiration to do so.

What are you ready for right now? Have you been putting off taking a class, hosting friends for a game night, dancing to a live band all because of the pandemic? If you are ready, take action! Of course, there are still considerations to stay safe, but you know how to do that. Or have you been thinking you should donate to something to help the people of Ukraine but you haven’t yet because there are so many choices you could make. Don’t let choices paralyze you. Take action on what you believe in.

What advantages have you had in your life that inspire you to give back in honor of that? I learned so much from learning how to play the flute, and I put that into use when I was in my high school band, which was an exceptional group. From doing that, I learned so many values, like integrity, dependability, kindness, and self-confidence. I took what I learned there into raising my children, teaching my classes, writing my books, creating my live theatre and school of arts, and supporting Maui Jazz Camp that Katie and her very talented husband drummer Matt Witek created. All these opportunities enriched my life as well as the lives of all those involved.

How can you give back? What can you say yes to? What kindness that someone did for you can you pay forward by helping someone else?

Would you love to be happy? You can! Just pay attention to your inspiration. Stay open. Stay ready. And say yes!

 

 

Sign up here for the very special gathering of the Grief and Happiness Alliance where we’ll introduce you to what we do. A great place to make friends! https://www.griefandhappiness.com/special-events

 

You can join the Grief and Happiness Alliance which meets weekly on Sundays by clicking here: https://www.griefandhappiness.com/offers/ytK7eLBa

You can order Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief by clicking here at Amazon.

You can listen to my podcast, Grief and Happiness, here. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/loving-and-living-your-way-through-grief-with/id1509589686?i=1000535381763

I would be happy to put you on the reminder list for or Writing Together Through Grief occurring on Saturdays each week by sending an email to me to [email protected] and giving me your email address.

Join my Facebook group here.

Peace on Earth

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When I was in high school, the Vietnam War was raging. I lived in my small hometown of Porterville, California. Our town had more war deaths per capita than any other community in the country. When a model of the Vietnam Memorial was created to take around the country, that journey was started in Porterville.

My memories were of singing songs for peace, wearing flowers in our hair. I had a denim jacket covered with war protest buttons saying things like Make Love, Not War. When any of the guys were drafted, they married their girlfriends to be sure they would have been able to make love at least once in their lives and that they would have someone to focus on for a reason to come home.

My father was a veteran of World War 2, my husband was a veteran of the Korean War, my other husband was part of the Vietnam war as part of a special government program, and my son-in-law served in Dessert Storm. War has been a constant in my life. While we are not officially at war in the US, we have way too much political fighting going on. I was hoping when we pulled out of Afghanistan that maybe, finally we would live in peace. I think of Rodney King’s quote during the Riots after the acquittal of the police officers who had beaten and tased him. He said, “Can’t we all just get along?”

We seem to live in a society that can’t be happy. But life doesn’t have to be that way. As individuals, we can choose to focus on peace and love. The more people who start doing this, the move love and peace we can have in the world. In the past, studies have been done where people around the world set the intention for peace all at the same time, and during the time they focused together on peace, violence dropped significantly worldwide. Just think of how we could stop this current war if everyone focused on peace and love.

Much can be done by letting go of anger and blame and always and focusing on love. Nelson Mandela was imprisoned on Robin Island for 18 of the 27 years of his imprisonment. In the early years he was frequently beaten and abused severely. Finally, he made the decision to love his jailers and not judge them. When he did this, the jailers gradually stopped beating him and withholding food. Eventually they started respecting him. He wasn’t telling him that he loved them.  He was demonstrating it through his love and expressing it in his prayers. When he became President of South Africa, many of these jailers became his bodyguards.

When I visited Robin island, my tour was led by one of his jailers. He told us how much he learned from Mandala’s example of peace and love. He told us that his life and the lives of the other jailers were permanently changed. Mandala didn’t raise a weapon. He didn’t fight back. He just loved them.

I encourage us all to stop criticizing what is happening. Just observe it, and in the process send love to all involved. This goes for all the government in our country too.  The more we focus on hate and controversy, the more hate and controversy we will continue to have.  The only way this situation can be improved is if we all, everybody, focus on peace and love.

At Unity Church at the end of their services they sing this song:

PEACE SONG

Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.
Let there be peace on earth, the peace that was meant to be.
With God as Creator, family all are we.
Let us walk with each other, in perfect harmony.
Let peace begin with me, let this be the moment now.
With every step I take, let this be my joyous vow.
To take each moment, and live each moment in peace eternally.
Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.

(https://www.unityonthebay.org/peace-song)

 

Let’s all sing this together. We can change the world.

 

 

 

You can join the Grief and Happiness Alliance which meets weekly on Sundays by clicking here: https://www.griefandhappiness.com/offers/ytK7eLBa

You can order Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief by clicking here at Amazon.

You can listen to my podcast, Grief and Happiness, here. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/loving-and-living-your-way-through-grief-with/id1509589686?i=1000535381763

I would be happy to put you on the reminder list for or Writing Together Through Grief occurring on Saturdays each week by sending an email to me to [email protected] and giving me your email address.

Join my Facebook group here.

How to Get There From Here

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Sometimes out of the blue, you’ll hear a song or smell a fragrance that reminds you of your loved one and the tears start. You may find yourself saying “Am I ever going to get over this? Will a time come when I don’t get blindsided by a remark someone makes that reminds me of my loss?” Those things are always going to happen. However, your reaction to them change over time.

Try this. Next time you find yourself avoiding ordering the delivery food you loved to share, make a list of new foods you have thought would be fun to try but you haven’t yet. Do a web search and see if there is something where you live that could be amazing and new and different if you only tried it. Depending on where you live, you probably have lots of choices. Where I live, I would never be able to try all the different Poke combinations, and since I haven’t eaten that with anyone before, it doesn’t come with memories

You may be like me where once I find something I really like from one restaurant, I tend not to order anything different, but there are so many others on the menu! Be bold. Be adventurous.  A friend was just telling me about a luscious octopus salad she had at a new nearby place.  I may just try it since she made it sound so good! By doing this, you’re making new memories. The new memories can be pleasant and make you smile instead of focusing on the food you used to like to share.

Music can be a trigger for me. Jacques loved Bach and Mozart and Ron loved all kinds of jazz.  Before I met either one of them, I hadn’t heard lots of either of those music genres, but I came to love them when I heard them do often.  Now I can listen to either and smile and relax, but it took a while to get there. I discovered other music that I love now and make new memories for myself. I’ve gained such and appreciation for Hawaiian music, and I dearly love Michael Franti. He’s an amazing musician with a giant heart always finding ways to help people and create great music.

And I know it’s sometimes habit to start feeling emotions come up that threaten to bring you down, so you start avoiding or suppressing your grief, and that just leads to more avoiding and suppressing. Feeling like you are wrapped in a bubble of sorrow, and the more sorrow you feel, the bigger the bubble gets.  When this happens, you find yourself holding on to that sadness so as not to pop the bubble and expose yourself to everyone and you don’t know how you’ll bear that. The thing is lots of the sad experiences you have, when you really look closely, you probably had a hand in making them get as bad as they got.

Sometimes the best thing to do is just let it all out.  Cry as long as you need to. Write all about it. Get down to the depths of those feelings. Let it all out. By feeling your feelings, eventually you will want to feel something different.  When that happens, focus on the opposite of those feelings.

What brings you joy? Do that. What makes you smile? Do that. When are you compassionate? Bring that on! You’ll find the more your do these types of things, the less time you will be thinking about what brings you down. You can create an amazing new you with great feelings.

Don’t be surprised if you are triggered by something that reminds you of your sorrow. When that happens, remind yourself of all that’s good and beautiful in your life, and the sorrow will start to fade.

Remember, life is good, and in the words of that Beatles song that everyone knows: “All you need is love.” And that love starts with loving yourself. The more you do, the more happiness you will have in your life.

 

You can join the Grief and Happiness Alliance which meets weekly on Sundays by clicking here: https://www.griefandhappiness.com/offers/ytK7eLBa

You can order Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief by clicking here at Amazon.

You can listen to my podcast, Grief and Happiness, here. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/loving-and-living-your-way-through-grief-with/id1509589686?i=1000535381763

I would be happy to put you on the reminder list for or Writing Together Through Grief occurring on Saturdays each week by sending an email to me to [email protected] and giving me your email address.

Join my Facebook group here.