AND THE LITTLE BOY SAID

We all go through rough times in life. It is easy to want to blame others for our situation, but it is not about others, but ourselves. I keep learning and relearning that when I blame others, it just keeps the sadness and negativity in control of my life. The longer I hold on to my negativity and sadness, the more of my joy and wealth I give away. Sometimes we just need someone to help us refocus.

Decades ago, I worked in a summer camp and had a little boy named Mikey. He was learning how to be away from his mom for the first time in his life. He would come in crying and I began playing this game with him to redirect his energy. I would say can you make a monster face and he would. How about a sad face and he would and before you knew it he was okay and then we could go play with the other kids.

One day we were playing the water when I realized I had lost a piece of jewelry that I never took off. It brought tears to my face and no matter how hard I tried I could not stop the tears from rolling down my face, and then this little boy gave me a gift I will never forget. I tried to capture this in a poem about us and this experience.

Read More

SIMPLE JOY

This past Tuesday my spiritual granddaughter passed away on her 43rd birthday after a long struggle with kidney disease. It was a day of mixed feelings and emotions. There was the expected feeling of loss, grieving, numbness, sadness accompanied by feelings of regret, compassion, and a whole host of feelings. Then there was joy; joy that she was no longer suffering. Joy that she got to celebrate her birthday with her mother, who had transitioned a few years earlier. Joy I had been able to know her and joy I could grieve her passing.

As I moved through my feelings, I began to realize that joy is a simple state. When I am practicing joy, I am happy, light, and at peace. The grieving and the sadness were complicated. 

Read More

TRUST ME

When I was intentionally beginning my personal healing work, the writer my therapist was using and encouraging all clients to read was the work of John Bradshaw, author of Home Coming: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child. This book discusses how the process of healing your wounded inner child is one of grief, and it involves these six steps. The first of these six steps is trust.

The person we most need to trust in our lives is ourselves. In order for us to begin our own healing process (emotionally, mentally, physically, or spiritually); we must begin by trusting ourselves. For many people, our wounded inner child is in hiding. That wounded part does not trust others and to some extent does not even trust the older version of who we are. To keep themselves safe, they learned to hide until they could find someone who would be a supportive and non-shaming ally.

Read More