The river of grief and how to keep being

This article is so very well written, I had to share it... grief is a topic we so rarely discuss in common conversation -- but we all experience it and we all fumble our way through it... this article gives it a framework for pushing through and I think everyone should read it:

In grief we must take time to be in our bodies, even when our minds couldn’t possibly go on.

Written by Jini Maxwell

 

 

When I think about grief, words don’t really come to mind. What I do get is the visceral feeling of being too deep underwater. When I think of grief, I imagine the sudden stab of fear that accompanies a realisation that you’ve dived deeper than you first thought: your trapped breath like a weight in your chest, the glimmer of oxygen perpetually too many arm lengths away.

Grief is more than a feeling. It’s really an environment, a new condition to your life that you have to meet with your whole self. No amount of swimming against the current, or scrambling up the banks, will make it easier to navigate. Most importantly, it is not a puzzle you can think your way out of. It’s something more bodily than that, like the mammalian diving instinct.

At first contact with water, an infant’s heart rate slows, oxygen moves more slowly, and the glottis spontaneously blocks access to the lungs, all before the conscious mind can react at all. Living with grief is an animal experience, and surviving it requires the action of a body that knows how to keep being when the mind couldn’t possibly go on. Your body knows how to keep you safe, not just before your conscious mind, but instead of it. You just have to be in it, and it has to be processed as a part of you.

The bad news is, no amount of time in rivers of grief will prepare you for a new one. The good news is, you didn’t drown then and you’re not drowning now. Your body is carrying you through the experience on instinct. Take a deep breath and listen to yourself from the toes up. Feelings are hard, inconvenient and unpredictable, but the less time you spend fighting your body’s messages, the more you can learn from them.

Survival is, in the end, a game of trust, and not of thought. You have to trust that you can survive your own emotions. You have to feel, even if it’s overwhelming. The most important thing to remember about the river of grief is you’re not surviving it wrong. It’s not taking too long. You’re not moving too quickly. The river you are in is just the river you are in, without moral resonance. Trust that you can cope with doing what you need.

It’s easier to think of grief as something of a redemption arc, starting with pain and ending with the well being you knew before. But mourning exists without narrative; it’s not something you can itemise in a eulogy. The river’s current will stick with you for longer than you expect, and you’ll emerge and re-emerge from the worst parts of it feeling as shocked by the ways you’ve stayed the same as you are by the way you’ve changed. Like a newborn in a swimming pool, trying to analyse your progress is only going to make the water feel heavier around you. Your body knows what it’s doing.

In the moments that you feel yourself entirely submerged, trust that your heart rate may slow, your throat may close and the pressure may build, but your body knows how to navigate this space, even if your mind does not. Every fibre of you is already working slowly and carefully to navigate this new emotional landscape, if you let it. That’s how survival happens—by gentle instinct, not by achievement or analysis. Take the time to be in your body, listen to every soft and hurting part of yourself whenever you feel the urge: beat to beat, without scrutiny, until you can resurface.

However you’re going, you’re going okay.

[ source: https://www.dumbofeather.com/articles/the-river-of-grief-and-how-to-keep-being/ ]

About Loss:

The relationships we have in our lives shape and guide us into the person we are to become tomorrow.  When they end, they can change us just as much as they do while we are in them.  Sometimes they smooth our edges. Sometimes they harden our resolve. And sometimes, one comes along that seems to carve out our insides and lay us bare before all of creation.

I think some people shy away from those last sort…. saying that they never want to love again, if it means they are going to hurt that way, or cause someone else to hurt that way, ever again!

But I think it is this last sort that make living all the more worth it. Only a great love can leave us so completely devastated. Only a truly deep connection, one that meets us on so many fronts, one that seems like it ought to last an eternity of lifetimes, not just one lifetime, can gut us to our core when it finally reaches an end.

Only the very few are lucky to meet their life partner early on in the process and spend a lifetime together.  For the rest of us, we must be worked through the ringer several times over, before we connect “for the last time” and even then, some of us may never make that lasting connection.

Are we really so afraid of the loss, that we’d be willing to give up the depth of love that comes before the crash? Is the pain so great as to wash away the feelings that built to be able to create such a maelstrom of destruction in our hearts and psyche?

I can’t imagine ever not wanting that loss, if it means I could have what comes before.

Sure, it’d be best if what comes before could last — but even knowing the risk involved, I’d still take that leap of faith required of me to fall in love. Every. Single. Time.

And y’know what, I think you would, too.

Human beings are born with the capacity to love. We love our parents before we even know words, let alone the definition of love. We love animals just as easily as other human beings. We love friends and family. And eventually, if we’re lucky, we fall head over heels over senses in love. We throw all caution to the wind and we give ourselves completely to the vulnerability that is love. We let that love grow and surround us; we attempt to find balance, but so many times we tip over and let love ruin us.

I’m not going to talk here about how to maintain a relationship — that’s for another post, another time. What is important here is the idea that …. love is worth the loss.  The truly amazing high is worth the truly destructive low. It’s what we do with both of them that matters.

Love like there is no tomorrow. Love like every moment with your loved ones is your last. Say what you need to say, be honest, be bold, let your feelings show. Never shy away from how you feel. Let your partner in and let them in all the way. Build trust and be honest and always communicate. Love freely, unquestioningly, without conditions. Love with your whole self.

And if it still ends, when it’s over, it’s okay to hurt. It’s normal to hurt. It would be abnormal if you didn’t hurt after a love like that. Let yourself feel the pain, allow yourself the freedom to mourn for a great love lost. Cry in the shower, write angry poetry, listen to music that makes your soul bleed. Hurt like you’ve been carved apart with a knife over and over again; like your heart still beats, but it does so outside of your body. Ache like you’re never ached before. Long for the love back and long for death to stop the pain.

But as time ebbs and flows, it will take away small parts of the pain, it will soften the edge of the sharp knife and eventually the pain, when touched, will be almost gentle.

It will happen. It may take more time than you’d like, but it will happen. You will be almost numb to the hurt, almost, but never fully.

And when that finally happens, take a deep breath, and be open! Be open to another opportunity to feel that great love again. Be open to the small loves and the medium loves, be open to friendships so deep they’re almost like that great love. But always be open to the great loves again! Even knowing the hurt that may come, never give up on the great loves.

For what other reason is there to be alive, than to feel the way a great love does?

All things are impermanent, and life is the longest thing you’ll ever know. Love like it is your last breath, and I promise, every breath while you love will be easier and life will feel excitingly longer.

They say we all die alone, but I think we all bring those great loves to us in those last moments. We wear them like a hug, like a cloak, like a living shroud …. we are whisked away on the wings of our memories. And it is the great loves that we will remember the longest.

She Divorced Me Because I Left Dishes by the Sink

This is a really great piece that gets at the heart of an issue that I think has popped up in most relationships, whether romantic or otherwise... it's a great read.  Re-blogging it here so that I can find it again easier! These are not my words:

Shared from: https://mustbethistalltoride.com/2016/01/14/she-divorced-me-because-i-left-dishes-by-the-sink/

She Divorced Me Because I Left Dishes by the Sink

Article written by Matthew Fray

It seems so unreasonable when you put it that way: My wife left me because sometimes I leave dishes by the sink.

It makes her seem ridiculous; and makes me seem like a victim of unfair expectations.
We like to point fingers at other things to explain why something went wrong, like when Biff Tannen crashed George McFly’s car and spilled beer on his clothes, but it was all George’s fault for not telling him the car had a blind spot.

This bad thing happened because of this, that, and the other thing. Not because of anything I did!
Sometimes I leave used drinking glasses by the kitchen sink, just inches away from the dishwasher.
It isn’t a big deal to me now. It wasn’t a big deal to me when I was married. But it WAS a big deal to her.

Every time she’d walk into the kitchen and find a drinking glass by the sink, she moved incrementally closer to moving out and ending our marriage. I just didn’t know it yet. But even if I had, I fear I wouldn’t have worked as hard to change my behavior as I would have stubbornly tried to get her to see things my way.

The idiom “to cut off your nose to spite your face” was created for such occasions.

Men Are Not Children, Even Though We Behave Like Them

Feeling respected by others is important to men.

Feeling respected by one’s wife is essential to living a purposeful and meaningful life. Maybe I thought my wife should respect me simply because I exchanged vows with her. It wouldn’t be the first time I acted entitled. One thing I know for sure is that I never connected putting a dish in the dishwasher with earning my wife’s respect.

Yesterday I responded to a comment by @insanitybytes22, in which she suggested things wives and mothers can do to help men as an olive branch instead of blaming men for every marital breakdown. I appreciated her saying so.

But I remember my wife often saying how exhausting it was for her to have to tell me what to do all the time. It’s why the sexiest thing a man can say to his partner is “I got this,” and then take care of whatever needs taken care of.

I always reasoned: “If you just tell me what you want me to do, I’ll gladly do it.”

But she didn’t want to be my mother. She wanted to be my partner, and she wanted me to apply all of my intelligence and learning capabilities to the logistics of managing our lives and household.
She wanted me to figure out all of the things that need done, and devise my own method of task management.

I wish I could remember what seemed so unreasonable to me about that at the time.

Men Can Do Things

Men invented heavy machines that can fly in the air reliably and safely. Men proved the heliocentric model of the solar system, establishing that the Earth orbits the Sun. Men design and build skyscrapers, and take hearts and other human organs from dead people and replace the corresponding failing organs inside of living people, and then those people stay alive afterward. Which is insane.
Men are totally good at stuff.

Men are perfectly capable of doing a lot of these things our wives complain about. What we are not good at is being psychic, or accurately predicting how our wives might feel about any given thing because male and female emotional responses tend to differ pretty dramatically.

‘Hey Matt! Why would you leave a glass by the sink instead of putting it in the dishwasher?’

Several reasons.

1. I may want to use it again.
2. I don’t care if a glass is sitting by the sink unless guests are coming over.
3. I will never care about a glass sitting by the sink. Ever. It’s impossible. It’s like asking me to make myself interested in crocheting, or to enjoy yardwork. I don’t want to crochet things. And it’s hard for me to imagine a scenario in which doing a bunch of work in my yard sounds more appealing than ANY of several thousand less-sucky things which could be done.

There is only ONE reason I will ever stop leaving that glass by the sink. A lesson I learned much too late: Because I love and respect my partner, and it REALLY matters to her. I understand that when I leave that glass there, it hurts her— literally causes her pain—because it feels to her like I just said: “Hey. I don’t respect you or value your thoughts and opinions. Not taking four seconds to put my glass in the dishwasher is more important to me than you are.”

All the sudden, it’s not about something as benign and meaningless as a (quasi) dirty dish.

Now, it’s a meaningful act of love and sacrifice, and really? Four seconds? That doesn’t seem like the kind of thing too big to do for the person who sacrifices daily for me.

I don’t have to understand WHY she cares so much about that stupid glass.

I just have to understand and respect that she DOES. Then caring about her = putting glass in dishwasher. 

Caring about her = keeping your laundry off the floor.

Caring about her = thoughtfully not tracking dirt or whatever on the floor she worked hard to clean.

Caring about her = taking care of kid-related things so she can just chill out for a little bit and not worry about anything.

Caring about her = “Hey babe. Is there anything I can do today or pick up on my way home that will make your day better?”

Caring about her = a million little things that say “I love you” more than speaking the words ever can.

Yes, It’s That Simple

The man capable of that behavioral change—even when he doesn’t understand her or agree with her thought-process—can have a great relationship.

Men want to fight for their right to leave that glass there. It might look like this:
“Eat shit, wife,” we think. “I sacrifice a lot for you, and you’re going to get on me about ONE glass by the sink? THAT little bullshit glass that takes a few seconds to put in the dishwasher, which I’ll gladly do when I know I’m done with it, is so important to you that you want to give me crap about it? You want to take an otherwise peaceful evening and have an argument with me, and tell me how I’m getting something wrong and failing you, over this glass? After all of the big things I do to make our life possible—things I never hear a “thank you” for (and don’t ask for)—you’re going to elevate a glass by the sink into a marriage problem? I couldn’t be THAT petty if I tried. And I need to dig my heels in on this one. If you want that glass in the dishwasher, put it in there yourself without telling me about it. Otherwise, I’ll put it away when people are coming over, or when I’m done with it. This is a bullshit fight that feels unfair and I’m not just going to bend over for you.”

The man DOES NOT want to divorce his wife because she’s nagging him about the glass thing which he thinks is totally irrational. He wants her to agree with him that when you put life in perspective, a glass being by the sink when no one is going to see it anyway, and the solution takes four seconds, is just not a big problem. She should recognize how petty and meaningless it is in the grand scheme of life, he thinks, and he keeps waiting for her to agree with him.

She will never agree with him, because it’s not about the glass for her. The glass situation could be ANY situation in which she feels unappreciated and disrespected by her husband.

The wife doesn’t want to divorce her husband because he leaves used drinking glasses by the sink.

She wants to divorce him because she feels like he doesn’t respect or appreciate her, which suggests he doesn’t love her, and she can’t count on him to be her lifelong partner. She can’t trust him. She can’t be safe with him. Thus, she must leave and find a new situation in which she can feel content and secure.

In theory, the man wants to fight this fight, because he thinks he’s right (and I agree with him): The dirty glass is not more important than marital peace.

If his wife thought and felt like him, he’d be right to defend himself. Unfortunately, most guys don’t know that she’s NOT fighting about the glass. She’s fighting for acknowledgment, respect, validation, and his love.

If he KNEW that—if he fully understood this secret she has never explained to him in a way that doesn’t make her sound crazy to him (causing him to dismiss it as an inconsequential passing moment of emo-ness), and that this drinking glass situation and all similar arguments will eventually end his marriage, I believe he WOULD rethink which battles he chose to fight, and would be more apt to take action doing things he understands to make his wife feel loved and safe.

I think a lot of times, wives don’t agree with me. They don’t think it’s possible that their husbands don’t know how their actions make her feel because she has told him, sometimes with tears in her eyes, over and over and over and over again how upset it makes her and how much it hurts.

And this is important: Telling a man something that doesn’t make sense to him once, or a million times, doesn’t make him “know” something. Right or wrong, he would never feel hurt if the same situation were reversed so he doesn’t think his wife SHOULD hurt. It’s like, he doesn’t think she has the right to (and then use it as a weapon against him) because it feels unfair.

“I never get upset with you about things you do that I don’t like!” men reason, as if their wives are INTENTIONALLY choosing to feel hurt and miserable.

When you choose to love someone, it becomes your pleasure to do things that enhance their lives and bring you closer together, rather than a chore.

It’s not: Sonofabitch, I have to do this bullshit thing for my wife again. It’s: I’m grateful for another opportunity to demonstrate to my wife that she comes first and that I can be counted on to be there for her, and needn’t look elsewhere for happiness and fulfillment.

Once someone figures out how to help a man equate the glass situation (which does not, and will never, affect him emotionally) with DEEPLY wounding his wife and making her feel sad, alone, unloved, abandoned, disrespected, afraid, etc. …  Once men really grasp that and accept it as true even though it doesn’t make sense to them?

Everything changes forever.

2017 is a new year!

A new year, a new leaf? Fuck leaves..! I'm still me, it's just a change on the calendar... but this me is going to try to be more consistent with my writing.

I know I've tried it before, but this time I've made a plan, and as Wayne Dyer says "If you fail you plan, you plan to fail."

I am out at a lovely coffee shop down the street from my home, I have a stellar mug of Espresso Latte to sip at, a strange pineapple cream-cheese fritter to nibble on, and a cup of yoghurt, granola, fruit and honey to start it all off.

I have grabbed a book at random -- a book of my earlier writings. And that's what I'll do .. I'll start filling in the void from the past. I am going to finally get all my old journals and diaries and writings from the past digitized.

That's the plan. I'll need to set some timelines, like, at least once per week. I have my trusty tablet and keyboard, the coffee shop has wifi .... I should be good to go.

So, here's to new plans and new years. Check out some of my old (old old old!) posts from 1993 maybe?

The Nameless shall remain Nameless until otherwise noted.

I know almost nothing about you … but I can’t get you out of my head …. your smile is like an arrow shot straight to my heart …. I feel foolish, caught up in this love-affair all in my mind…. you’re a stranger… but nothing is stranger than the way I instantly felt about you.
[written Day 2, posted Day 3]

Fall is almost upon us... it certainly seems like the best time to fall.... head over heart over heels into something that makes me feel precarious.

I wonder what you smell like... what your kisses taste like ... how your laughter trills.

Do you think of me between moments of connection? Have you thought of me today?

Hopelessly, irrevocably pierced with a notion of lust leaning towards lost in love.

...and so my inevitable demise has begun.

The Other Me

I think there are only two kinds of people in this world.

One sort gets up in the morning and knows they’re doing the right thing. They turn off the alarm, stretch, and then go about their day with one step in front of the other, one moment to the next, sure that each decision they make, each minute choice will taken them one step closer to the right thing for them …

The other sort, the sort that I seem to fit into, is the sort who can’t figure out how to do anything right. I’m not even sure I know my right from my left. How can every move I make feel like the wrong move. I’m intelligent and I think things through… I make decisions based on the best of my knowledge, I add my heart into the mix …. and every. single. thing. I. do. is wrong.

How did I get here?  

Where was the me that was once the first sort of person… maybe a little carefree. Maybe a little obnoxious. But ultimately not concerned, or worried, that my next move might be the wrong move. It was just _a_ move and a move always had to be taken, so let’s take this one next…….

At what point did this calculating, self-doubting, self-criticizing me that I am today … when did she get behind the wheel and start driving?

All the flotsam and decay of my life… which bump in the road knocked me off kilter to such a degree that I truly think I am doing the wrong thing, no matter what I do?

I don’t like the way this me looks at me in the mirror. The way she lets light pass over the contours of my face and never quite pauses to see the me that is behind the eyes…. the scared, anxious, nervous, worrisome, critical me.

Am I the worst parts of my parents? Am I the worst parts of my classmates? Am I simply all that’s left after the joy was surgically removed (by me, and placed in a glass jar and tucked somewhere safe so that no one could steal it, because I treasured it, and I could see that the path I was taking could only lead to heart-ache, so I best squirrel it away for a rainy day)….

But I’m crying and I’m crying and I can’t stop crying — if you’re waiting for rain, it’s falling down my face in a torrential downpour.

When I’m alone, and no one is there to tell me what to think or what to say or how to act, or which piece of etiquette I ought to take down and shine today….. I don’t think I like who I’ve become. But I don’t know how to be the other sort of me ……….

10:33pm June 9, 2016

moments

The problem is.. I can’t talk about the automatic thoughts and behaviours and moods that really matter.

That half the time I don’t believe in reality. That half the time I’m stuck in this alternate-universe mentality, belief that I’m the only person in all existence and everything else here is just a screwed up computer program designed to keep me from being lonely and destroying myself.

It would take a month of talking for me to explain the whole other “game” that goes on.

And I’ve shortened it down into saying that I have “moments” because I can’t explain any of those moments without the whole 16 year back-story.

Some days it gets worse. Some days I believe my cat hates me. And like THAT even matters.

I had a GOOD day today, and here I am at my computer writing this with tears streaming down my face because I feel like a horrible person, guilty of leaving my cat alone for hours on end in a dark apartment, with very little for amusement. He’s a CAT — we live in a society where it’s deemed okay to do that to “domesticated” animals. I feed and water him and (mostly) give him a clean place to shit. I’m not harming him….. right?

But I don’t believe that our social structure does anything good. I don’t believe we are ‘humane’ even to humans.  The way we treat our elderly, our mental health practices, those who live at the fringe, of poverty, of health.

How am I just supposed to SWALLOW all of that and move on with my day. Not think about those big picture pieces, because I can’t do anything to make them any better so I have to focus on me and my life and making my little piece of it better for me and my daughter (and my damn cat)

well that feels like a fucking crap shoot.

And half the time I don’t believe in any of it anyhow …..

it’s all just busy-work for my brain to keep me from seeing the truth.

But I pull it together, wipe my tears, and tell my daughter it’s bed-time… like the good mom that I am.