I’m not really okay. My morning started badly. I don’t know why some people think you can’t see them when they’re in their cars but the dude in my rear view mirror was pissed. I was just obeying traffic laws, trying to stay out of trouble: 1. No Turn on Red; 2. STOP; 3. Speed limit.

What the dude didn’t know this morning was my grief. I am feeling wobbly and vulnerable and fragile. The dude couldn’t know. I have nothing outwardly visible showing my grief. Though I am walking slowly and carefully, a crutch wouldn’t help. A cast won’t work either. My wounds are too deep for that. My grief can’t be fixed. I’m trying to work out how to carry it and stay out of its ditch especially while operating heavy machinery.

My grief these days is an unwelcome and uncomfortable but not unexpected tutorial. We’ve lost a beloved family member. We cannot gather to celebrate her life and legacy. Without the customary rituals and my community,  I’m struggling to process and accept that our dear one has returned her stardust to the universe. I’m grieving in the space where I know so many others are stuck as well. Still, griefs are not to be compared. Grief is a brilliant brutal teacher. And this is what I know and am relearning: 

​I just proved that writing is the most effective therapy for working through grief. Rereading the above, I admit that I am stuck. I am slowed down miserably and completely experiencing this grief. I am stunned and I am proceeding with extreme caution. Above all, I must prevent further damage. Grief has its own time and space and cannot be hurried. Grief demands that I understand my wobbly, my vulnerability, my fragility. In order to heal you have to remember and remembering hurts.

I value the principle that ‘nobody gets to be wrong’ in my professional grief practice more than anything else. Knowing that truths are rarely absolute, we also know that what we resist will persist. Only we know what we heard, how we felt, and why we cry. Grievers know what they know.  Articulating and opening to our experience helps us to take agency for what is happening to us. Sharing our grief enables us to hear what we feel and so helps us to build structure around our disappointments and our broken heartedness. Let be. Let go. Let in. It is wickedly hard to grieve and there simply is no way to do it wrong.

Working on grief is hard and lonely and scary but you do not have to suffer it alone. Merging onto the highway, you must accelerate to the pace of the road. Rumble strips alert us to danger. Exiting the highway is how you get to your destination.

“You are never strong enough that you don’t need help.” Cesar Chavez. I and many others know grief and we are ready to to be of service to support you at B'More Good Grief. I am inspired by Dr. Carl Rogers, the humanistic psychologist, and his method which he called Unconditional Positive Regard. “Before every session I take a moment to remember my humanity. There is no experience that this man has that I cannot share with him, because I too am human. No matter how deep his wound, he does not need to be ashamed in front of me. I too am vulnerable. And because of this, I am enough. Whatever his story, he no longer needs to be alone with it. This is what will allow his healing to begin.”

​This pandemic is our communal catastrophe. I’m so sorry that I don’t know if the dude in my rear view mirror was or is okay. Or if that dude is grieving just like me. 

These are trying days. These trying days are the days of our lives. 

These are January days. January is named for Janus, the Roman God, protector of gates 
(beginnings!) and doorways (transitions!) which symbolize beginnings and endings (gateways!) into our life and times. Images of Janus depict him as having two faces, one looking into the past, the other seeing into the future. 

“We are creatures made, again and again, by what would break us. Yet, if we only open to the fullness of the reality of what goes wrong for us, and walk ourselves with and through it, we are able to integrate it into a new kind of wholeness on the other side...our collective need for a new kind of wholeness might be the only aspiration we can share across all of our chasms right now.” Krista Tippett, On Being. 

And, as days in January let a little more light in and lengthen each day, I am ever inspired by my cousin Andrea: “I, DO live in the light but honor and cherish the darkest moments as they are when you are able to see the light at its clearest and brightest.” 

I believe we don’t control what happens or comes into our lives. I believe I can doubt, I can challenge, and I can dream because ‘we never step into the same river twice’. Heraclitus 

“The precious pot containing my riches becomes my teacher in the very moment it breaks.” Milarepa 

I don’t know if I am dying fast or living slow these days but I try to keep showing up. I try to keep listening. I try to keep holding space for myself and for those who are also trying to make the best of these days. 

These are trying days. These trying days are the days of our lives in January. 

A Wish to End Where We Begin

Through my toddler’s eyes,
The very best part of a package is the paper it is wrapped in,
The most wondrous discovery at the museum is the dried leaves that scatter the sidewalk in front of the entrance,
The best route from A to B is not ever a straight line,
And sometimes one handful of sand can hold more treasures than every structure on the playground.

One day, when I near my own death,
When I feel the constraints of time,
When I feel the constraints of space,
When I feel the constraints of a failing body or mind,
Perhaps this is just the magic I hope to rediscover.

The wondrous tingle that comes from a gentle head scratch,
The floating release of a good laugh,
The deep comfort of a body breathing in sync with your own,
Losing one’s self in the journey through a piece of music.

To rediscover what my eyes naturally knew to see at the very beginning: all of the wonders that can hide in a moment.

Danielle Chammas, MD (@ChammasDani)

Telling your own story to yourself is the most powerful thing ever. Reckoning problems and successes as the same, most people in dying remember Love. People who love grieve. “To be a spiritual warrior, one must have a broken heart; without a broken heart and the sense of tenderness and vulnerability, your warriorship is untrustworthy.” 
~Chögyam Trungpa

​If a problem is defined as the difference between an actual situation and a desired situation then What Do I Want is both your first question and the one you must ask again and again. Your chances, your ideas, your problems are constructs which shape your values and build your character and inspire you to live your life and legacy. Your choices are your truth...neither right nor wrong but just your own.

We make our own problems when we believe our own lies, when we choose perspectives that do not serve our best interests, and when we fail to give our all. We make our own problems when we lose faith in ourselves. We make our own problems when we get attached to the stories we tell and the expectations we create for ourselves and others. Perhaps in life, it is not about trying harder...perhaps it’s about resisting less. “If you don’t want to be disappointed, don’t get appointed to a particular future.” Stephen Gaskin

We all need loving support to be our best selves. We all need to be heard. We all need courage to stay curious. We all need rest from overwhelm. And we need heroes to follow when the going gets tough. “Happy people die whole...it is something that happens in us, through our active participation in life, through the choices we make during the brief interlude of our existence as animate beings in an animate universe. Wholeness itself is a participatory act — both a faculty of being and a function of becoming, to be mastered and refined in the course of living.” Robinson Jeffers

Telling our story to others can be the most powerful thing ever too. Nick Cave, the wickedly creative and full human, rock star on stage and in the scrum of life, writes The Red Hand Files: “you can ask me anything.” 

The following is Issue #126, November 2020.

Hey first I wanna say really like your music i have lost my beautiful wife in cancer and my dear brother in covid 19 my question to you is how keep you going on after lost your son its hard sometimes to keep going on with life.
MATTI, STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN

What do we humans do, really? We think. We create our own reality with ideas which shape our life and in death our legacy. We find our ideas in the questions we ask and the language we use as we seek to be seen and to belong. “We may think we can control our grief, our terror, or our shame by remaining silent, but naming offers the possibility of a different kind of control. When Adam was put in charge of the animal kingdom in the Book of Genesis, his first act was to give a name to every living creature.” Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk. 

We create our own reality. 

Ideas come from where we put our attention to what we know and what we tell ourselves about what we think- or the idea we have- about what we know. How truthful we are with our ideas either helps us to be kind to ourself and grow or catches us and holds us stuck. “We do not see things as they are we see them as we are.” Talmud

We create our own reality. 

Ideas have inherent polarity...good ideas/bad thoughts, generous ideas/resentments, public/private. When we become stuck, our emotions can bully us: “fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.” Pema Chodron.

We create our own reality. ​

When we put our emotions into our ideas they become our beliefs. Our beliefs can lead us to judgement. If we seek to create our own reality in a meaningful way it helps to understand that “words create worlds.”  Abraham Joshua Heschel. 

We create our own reality. ​

“The truest story is always the widest one. It’s the one that folds in the highs alongside the lows, the losses alongside the gains. It looks forward and back. It runs in a jagged line rather than straight. It tells us we must go on, even when going on seems impossible.” Cheryl Strayed.

We create our own reality. ​

“The capacity to create and understand the meaning of ideas is considered to be an essential and defining feature of human beings”, explains Martha Beck, one of the pioneers of the profession of Life Coaching. She developed a program of inquiry known as The Work- as below- to move us through our beliefs (and pain!) as we seek our personal truth (and a meaningful life!)

We create our own reality. ​

So too, Brene Brown investigates ideas especially those around vulnerability and shame. She focuses her lens ‘does this serve me or trigger me?’, champions our humanity,  and encourages we ‘welcome flies to the picnic’.

We create our own reality. ​

We create our own reality. ​​

“To become learned, each day add something. To become enlightened, each day drop something.” Lao Tzu.​

We create our own reality. ​​

Forgiveness is as important as gratitude.

We create our own reality. ​​​
​

Chances. Opportunities. The stuff of life. Chances are where the road diverges in the wood or along the trail. How we cope with chances is existentially Being and Doing. “When soldiers go to war, they don’t fight because they hate what is in front of them, they fight because they love what is behind them. When they return, the defenses they created to protect their loved ones are the same defenses they must lower to return to them.” G.K. Chesterton. It is through agency and creating our way through that we get what we want. Glennon Doyle says “The braver we are, the luckier we get.” Still, chances represent change. Change can be scary. 

Loss is woven through each and every life. Some losses, like baby teeth, make way. Other losses, like losing a limb, persist as phantoms. Loss of a loved one is part of our loving life. Being human happens within suffering. When we do not hide from our sadness, our disappointments, our lives don’t diminish they expand. Living fully means means more than just staying alive. “When we come to accept that life is just one damn thing after another and determine to be happy in between, that is when we have grown up.” Katherine Hepburn. 

We cry tears to process loss and reduce our emotional stress. We cry tears as we connect deeply with one another. We cry tears to dilute our frustration, rage, and disappointment. American Psychological Association researcher Bylsma explains that “one theory of crying is that it helps the body to return to a state of homeostasis after being overly aroused—whether positively or negatively. Right after that peak in arousal, whether it’s immediately after winning an Olympic gold medal or walking down the aisle at a wedding, tears might help bring a person back to a baseline level of functioning.” 

Tears are one of our most important body functions because through tears we involuntarily express the gamut of our true emotions. Tears are where our mental and physical health come together and we experience joy and sadness as equally important. Tears are also healthy and nutritious comprised of proteins and antibodies and can have antibacterial and antiviral properties. Tears help us sleep better, strengthen our immune systems, and lower blood pressure and stress levels. Tears are also treatable symptoms of distress and depression. The sage Ida agrees “Feel your feelings when you feel them.” 
​
Adults make between 15-30 gallons of tears per year. There are three types of tears which are all chemically distinct. The tears that protect our eyes are called basal tears. Reflex tears protect our eyes from external irritants. And then we have emotional tears which women shed at a rate approximately 5 times more than men and apparently the Australians cry most. People under stress as or who are lying blink more making more tears. "We conclude that there is a chemosignal in human tears, and at least one of the things the chemosignal does is reduce sexual arousal," study author Noam Sobel, a neuroscientist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, told LiveScience after the research was published in the journal Science. Most of us cry between the hours of 6pm and midnight. Also, it is a physiological fact that the first tear to fall from the right eye is for happiness while the first tear to fall from the left eye is for pain! 

Tears are our water. Water holds memory. We are 70%+ water. The same water here on our planet is the same water that ever was...it just circulates.  

Dobedobedo! 

How are you? I really want to know. It’s important. Really. More important than ever. How you are has everything to do with who you are becoming and where we go from here. 

Sam Sifton who writes New York Times Cooking cares as well. “Good morning. You doing all right? Mondays land heavily sometimes, especially seven months into this pandemic that stalks the world. It’s been exhausting. We’re working more, or not working enough or not at all. We’re staying safe while others aren’t. We’re worrying, staring, thinking, overthinking. We are on, all the time. The weekend comes and maybe we get outside and into the world and maybe that’s a relief, but then its over and the circus music blares once more. So I hope you’re all right. I hope you’ll take the time to be all right. That’s work too, sometimes.” 

So how do you ‘take the time to be all right’? “Most of us believe we have a fairly firm grip on reality. But, behind the outer world we perceive exists the causal world of energy. It is from this plane that we draw into our life whatever we resonate with. We can modulate our energy by changing what we think about and how we think about it. Focusing on all that’s going well helps us counterbalance the daily tidal wave of negative information. Acknowledging what is negative helps us remember that there is always a battle between opposing forces, forever moving out of and back into...Balance.” Gratitude Twenty Four Seven. 
​
As a professional listener, I am all right but I am worried. These days and times are a lot to wrap one’s head around. And under quarantine and into our new WFH experience, few of us have any experiences to reference...and I know the following idea is inspiring. “Many people live in fear of some terrible event changing their lives, the death of a loved one or a serious illness. For the chronically ill, this terrible event has already happened, and we have been let in on an amazing secret: You survive. You adapt, and your life changes, but in the end you go on, with whatever compromises you have been forced to make, whatever losses you have been forced to endure. You learn to balance your fears with the simple truth that you must go on living.” Jamie Weisman, as I Live and Breathe. 

“I’m fine.” Or “Fine” is the proper response to “How are you?” Quora “If you say that you are fine, you mean that you are in good health or reasonably happy.” www.collinsdictionary.com. Not feeling fine, actually being overwhelmed, anxious, and stuck is a new normal for most of us. Still, the mind is an incredible thing especially if nobody gets to be wrong. “The great paradox of the brain is that everything you know about the world is provided to you by an organ that has itself never seen the world.” Bill Bryson, The Body. Front line caregivers are describing working in this pandemic like flying a plane while you are building the plane. We are in chaos. We are all vulnerable. And the chant I hear most among my peers is It’s Okay Not To Be Okay.  

The dis-ease of COVID is giving rise to many paradigm shifts. What if in these times those of us who are “not all right” are the ones who are right in “not having a normal mental state or ​condition”. As uncomfortable as we may be, our dis-ease is a healthy reaction to an unhealthy situation. 

This crisis is one of collective grief. Our assumptive world has been shattered. The general mind loop one may experience is thinking that the world is no longer benevolent, the world seems meaningless, and my place in the world seems insignificant. These days this is all true/Or is it? We are afraid of suffering. We are suffering. We are afraid of dying. We are dying. 
​
“We know that the unprecedented challenges from the pandemic, the economic fallout it has brought on and the racial unrest in the country are having an effect on Americans’ mental health. The prevalence of symptoms of an anxiety disorder was three times as high and symptoms of depression were four times as high in June 2020 than in the second quarter of 2019, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The pandemic’s psychological ripple effects are different from, say, those of natural disasters, which last merely hours or days. The pandemic is like the never-ending story.” Stacey Colino, The Washington Post, The Pandemic Proves We All Should Know Psychological First Aid. 

Still, there are opportunities given to each of us every day to order our dis-ease. The sun rises.  The sun sets. So too we can create more ease for taking good gentle care of ourselves, making our beds, finding new ways of doing things, giving ourselves permission to feel, taking deep breaths, accepting change, counting our blessings, making rituals honoring our lives and loves, visualizing our peace, and slowing down. 
Facing these new days takes courage and reframing may help. Perhaps consider that behind our masks, we have “breath or cooked air...there is a furnace in our cells and when we breathe we pass the world through our bodies, brew it lightly, and turn it loose again, gently altered for having known us.” Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses. 

“Cogito, ergo sum...Je pense, donc je suis...I think, therefore I am.” Rene Descartes. You think too and I am curious about your experience with these new and different times. This living is our human experience. We are dying a little every day and that is our human experience, too. “When we are struggling we don’t need a book in our hands. We need the right words in our minds. When things are tough, a mantra does more than a manifesto. Eric Greitens, Resistance. 

This challenging time has given rise to some brave new leaders. Glennon Doyle disarms her demons by reframing them as guides. “They’re just guides to tell me what is the next right thing for me to do. Loneliness- it leads us to connection with other people. And jealousy- it guides us to what we’re supposed to do next. And pain guides us to help other people. And being overwhelmed- it helps us- it guides us to ask for help...I’ve learned that if I honor my feelings as my own personal prophets and instead of running I just be still...there are prizes to be won and those prizes are peace and dignity and friendship...Maybe, it’s okay, to say actually today I am not fine. Maybe it’s okay to remember that we’re human beings and to stop doing long enough to think and to love and to share and to listen.” TED Talk 

This has been and continues to be one hell of a year. 


"The times are urgent.
Let us slow down."
Bato Akomalafe, PhD


Grieving is a form of activism.

What is it to slow down? 

Emotions need motion. Seek balance.

What if this is all a dream?

Thoughts create the way we feel. Listen. Process.

Is death an experience like any other?

Knowing is an act of faith. Be curious.

How do we engage with that which we cannot see or really know?

It’s coming time that we need to learn to live in our new world. 

What if everyone is more afraid than you? 

Still you survived the night again and got up from your bed this morning. And so did I.  Even if you did wake and start to shake and coach yourself to take ten deep breaths. We are together and closer in our world than ever before and still many of us feel terribly lonely behind our masks. Mercy was easier to cultivate in safer times when it seemed we had boundaries. The contagion we are experiencing has opened that curtain to show how collectively vulnerable we are (and always have been). We are truly global now and actually more connected than ever- both a blessing and a bane.

“The silver lining of our collective disappointment, confusion, grief, illness and loss is that the people and places that mean the most to us have become crystal clear in a 20/20 kind of way.” ~ Camp Merrie-Woode

These days of late summer and early fall are here and are known as the season Worry in Traditional Chinese Medicine. Emotions from this perspective manifest in our digestive systems. Fortunately, September looms and it is a natural time to reboot: our days are shortening, and the sun is lower in the sky every day, casting more shadows so we see more dimension and less reflection. “Don’t kill the butterflies in your stomach. Instead, ask: ‘how can I find a way to ride them?" ~Jonathan Fields

The only way out is through this these days. Breathing. Thinking. Struggling. Persevering. And taking good gentle care of ourselves. “To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it.” ~Mother Theresa

We run on oxygen so learn to breathe. Take 3 deep breaths before challenges. Breathe yourself to sleep. Breathe in for a count of seven and breathe out for a count of four, ten times. “Breathing brings you home. Body and mind twine together in the breath. As soon as you become aware of breathing, you're in your body. Speed up the breath and there's new energy. Slow it down and you calm. Inhale and oxygen surges into your brain while the arousing sympathetic nervous system activates and accelerates the heartbeat. Exhale and activate the soothing peaceful parasympathetic nervous system, so the heart beats more slowly. In the breath you are home in this moment, this Now.” ~Rick Hanson, Just One Thing

What does this have to do with who you are becoming?

​Thinking is meditating. Thinking is focusing. Thinking is staying still. Thinking is a way of being present. Think positive. Pray.

Visualize yourself up and above yourself and explore your meta view.

Visualize yourself in a sacred safe space. Notice what calms you. Notice what feeds you. Notice what inspires you.

What do you really want?

Struggling is working. Struggling is self-management. Life is a struggle.

Witness yourself. Stand in front of a mirror and really look at yourself and acknowledge what you see.

What about this is important to you?

Persevering is hope and faith and gritty nails and courage. Perseverance is a mantra. Perseverance is a battle cry. We persevere because we care. Because we want to be here and in the game. Press your hands together hard in front of you harder and harder until your anxiety abates. Or consider your hands and fingers. What or who are you pointing at?

What will you do and when will you do it?

I do not believe this strange time is meant to kill us. Yet we and everything dies a little every day. What if death is like the sun? Our world orbits the sun but staring at it is dangerous and painful. 

Yesterday a busy bee crossed my path. She was a cicada killer bee in flight transporting a cicada to the ground where she landed and straddled her prey walking to her burrow home. The operation was like a stratolaunch. The bee was made for the cicada and the cicada for many bees.  

We are born into this world, we give birth, and we die just like every living thing. We are all part of everything, and we heal in community. Brené Brown coaches “we’re moving through a lot of tough “todays” as we try to build a world that brings better “tomorrows.”

We have a common enemy and as long as we’re part of a story, we’re not alone. In fact we are one as never before. We are all residents of earth and united in virtual rooms. Still, “Nothing is ours, except time." ~Seneca
 
Could it be that we really have nothing to fear but fear itself? My fear weighs on me like a depression more often than not these days by any clinical definition. But what if my depression is a healthy response to an unhealthy situation? “If you take responsibility for anything in your life know that you’ll feel fear...Every worthy challenge will inspire some fear.” ~Resilience, Eric Greitens

BE NOT AFRAID is the recurring theme through The Bible. If you are afraid, you will fail for sure. The other recurring theme is LOVE. Be the love. Love one another.

​Today is my fairy god-mother’s birthday. She is who I thank most for who I am becoming. Tiana, as she liked to be called, was a force and she knew it. She was devoted to that which she liked and emphatic about those things she did not like- to include square plates and football. 
When Tiana was diagnosed with ovarian cancer she wasn’t surprised nor particularly upset. She wanted to be full and fierce or nothing. Her diagnosis returned her the control she had lost over her life as her children had grown, left home, and she and her husband divorced.  

She engaged the best doctors, care providers, and advisors, and when it became apparent that hers was not a fight to be won, she pressed me into service for what I now practice as a Death Doula. 
We sorted her affairs, her home, and her many possessions. We reviewed her life, reflected on her ‘who’, her values, and her legacy. She knew what she wanted her people to remember about her and she knew how she wanted to live on in their lives. She wrote letters, made phone calls, and distributed inheritances with her warm hand. She made meaning of her life and enriched the lives of those she loved. She gave me a gold bangle that, when I snapped it on my wrist, locked. It’s been there almost 8 years. She was pleased then and I believe she keeps it there still.  

She determined every aspect of her passing away and created an action timeline for her demise. She survived her chaos because she accepted it, made her self strong, her space safe, and so lived until she died. 

She returned her star dust to the universe in September 2012.  

I clipped “Something Else” by Rick Moranis from the New York Times on Sunday, May 16, 2010 and taped it to my office wall. I am as amused by the capital letter force of author Rick Moranis’ voice today as I was then. As whopping as 2020 has been to date, I remember when 2010 opened with big and scary times: the earthquake that destroyed Haiti; BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion that was the most devastating environmental disaster in history; Apple debuted the iPad and Google introduced the driverless car; Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano erupted and grounded air travel; Greece’s economy tanked and masses rioted protesting austerity sanctions and bailout; Tea Party politics raged; and Dawn Brancheau was killed at Sea World.

The recent radical shifts in our world call on the brave to keep “a selective memory for remembering the good things, a logical prudence to avoid doing anything to ruin the present, and defiant optimism for facing the future.”~Isabel Allende, The Sum of Our Days.