Marie Kondo, Will you be my Valentine?

by | Feb 12, 2019 | Musing

Dear Marie,

I know my invitation may come as a surprise after all the snide comments I made about tidying in this blog. You have every right to be offended.

I read your book once, standing up, in the bookstore. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing. (My approach saves the clutter of buying new books.)

Your message, which has been praised and parodied, was too austere for me. The word “tidying” made me think of “white gloves,” and “princesses,” who probably have more than they need, incidentally.

It was hard to accept tidying because I believed, and still do, that creativity can thrive in chaos. A life that is too strictly organized feels confined to the straight and narrow. I always find some moment of inspiration when I go through an old stack of papers, books, memorabilia, or the top drawer of my desk. Austin Kleon, whose book, Steal Like an Artist I love, would agree with me, by the way.

Why else would we be fascinated to rummage around in old attics, trusting that some magic could be found in the mess?

Once upon a time,  I participated in a spiritual community that favored simple living before minimalist was a word. The teaching was to have no more and no less than you needed. Some participants were able to reduce their belongings to what could fit in a half dozen Tupperware boxes.

I succeeded at simplifying a bit, but I always rankled at the idea that I “should” let go of what I loved. I flunked the teaching.

That’s why Marie, I wasn’t well set up to enjoy “tidying.”

What turned me around to tidying

This weekend I binged watched your new Netflix series in the midst of Seattle’s once-in-a-lifetime (I hope) blizzard. I watched as you taught your approach to eight different households. 

First off, thanks for picking a diversity of clients – not just affluent, straight, Caucasians. I counted African-Americans, Pakistani, Japanese-Americans, Caucasians, gays, married straights, married lesbians, and one widow, all at different stages of life. Their homes ranged from tiny apartments to big houses. You greeted all your clients with respect and a squeal of delight.

I once worked in Japan, so hearing you speak Japanese was a treat, as were the moments at the beginning of each consultation in which you’d sit in Zen-like silence, meditating to connect to the spirit of the home.

I was never good at tidying because I thought it meant austerity. Something that would be good for me to do. It brought as much joy as my mother did when I was eight and she made me stay inside on a sunny day and clean my room.

But now your words, “Does it spark joy?” are ringing in my head. Some may call them corny, but I think you’re in touch with something here. I started looking at my belongings in a new way.

I was so glad that you didn’t insist that your clients prepare themselves to sleep on woven tatami mats instead of beds, and keep their belongings in a closet tucked behind a couple of shoji screens, like my Japanese friends. You knew that wouldn’t work for people in the States. I loved watching the man, of Guatemalan parents, who was proud to have reduced his 165 pairs of sneakers to 45. 

You seemed to understand what your clients were facing, not just with their stuff, but with the impact that their belongings had on their relationships. You helped them remember what was most important. Maybe that’s what I liked most about your show.

Giving tidying a try

With the blizzard burying our town, and no electric power, I started tidying my bathroom and then did my dresser. That question, “Does it spark joy for you?” shifted my mood, together with the process you suggest of always thanking your belongings for their service before you let them go. Crazy idea perhaps, but it made it much easier for me to give things away.

My belongings started speaking to me in new ways. I discovered items I had forgotten and felt like I was re-meeting old friends. I resolved to pay them more respect. 

I admit, I took a few liberties with your system, and I followed more of a  “let’s do what I can” process. I approached my book collections separately rather than heaping all my books together. I used a small-steps approach.

The hardest so far has been my vases. I study Ikebana, the Japanese art of arranging flowers, so I can always justify getting another vase. But then I bet Imelda Marcos, the queen of obsessive shoe collections, could always justify buying a hundred more shoes. One by one, I asked the joy question to my vases and started letting some go.

Please be my Valentine

Sparking joy feels a bit like magic, and we need more of that today. Tidying feels like an invitation to feel the essence of things and to appreciate everything you have. Plus, it brought me joy.

I get so tired of reading about bad news that I am powerless to change. Tidying a drawer helped me to feel a little optimism again. 

I know, Marie, that you’re probably not available to join me on Valentine’s Day. I just wanted to tell you that I appreciate you a lot. 

My real Valentine’s date will be my husband. I used your question and discovered that yes, he still brings me joy.

 

 

 

Create a daily oasis with ordinary rituals

by | Jan 16, 2019 | Musing

“We humans remember trauma better than pleasure, it’s the way we’re built, so ritual helps to inject the significance of this moment into us. “   Lorene Cary

Every year as December fades into January, I celebrate. My rituals, whether a gathering on New Year’s Eve, a few hours of reflection on New Year’s Day or eating black-eyed peas for good luck, help assure me that 2018 is firmly gone and I can start fresh in 2019. Life is offering me a new canvas with colorful, fresh paint waiting for me to begin.

I’m grateful for the cycles of life that let us start again with new endings and beginnings.

Sitting on my couch last Monday morning, I watched the sun coming up (a rare treat) and reflected on how magnificent it is that sleep allows us to let go every night and wake up to a new day.

Yesterday’s anxiety doesn’t need to poison today.

Continuing to reflect, I noticed that all of life is full of endings and beginnings: winter melting into spring, weekends fading into weekdays, the end of adolescence opening into the beginning of adulthood.

No wonder that people throughout the ages have used rituals to mark the passage of time and highlight important transitions. Festivals mark the seasons, celebrations mark important events (like religious and civic holidays), and private gatherings mark transitions such as births, deaths, graduations, retirements, and marriages. In some cultures, one’s coming of age is marked by the launching of a heroic quest.

The need for ordinary rituals

Large or widely celebrated rituals help bind a culture together, but ordinary rituals offer us small oases of sanity throughout our days. Prayers at the dinner table, whether religious or not, give us a moment to pause and find gratitude. A glass of wine or a trip to the gym may be the ritual that marks the end of our workday. An evening ritual can help us wind down and set the stage for our dreams.

Small rituals can make our days more mindful by adding a pause, a moment of reflection, a touch of magic, and an opportunity to feel in touch with ourselves or a spirit that feels bigger than ourselves.

We can create a ritual by identifying a repeating pattern in our life, perhaps a daily activity that feels meaningful to us, and then claiming it as a ritual, giving it some extra attention and mindfulness. We add a little extra beauty to our lives.

In an era of constant change and turmoil, ritualizing these patterns can add a sense of stability and comfort to our lives. They can help us adjust our attitudes, reconnect to a sense of purpose, or reinforce our better selves.

Apoorva Bhide, a commentator on the Quora website, called rituals “rafts of meaning in a world that systematically… lacks it.” [expletive deleted.]

Setting up a morning ritual

Every morning we wake up, often around the same time, and undertake a series of activities. Morning routines are everyday rituals we create to wake us up, prepare the day, remind us of what is good about who we are, and set us on track to create.

Many writers use a morning ritual to prepare, mentally and physically, for the shock of facing a blank page when they sit down to write.

You can use a morning ritual to focus, tune up your attitude, or think about your day.

An example:

There’s nothing exotic about my morning routine. I:

  • wake up and stumble into the kitchen for a cup of tea.
  • sink into the couch and stare into the blackness of night or a dawning sun.
  • search for words of inspiration from Richard Rohr, Krista Tippett or Maria Popova in my email. (Always risky because I may also find to-dos.)
  • meditate sometimes–hopefully more in 2019.
  • write three pages. I use the website 750 words to inspire me to write at least 750 words. I write anything from shopping lists to reflections on life or ideas for my blog. This writing is key to my ritual.
  • get dressed.
  • feed the horses. Often, I’ll muck their paddock. Mucking, even in the cold rain, counts as another form of contemplation.
  • return to the house, eat breakfast and start my workday.

Sometimes I resist this routine on the days I don’t feel like going out in dark sleet to feed the horses. But this routine is what says “home” to me whenever when I’m away on vacation. Then, I even miss mucking.

Any set of regular activities that mean something to you can become a ritual, especially when you reinforce them with joy and attention.

Other people’s rituals

If you’re curious about the rituals and routines used by some great artists, scientists, writers, poets, and mathematicians, check out Daily Rituals: How Artists Work.

You can adapt any of these rituals that might work for you, although I suggest staying away from some of the more destructive ones: drinking, drugs or too many doughnuts.

Designing everyday rituals

Here are a few of my criteria. My rituals have to be:

  • Satisfying and. hopefully, yummy. I want to feel more creative, connected and alive as a result.
  • Easy to remember and easy to repeat. Do-able. If they’re too complicated, they won’t happen.
  • Meaningful and uplifting.

Your rituals don’t have to be:

  • Practiced or understood by others. Athletes and performers often have private rituals that can seem downright goofy or superstitious. But who cares as long as it works for them! Baseball pitcher Wendell Turk always chewed four pieces of licorice before he pitched. You figure.
  • Religious or serious. Your ritual can be small, quiet or boisterous. No temple bells or incense required. As I think about it, five minutes of laughter yoga (deep belly laughing) is a ritual that could add vitality to my day.

Rituals are about practicing patterns that increase our aliveness and attentiveness, not a way of forcing us into habits that can turn us into drones.

Crafting our rafts of meaning

Author Lorene Cary, addressing the graduates of Swarthmore College at their graduation ritual said:

“We humans remember trauma better than pleasure, it’s the way we’re built, so ritual helps to inject the significance of this moment into us. We rush, rush, rush, and then we slooooow down time. We make this boring. [referring to graduation] It’s not a mistake, it’s meant to be. We assemble. We say certain words.
…. Ritual rough ups the smooth surface of memory so that existence can snag.”

Let’s build rituals that help us remember what is good.

You could create rituals for the beginning of the end of your day or work week. Maybe you want a practice of creating special meals at special times. Maybe your ritual will be an oasis in the middle of the day (aka a nap) or a Sabbath each week.

If rituals are rafts of meaning in a sea of chaos, then let’s design ones that we can enjoy.

What would make your everyday life richer? I’d love to hear.

 

Welcome back the light

by | Dec 18, 2018 | Musing

“There is a crack, a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”
Leonard Cohen, “Anthem.”

We’re almost at the Solstice and not a moment too soon in my book.

I’ve been so hungry for light that I pulled out my old lightbox from the attic to begin soaking up some rays. I think it’s helped my spirits.

In truth, there’s plenty of light if you know where to look for it. I decided to check out the news from 2018 to see if a few cracks of light got in. (I skipped the big headlines such as royal marriages and elections.)

I found a few interesting items to share with you:

1) Overlooked no more

The venerable NYT finally noticed that most of the obituaries it has featured since 1851 were of dead, white guys. Amazing insight for a news organization!!!  Even Charlotte Bronte, of Jane Eyre fame, didn’t make the cut when she died in 1855. (Her who-remembers-him-now husband rated an obit many years later.) Now the Times is playing catch-up with their coverage of underrepresented communities with a feature called “Overlooked.” Check it out on-line – I plan to learn a lot!

2) Whistle with the wind

I love the sound of wind, especially when I’m not walking near any swaying Doug Fir or Madrona trees. Now, thanks to NASA, for the first time ever, you can hear the sound of the wind on Mars. NASA’s InSight touched down on Mars and caught some of the wind on its recording. How miraculously cool is that?

3) Singing helps your health

Reuters reports that, according to a small study, singing in a community choir may provide psychological benefit to seniors. (If you could have heard our local Chorale with its glorious grey hair voices, this would have been obvious.) And it gets better. Research from Hungary suggests that singing in a choir helps lung patients breathe more easily. I want to see a study in 2019 on the health benefits of yodeling or singing, in my case, to two very patient horses.

4) A few landmarks:

  • A lot of women, or at least a lot more women, ran for office, and some of them even won. (“Just you wait, Henry Higgins, just you wait.”)
  • A city in Georgia became the first to have its criminal justice system led entirely by black women. Way to go.
  • India’s Supreme Court decriminalized consensual gay sex.  About time, India. Proud of ‘ya.

5) Leaders cross the partisan divide

In headline news, George W. Bush handed Michele Obama a cough drop at Senator John McCain’s memorial. They have also been seen to hug in public. A cough drop may sound small, but don’t be deceived. With the state of our political divides, it’s a small victory.

6) Michele Obama

I think Michele Obama doing anything in public is cause for celebration. She also published a book.

Now beyond the headlines.

These events made headlines.

As I searched for light, though, I realized that many significant, light-filled events are hidden in plain sight.

I’m looking for statistics on the number of people who:

Sang in the shower:________
Watched their child take a first step:___________
Helped a stranger cross the street:____________
Went dancing:____________
Laughed so hard they snorted:_______
Gave money to end homelessness, poverty, discrimination or hate:______________
Cried watching It’s a Beautiful Life:______________
Helped a neighbor:_____________
Fingerpainted:_______________
Fostered or adopted a dog:_____________
Learned to read for the first time:______________

Now it’s your turn: what noteworthy statistics remind you of the good stuff that keeps happening daily?

The truth is that the light is everywhere. With us. Always.

We just have to notice.

Thank you for reading. You bring light to my life.

Taking the small steps back to thriving

by | Dec 4, 2018 | Creative aging, Flourishing, Musing

What do we do when we keep getting clobbered by bad news?

Find our way back to thriving.

This week, I’m continuing my survival guide to pulling a little hope from tough times. Hopefully, you don’t need it, unless, of course, you made the mistake of listening to the latest report on Global Warming or what’s happening at the border with Mexico.

Topping my list of things-I-didn’t-ask-for-and-didn’t-want this week was Monday’s emergency root canal and the death of a favorite cousin. Plus all the national and international news.

I’ve also been questioning my authority to write about thriving creatively in the second half of life, while my list of woes keeps accreting with medical and health issues, financial concerns, the loss of a beloved, and even letting go of plans to adopt a dog I had been counting on. 

Maybe this week’s episode of the Survival Guide should be called Thriving is Not What You Think.

Raw and a bit crumpled, I’m wondering how I can have any legitimacy to talk about thriving. But this has been the perfect time to explore how we keep going when we feel broken, so maybe I still have something to talk about. I figure there might be a few others out there whose lives are rich, complex, and full of stuff not chosen.

It’s one thing to thrive when everything is going great, or an affirmation or two can turn things around. But challenges will come with life after 50 (or living in general), and we know better than to think that we can varnish over them. 

Don’t believe the well-packaged books, posts, and articles being marketed with titles like Do This One Thing and Your Life Will Be Instantly Wonderful. Yes, they’re tempting. (Disclaimer: I occasionally read this stuff.) But, even as I unconsciously take the bait and click on the tempting tidbit flashing over the Internet with a sexy, pseudo-solution, I know it’s a sham. After the headline, “clickbait” is always boring.

Moreover, the one-stop solution feels disrespectful of those of us who know it ain’t that easy. 

Finding a way back to thriving.

I decided to notice, on root canal day, what kept me going.

When you’re feeling raw or broken, the good stuff stands out. Maybe the darkness makes the light brighter. (Forgive me if that sounds like a bumper sticker.) With my customary, entitled belief that things should go my way worn off, I started noticing lots of small things that were, in fact, working for me. I found hints of delight.

The day of my root canal was brilliantly sunny, and I enjoyed a spectacular view of Mt. Rainier on the way to the endodontist. The “C” bus that I needed to catch came promptly. A brisk walk to her office gave me some exercise, and the warm greeting from the receptionist felt genuine. Throughout the visit, I experienced respect and compassion. The endodontist, whom I fell in love with as much as you can love working with a dentist, soothed me as she gently touched my arm. Beautiful music distracted me from the procedure (thanks Pandora Radio)–the nitrous oxide helped me relax into a semi-comatose state where every song seemed spectacular. 

Returning home, I needed to run to catch a bus and discovered that my knees, ankles, and back could still pull as a team. Back on the island, my husband was waiting for me on the street with an open-hearted smile. A friend who was also in pain called to ask me a question. I was buoyed by an opportunity to help another.

Each small step was a grace.

I discovered that life is never all one way…all happy or all sad, all dark or all light. 

I can’t pretend that everything that happens to us is good. The fact that my cousin struggled with early onset dementia for twenty years, knowing that she would eventually die of the same condition that had killed her mother, was tragic. Yet in her life and death, there were many miracles: her resilience and hope, her peaceful death, the way cousins are reconnecting around her departure.

Within everything, we can find enough good to keep us going. 

I won’t call the pain, hassle, and expense of a root canal good. Yet my day contained so much good within it, that I discovered that I was, indeed, thriving.

True, it broke my heart to not be able to adopt the dog I had been counting on; yet along the way I experienced a new friendship and generous, caring support from the dog’s current foster Mom. The heartfelt, compassionate back-up from the animal-loving friends to whom I reached out for guidance, touched me deeply. 

Etty Hillesum, whose writings about life during the Holocaust have inspired me so much, wrote about the touches of beauty she discovered in her horrific surroundings, like how the sun bounced off the walls of the concentration camp or how a flower could grow in the broken concrete.

All is not good. But we can always discover the good that is waiting to be noticed.

My list of saving graces is full of items that are small and, seemingly, insignificant, like being able to run a few blocks. On my “Life-is-working-aren’t-I-great-days” I can forget to appreciate these small things. On my bad days, they are the gifts that bring me back to life.

The days when life drops us to our knees are the days when we may look down to find the flower in the concrete.

People come together in remarkable ways after the worst tragedies, like the recent fires in Paradise, California. Small acts don’t bring a burned home back; they bring back hope.

When we get raw, we get real; we drop some of the masks we carry that separate us from life. 

My book is taking a new direction. I don’t need to be a cheerleader for “Isn’t it great to thrive after 50?”  Rather, I can say, “Stuff is going to happen, but we can still find our way to thriving.” A bit of depression, a period of brokenness, or a calamity or two don’t banish us from experiencing the small wonders of life. At times, they may even be enhanced.

That’s how we will continue to thrive. We don’t have to force fit life into an ideal reality.

We follow its flow and discover what is ideal within the reality we have.

 

Expanding our thanks

by | Nov 19, 2018 | Musing

Thanksgiving, that holiday of family, friends, food, and thankfulness in the US, is almost here. T-day is my favorite holiday, even if I need to monitor my consumption and cool it on the mashed potatoes and gravy.

What could be better than a day dedicated to giving thanks?

Hopefully, on T-day, we’ll fill our spirits as well as our plates. Our expression of thankfulness, expanded, becomes gratitude. Gratitude, in turn, becomes a way of being in the world. We give thanks for specifics, for family, community and what we’ve been given. With gratitude, we expand our perspective beyond what is personal to us and feel our common connection.

Gratitude invites me to share blessings with others. 

Gratitude is like a healing superpower, which brings me light when the fires rage in California, the Northwest rains begin, I lose a dog, or life doesn’t go the way I’d prefer. Gratitude invites me to remember my deepest values, even as the cultural cacophony about holiday sales and shopping days till Christmas, begins to crescendo.

Gratitude reminds me of what is important and what is good. I notice the small blessings that I almost take for granted, such as the right to a good meal, and the big ones I should never forget, such as the right to freedom. 

Because life is not a “grab-bag candy game.”

Sorry, Gordon Gekko (of the movie WallStreet), but greed is not good. Toni Morrison put it bluntly when she spoke to a group of students. Don’t treat life, she told them, like a “grab-bag candy game.”

In that game, the powerful get to be first in line, putting their mitts into the candy bag and pulling out all that they can. Winners take all. The losers, whether they be refugees in a Caravan from Central America or the marginalized in our own communities, well, too bad. They should have been first in line. 

The grab-bag candy game dehumanizes us. I remember the words of the Dean of the Management School at Yale, a fiscally conservative guy, who nonetheless said, 

“The problem isn’t in making a lot of money. The problem is thinking that you have to keep it.”

Hoarding isolates us. Sharing connects us.

My sister-in-law, a very talented independent videographer, shot several episodes of a reality show about hoarders. As she entered their overstuffed homes, she found them crammed with misery. (Believe me, she doesn’t keep anything surplus!)

Now back to freedom…

The freedom to share freedom

Our freedom thrives in our desire for others to be free.

Morrison also told her students:

Remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else.”

Right on.

Freedom, like love, gets bigger when it’s shared.

 
President Obama, a friend of Morrison’s, said: 
“Justice grows out of our recognition of ourselves in each other, That my liberty depends on you being free, too,”
Nelson Mandela said:
For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”
and even Abraham Lincoln had a few things to say:
“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.”-
Please mention this to the powers that be.
 
On Thanksgiving Day, as we bless the food we receive, or as you, in your way,  eat and celebrate what’s good in your life, let’s send blessings to those who will never take freedom for granted.
Here’s my tiny prayer:
 
Because I have food, I want you to be able to eat.
Because I have known love, I want your life to be full of love.
Because I have known freedom, I want you to be free.
 
Peace and blessings to you and my great thanks to you for being who you are.
 
 

When Grief comes to call

by | Nov 5, 2018 | Creating, Creative aging, Musing

Last week Grief took me down, yet left a gift.

If you’re dealing with personal pain or the low-grade, chronic grief a lot of us are feeling about the world, it may be time to learn to walk with him.

I can’t tell you how to “get over” grief, but I’m learning about how to deal with his dominating, demanding presence.

Grief is one tough master. (I’ve gendered him, but you can change that if a force that takes you to your knees and threatens to flatten you to the ground feels more female to you.) He’s unyielding, sometimes cruel, and yet not without occasional kindness.

Losing Riley

Grief took my husband and me for a wild ride last week after we decided that it was time to put down our little animal companion, Riley.

Riley was our foster-rescue dog, a sweet, gentle Springer Spaniel, who came into our lives for four months, until his dementia and neurological difficulties made life too painful for him.

Our passion for Riley defied logic. We were smitten the moment we saw him walking in circles at the park, on a leash with the woman who brought him to us from the Seattle Animal Shelter. No matter that Riley was deaf, near blind, had trouble lifting himself to walk, and at times couldn’t contain himself for more than three hours.

He became a vessel for the biggest love we could give.

When Riley looked at us with his clouded eyes, our hearts melted and all we could think of doing was showering him with the safety, care, and love that he had missed during his days of abuse, neglect, and abandonment.

Grief was watching our moves.

Grief took aim as we kept opening our hearts to our little fella. Grief knew how to pulverize us the moment that we decided that Riley’s pain and confusion had outstripped his joy in living and it was time to say goodbye.

NEVER say to anyone, “He was just a dog.” Grief doesn’t care. Grief shakes us with loss and strips from us whatever we hold precious, whether it’s a beetle or a treasured photo, lost, of a deceased grandmother.

In the soul, sorrows mingle. My mother’s long-awaited death evoked few tears (they may still come), but putting down Riley took me to a place where I couldn’t stop sobbing.

Last week I read the words of Elizabeth Gilbert, who experienced a tsunami of grief when her wife Rayna died. As she shared in a recent TED interview:

“Grief… happens upon you, it’s bigger than you. There is a humility that you have to step into, where you surrender to being moved through the landscape of grief by grief itself. And it has its own timeframe, it has its own itinerary with you, it has its own power over you, and it will come when it comes. And when it comes, it’s a bow-down. It’s a carve-out. And it comes when it wants to, and it carves you out — it comes in the middle of the night, comes in the middle of the day, comes in the middle of a meeting, comes in the middle of a meal. It arrives — it’s this tremendously forceful arrival and it cannot be resisted without you suffering more… The posture that you take is you hit your knees in absolute humility and you let it rock you until it is done with you. And it will be done with you, eventually. And when it is done, it will leave. But to stiffen, to resist, and to fight it is to hurt yourself.”

Quote cited in a post at Brainpickings

Gilbert’s words resonate as memories of Riley continue to haunt our house.

A piece of chicken fat turns into a memory of how Riley would have swallowed it whole and then licked my hand. The baby gate we put in place to keep Riley in his section of the house is down, yet I still try to step over it. After-images of Riley keep appearing: Riley stumbling to stand, Riley being carried down steps by my husband, Riley panting and turning in circles in the hall, confused by his growing dementia.

Part of me wants to numb this pain, but neither drinking nor drugs are appealing. Grief is adept at waiting out numbness. Reasoning feels equally useless. Who cares that Riley was only with us for four months or that we gave him the best life we could? That may matter, but not to Grief.

Grief comes with a gift

Bearing the pain, I walk through our vegetable garden. I notice that the colors of the leaves on the smoke bush have become more vivid. The beans I left dangling from their vines stand out like a piece of art. The rustle of the quaking aspens turns into a melody.

Words, inspired by Riley, start flooding into me and I create a small poem. Grief waits with me as I shape a blessing from Riley for my husband, another for a friend who loved our furry companion.

The power to shape and craft my words is the lifeline I need, a way to stand with my grief, neither running from it nor drowning in its waters. Creativity lifts me out of the darkness, with compassion. I do not have to produce something lasting or great, I just need to follow its suggestion and open my senses and imagination.

I follow the thread, creating other small poems, trusting that each step I take is leading me towards healing, knowing that light will follow the dark, sensing that the gashes in my heart are expanding my perspective, and giving Grief its due.

Whether you are happy with the elections or not, concerned about the Caravan of refugees coming towards the Mexican border, or not, or tracking on other sufferings, know that in today’s world, Grief is likely to be a frequent guest.

Give Grief his place at the table

It’s a small price to pay for the right to love and care deeply about the world.

Let Grief stand at your side as you dip into that place in your soul where joy and sorrow mingle and deep hope lives.

From there, you may find solace. From there, you can create.

From there may you find a place of wholeness, a rainbow within that can bear the storms.

A blessing from Riley

To the friends I met
and those I never did,
I send you blessings.

I will be watching over you.
So grateful to have received love
in your difficult world,
a chance to leave in peace
even though I couldn’t wag my tail
or say thank you.

I will be romping again
with those you have loved
in a place called Dogland.

If you listen quietly
you may hear us bark.

.

 

 

 

 

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