I am Wonder

This is PART SIX of a series. To start from the beginning, go here.

This is an excerpt from The Deep Water Leaf Society: Harnessing the Transformative Power of Grief (copyright 2008, Claire M. Perkins. All Rights Reserved.)

from chapter 13: Voices from the Big Wave

I am highlighting one of these dialogues in each post of this series. The questions of the dominant hand are noted (DH) and the answers of the images, transcribed by my non-dominant hand, are noted (NDH).)

I Am Wonder (excerpt from The Deep Water Leaf Society) by ArtfulAlchemist on Polyvore.com

5/24/04 Dialogue with Blond Baby Girl

Me (DH): Hello little blond girl peeking out at me. What is your name?

Girl (NDH): Wonder.

(DH): Hello, Wonder. How do you feel?

(NDH): Alive. Happy. Curious. Excited. Inspired.

(DH): Why do you feel that way?

(NDH): Just look and see! It’s all around us. It sparkles. It sings. It’s magic.

(DH): What is this that sparkles and sings with magic?

(NDH): LIFE! All of it. It’s awesome.

(DH): What can I do for you?

(NDH): See through my eyes.

(DH): What gift or wisdom do you bring to me?

(NDH): JOY!

This little one seemed to be telling me that if I looked at life with the innocence and wonder of a child, I could reclaim joy. She seemed to promise that life could still be worth living and could still be full of joy and wonder, despite the loss I had suffered. Although right now my heart felt shattered and broken, I could feel her promise singing through my veins.
~~

to be continued . . .

As always, I welcome your comments here or by email (Claire@DeepWaterLeafSociety.com)

Visit my website: www.DeepWaterLeafSociety.com

I am the Wiz Kid

This is PART FOUR of a series. To start from the beginning, go here.

This is an excerpt from The Deep Water Leaf Society: Harnessing the Transformative Power of Grief (copyright 2008, Claire M. Perkins. All Rights Reserved.)

from chapter 13: Voices from the Big Wave

(I am highlighting one of these dialogues in each post of this series. The questions of the dominant hand are noted (DH) and the answers of the images, transcribed by my non-dominant hand, are noted (NDH).)

I Am the Wiz Kid (excerpt from The Deep Water Leaf Society by ArtfulAlchemist on Polyvore.com

5/24/04 Dialogue with the Boy in Blue

Me (DH): Hello little boy in blue – who are you?

Boy (NDH): I am the Wiz Kid.

(DH): Hello, Wiz Kid. What is it you are up to?

(NDH): Magic. Alchemy. Transformation.

(DH): I see. That sounds exciting! How do you feel?

(NDH): Anticipation.

(DH): Anticipation? What is it you expect?

(NDH): Great things. Growth.

(DH): It looks to me like you are feeding something to the swimmers in the bowl. What is it?

(NDH): Wisdom in small doses. Only what can be handled at any given time.

(DH): And who are the swimmers?

(NDH): Look. There are 3.

(DH): Yes, there are 3. Is one of them me?

(NDH): At least one, yes. At least.

(DH): Are they all me, then?

(NDH): All you – all me – all one.

(DH): You are very cryptic – mysterious. What can I do for you?

(NDH): Play the game. Dance, laugh, grow.

(DH): What gift or wisdom do you bring to me?

(NDH): Vision.

This dialogue left me puzzled and curious. Through the image of the Wiz Kid and the words he said, I felt connected to the side of Cameron that was always so curious and creative, the side of him that somehow seemed to know more than I did despite all appearances to the contrary. I felt uplifted by the idea that some powerful transformation was just around the corner for me. The three swimmers in the bowl had made me think of the karmic triangle that Cameron, David and I had always seemed to form, so I was surprised that the meaning was deeper and more mysterious than that. The dialogue reminded me that I could keep living and growing and enjoying life, and that this loss could lead to wisdom and vision if I allowed it to.
~~

to be continued . . .

As always, I welcome your comments here or by email (Claire@DeepWaterLeafSociety.com)

Visit my website: www.DeepWaterLeafSociety.com

I am what calls out for love . . .

This is PART TWO of a series. To start from the beginning, go here.

This is an excerpt from The Deep Water Leaf Society: Harnessing the Transformative Power of Grief (copyright 2008, Claire M. Perkins. All Rights Reserved.)

from chapter 13: Voices from the Big Wave

Between funeral arrangements and a steady stream of visitors, some weeks passed before I got around to dialoguing with The Big Wave collage images.

The process of journaling dialogue with images involves writing with both hands. My dominant hand, the one I normally write with, speaks for my conscious self and asks questions of the images. My non-dominant hand answers the questions, speaking for the image.

It is an amazing process that works because the non-dominant hand has direct access to the right hemisphere of the brain, where intuition, emotion and spiritual connection reside. It was an awkward process at first. Once I got used to it and allowed the non-dominant hand to just write, uncensored by the critical voice or the logic of the left brain, I found that amazing insights would arise.

I sat down to dialogue with the images in the Big Wave collage toward the end of May, several weeks after Cameron’s death. I was wiped out, emotionally and physically. I was searching for answers to that unanswerable question, “Why?” It took me two days, several days apart, to dialogue with each and every image in the collage. The messages they gave me were profound and brought me much needed peace and healing.

(I am highlighting one of these dialogues in each post of this series. The questions of the dominant hand are noted (DH) and the answers of the images, transcribed by my non-dominant hand, are noted (NDH).)

I am What Calls Out for Love (excerpt from The Deep Water Leaf Society) by ArtfulAlchemist on Polyvore.com

5/24/04 Dialogue with Baby in the Galvanized Tub

Me (DH): Hello little boy being bathed – who are you?

Baby (NDH): I am what calls out for love, for nurturing. I am content with simple things. I am well loved.

(DH): Do you have a name?

(NDH): My name is Earth Child.

(DH): Earth Child, how do you feel?

(NDH): I am sad for the mother who loves me so but thinks that she hasn’t enough to give.

(DH): Why do you feel this way?

(NDH): Because love is all I have ever needed. She cries for me but doesn’t see she’s given me the greatest gift of all.

(DH): But you live in poverty. She doesn’t know how she will feed you. Your life expectancy is so short. She bathes you in gutter water. The city is full of disease. She cries for the you that could have been – that should have been. She cries for not knowing how to heal you.

(NDH): She loves me. That is all. That is enough.

(DH): What can I do for you?

(NDH): Don’t become cold. Never give up on the power of love.

(DH): What gift or wisdom do you bring me?

(NDH): I show you the power of your heart.

The grieving and broken-hearted part of me was angry with the idea the love was enough. How could it be enough when my son’s life had been cut so short, when he had faced such difficulty despite my loving him? I argued with the photo in its own terms – gutter water and Third World poverty – but what my heart was really crying out was that in the midst of plenty, in the midst of middle-class white-bread suburbia, with every opportunity and all the love I could give, my son was still dead at the age of 26. How could love be enough? But the child in the photo insisted that it was and some part of me opened up to receive that message.
~~

to be continued . . .

As always, I welcome your comments here or by email (Claire@DeepWaterLeafSociety.com)

Visit my website: www.DeepWaterLeafSociety.com

Where the Wild Things Are

(spoiler alert – if you haven’t seen the movie yet, I do discuss the ending)

I’ve never read the book - not as a child, not to my own children. But ever since the previews for Where the Wild Things Are began playing on TV, I’ve been strangely drawn to the movie. I finally went to see it this past Friday and it has stayed with me in a way that few movies do.

First of all, there’s no denying that Max, the unruly, imaginative, emotional little boy in the film reminded me of my own little wild child, Cameron. It’s not that Cameron was just like that or that our family life had the same dynamic. It’s more that, for me, Max’s adventure played up the hurts of childhood as felt by a child and touched that emotional chord in me that still feels my own son’s pain even now, more than five years after his death.

Max’s mother is, most of the time, sweetly loving and displays extreme patience – a skill I never mastered to any degree. She listens to Max’s hurts and helps him clean up his messes. Even when she’s stressed by work, she takes the time to really listen to Max, to encourage his imaginative storytelling rather than brushing him off. She is the mother I wish I would or could have been. The only time we see her snap is when Max begins acting out in front of her new boyfriend. While she seems to love Max unconditionally when they are alone, she’s embarrassed by what her company will think. This is more like the mother I was. How many times I felt that sinking what-will-the-neighbors-think feeling when Cameron acted out in ways that were out of control. Max’s out-of-control behavior escalates into a rage and culminates with him biting his mother then running away. Cameron’s rage took him much farther away from me, into the self-destruction of addiction and a land of no return.

In Max’s running away fantasy, he goes to an island where the wild things are. He meets larger-than-life characters who mirror his outer circumstances and his inner responses. There’s one who smashes things in anger, just like Max; there’s another who feels unheard and wonders if anyone even knows he’s there, just like Max; there’s a mushy couple always wanting to kiss each other, just like Max’s mother and her boyfriend; there’s one who took off and abandoned the others to be with her new friends, just like Max’s big sister. This imaginative inner landscape is just like Max’s life – except that here, Max gets to be king. He sets out to create a place where only good things happen. He learns that it is a much more difficult job than he imagined.

Eventually he realizes he must say goodbye to his wild anger and sadness. He chooses to leave the land of the wild things and return to his imperfect home. The reunion scene with his mother is touching and heartbreaking all at the same time. It is a poignant, wordless mix of relief, forgiveness, acceptance and love – a true homecoming in every sense. Oh, that every little boy could feel such love.

To me, the film is a beautiful depiction of what we must learn if we are to grow up. And what we must learn if we are to heal our own grief. We all sometimes travel to where the wild things are. We live in a messy world where bad things happen. We get hurt and scared and angry. And we must learn not to squash or kill all those crazy things we’re feeling, but to befriend them and to rule them benevolently. Ultimately we must learn that however big and real and hairy those feelings are, love is always stronger and love is always waiting to welcome us home.


“It’s all yours. You’re the owner of this world,” wild thing Carol tells Max. May we each learn to rule it wisely. May we each choose to return to love.



As always, I welcome your coments here or by email (Claire@DeepWaterLeafSociety.com)

Visit my website: http://www.deepwaterleafsociety.com/

The Deep Water Leaf Society wins Honorable Mention

I'm excited to announce that The Deep Water Leaf Society: Harnessing the Transformative Power of Grief, just won an honorable mention in the Writer's Digest International Self-Published Book Awards!

I'm doin' my happy dance . . .

Meanwhile, you may have noticed I haven't posted here in a while. That's because I've been happily busy developing my newest website and blog: www.ArtfulAlchemist.com and ArtfulAlchemist.blogspot.com. If you are interested in Expressive Arts and creative expression as a pathway to healing, go on over and check it out!

I'm not abandoning the DWLS blog, though. Soon I'll be posting a whole series around using art as a pathway to healing grief. So stay tuned . . .

Declaring Independence from Grief

Here in the U.S. we celebrate the Fourth of July as Independence Day. It is the day that Congress approved a Declaration of Independence from British rule. It marks the birth of our nation as a free, self-governing entity. The Declaration asserts that everyone has the right to "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" and claims that when any form of governance "becomes obstructive to these ends," it is our right "to alter or to abolish it."

When grief has reigned as king in our lives for too long, it may be that we, too, need to declare our independence and reclaim our inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness.

Claiming freedom is only the first step. Like this country’s forefathers, we may have to fight to win our freedom. The energy of grief (one form of what don Miguel Ruiz might call "the parasite" or Eckhart Tolle might call "the pain body") will fight to hold on. It does not want to be vanquished. And there are factions within the psyche, just as there were colonies and individuals in our early nation, who may wish to remain loyal to the current king.

In the case of grief, we may feel that remaining loyal to the pain is the only way to remain loyal to our deceased loved ones. But would we wish for anyone who loves us to be in constant pain? Why would our deceased loved ones ask for such cruel loyalty? We would honor them better by living our lives to the fullest, freeing ourselves from pain and pursuing happiness and joy full steam ahead.

I know this isn’t easy, especially in the early days of grief. There is no timetable or deadline and everyone’s journey will be different. However, for me, there came a day when I recognized that if I ever expected to feel "normal" again, I had to make a conscious choice and effort to reclaim joy. Grief had become a tyrant under whose thumb I languished. I was tired of telling the story of my loss and tired of feeling victimized by it. I was ready to be free. Are you?

Reclaiming the right to feel happiness is an act of power and an act of faith. Declaring independence from grief is not a one-time choice; it is a commitment to consistently choosing life and joy, day by day and minute by minute. It is well worth the fight.

So here, very loosely based on the original Declaration, I propose a Declaration of Independence from Grief:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one person to experience the loss of another who was Deeply Loved, pain and sadness naturally result. And while it behooves us to feel what we feel and to mourn our losses, there comes a time when the Kingdom of Grief becomes a Tyranny best left behind.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that we have a Right to live fully even though our Loved One has passed, that our Loved One would rather be honored with Laughter and Love than with tears, that while Life will always be different now it can still be Joyful and Fulfilling, and that we have the Freedom and the Power to choose Happiness.

We therefore, as self-sovereign individuals, solemnly publish and declare that we have a Right to be free of the Rule and Tyranny of Grief, that we have the Right and the Will to fight for that Freedom, and that we will emerge Victorious and at Peace within ourselves.

Won’t you join me this day in signing the Declaration? By doing so, you will be creating your own personal Independence Day, and that is truly something to celebrate.

As always, I welcome your coments here or by email (Claire@DeepWaterLeafSociety.com)

Visit my website: http://www.deepwaterleafsociety.com/

Choice AND Consequences

I’m undoubtedly dating myself when I say I remember an old game show called Truth or Consequences. Of course, it’s the Bob Barker era of the show that I remember – I’m definitely not old enough to be talking about the original 1940’s radio program hosted by Ralph Edwards. (The only reason I even know about that is from this Wikipedia entry.)

The reason I bring this show up is because I think the game of Life (not the board game – actual L-I-F-E) is a very similar venture. Except instead of Truth or Consequences, the real title of the game is Choice AND Consequences.

In the game show, contestants had to answer a trick question in a very short time frame. The questions were generally impossible to answer, and the buzzer would go off before the contestant could even try to make something up. When the contestant couldn’t answer, he or she would have to face the consequences. Most often the consequences involved some slapstick embarrassing stunt, but sometimes the consequence was a heart-warming reunion with a loved one.

Doesn’t that sound a lot like life?

We are faced with trick questions every day. There are mundane questions, like the one that usually hits me as I’m already en route: “Will I be able to take the short route to Scottsdale or is the Loop 101 Freeway closed today?” Buzzz. You lose. Detour 1 mile ahead.

There are more philosophical questions like: “Can I create my reality with my thoughts?” Buzzzz. Time’s up – you already have.

And then there are the seemingly unanswerable “Why” questions that surround every challenge and loss we face: “Why is my job the one to be cut?” Buzzzz. “Why did I get this disease?” Buzzzz. “ Why did my child have to die?” Buzz, buzz, buzz.

Here’s the thing. In all of life’s situations, it’s not so much a matter of finding the “Truth” OR facing consequences. We’re already facing consequences all of the time – consequences based on the choices we make. It’s all about making a choice AND experiencing the consequences. And then making another choice about how we respond to those consequences, which leads to more consequences.

Of course, I’m not saying anyone consciously chose to lose their job, their investments, their home or their loved one. Usually there are a whole bunch of unconscious choices and beliefs at play. And not all of those choices are our own – after all we each share this planet with another six billion or so conscious and unconscious choice makers. So, as the bumper sticker says, sometimes Shit Happens.

When it does, you can spin your wheels trying to answer the trick question “Why?” before the buzzer goes off, or you can simply CHOOSE to respond – mentally, emotionally and practically – in the way that creates the best next consequence for you.

You see, no matter how tricky the question, no matter how painfully challenging the situation, the choice we make about how we respond makes all the difference. It always makes more sense to choose joy than to choose pain.

So, I guessed wrong and found the freeway closed? Oh well, the extra time on the road can give me just enough time to listen to some of my favorite music. Or I can take a brand new route and maybe I’ll discover a fabulous shop I didn’t know was there. If I CHOOSE to look at this as an opportunity rather than an inconvenience, I completely reshape the consequences.

Sure. That’s easy. But what about the bigger consequences? What about the loss of a loved one? What about the loss of my son? I still have a choice. Yes, it is painful. Yes, I would prefer it didn’t have to happen. But it did. Shall I spend the rest of my life trying to answer “Why?” Or should I choose to experience joy and live the rest of my life fully? There’s no wrong answer. There’s no buzzer. But time is very definitely moving on whatever I choose and even if I choose not to choose. It’s all Choice and Consequences.

So here’s your next question on Choice and Consequences. You have just 3 seconds to answer:

“Is anything inherently meaningful, or does it only become so by the meaning you give it?”

Buzzz. Time's up. Here’s your consequence: a slapstick pratfall or a joyful experience. The choice is yours.

As always, I welcome your coments here or by email (Claire@DeepWaterLeafSociety.com)

Visit my website: http://www.deepwaterleafsociety.com/

Tear Down the Bars

Today is the fifth anniversary of my son’s death – or his fifth “re-birthday.” I feel like I should blog about that, but I’m just not feeling inspired. Which is a good thing. It shows me how much healing has occurred. There’s no gaping wound, there’s no scab, there’s no scar. I’m just feeling at peace about it and thinking of Cameron with love.

So, I’m going to blog about something else.

This swine flu thing really bugs me. It just seems to me to be so much fear-based hype and hysteria. I’m not saying people haven’t gotten sick from it and I’m not saying people haven’t died from it, but it just seems overblown. I figure I could walk out the door and be hit by a bus just as easily as I could contract and die from this flu. And if we create our reality by what we focus upon, why in the world do we choose to focus on something like this. We are like moths to the flame of fear. Or like baby's sucking on the very pig's snout that we fear will kill us.

A friend of mine on Twitter (where swine flu has been one of the top trending topics all week long) recently wrote this post called “Swine Flu Immunity” and I think he’s got something. After reading the article, I tweeted him about it and that set off an interesting “twittersation” between us that went something like this:

Me: Love your Swine Flu post - I'm with you - they say wash your hands - how about washing our mental hands of it! I have.
Emmortal: LOL! You make way too much sense, Claire. Would you believe that I've already had 5 hits from Google on that after 3 hours?
Me: Not surprised at all - seems nothing reproduces quite as fast as fear - imagine many readers were surprised/disappointed at your POV!
Emmortal: Fear travels by thought at light speed, disease has to travel through space MUCH slower.
Emmortal: Disease is a common "plausible entry scenario" for fear that answers "Why am I afraid?" No one can stand fear with no cause.
Me: I’m working on ways to help people process/release fear. Positive thinking and affirmations are only a doily on a cesspool if fear goes underground.
Emmortal: Wish I could say you're wrong about the doily, but I can't. :( Did you read my blog piece "Fear Itself"?
Me: I did read "Fear Itself" and I think you are right on the money (as usual!) ;-)
Emmortal: I thought you had read that. Did you also see this one?
Me: Yep-fear/love is a big learning theme in my life. I think I'm finally getting it! (I faced my biggest fear & it disintegrated into love)
Emmortal: The weakest point is the belief behind the threat. The more specific you get, the more absurd it usually becomes.
Me: I was once told to speak any fear story in the voice of Mickey Mouse. So absurd you have to laugh. I think of Mr. Bill - "Oh Noooooo!"
Emmortal: Another key: whenever you decide you're unwilling to experience anything, you put another bar in your personal prison.
Emmortal: It's not just about getting past a certain fear. All fear in our lives rests on a few beliefs. Lose them, and it all changes.
Emmortal: A belief in personal powerlessness must be present in some form for any fear to exist. But people take it for granted.
Me: Re: bars in the cage – I did a great piece of collage art around that theme some years ago - will TwitPic it later if I can find it.
Emmortal: Cool! I'd love to see that. :>D

So, as promised, Emmortal, here it is. This is a collage I created in June 2004, a month after my son died. I was feeling lots of rage, grief, powerlessness, despair. The collage was sparked by a chance email forwarded to me by someone I didn’t even know. There was a whole bunch of astrological stuff in it from someone named Gururattan Kaur Khalsa, PhD. Most of it meant little or nothing to me. But one paragraph really grabbed my attention. It was about Pluto’s role in helping us to “uncover our darkness, expose our fears and examine what controls our thoughts and actions.”

One statement in particular really resonated with me: “There is no way we are going to set ourselves free without examining how we are imprisoned.”

What is it that imprisons us? Fear, surely. But fear of what, exactly? I explored my own feelings of stuckness, limitation and fear by creating this collage.

(click image to view larger)

I wrote the statement, "There is no way we are going to set ourselves free without examining how we are imprisoned" on the top and bottom bars. There are 14 images and 14 vertical bars. On each vertical bar I tried to write a phrase that seemed to capture the feeling of one of the images.

My bars became:
1) Hanging on to imprisonment through belief in lack and limitation.
2) Fear of death and meaninglessness.
3) Poverty of spirit.
4) Martyrdom – oh poor me!
5) Desire/Greed.
6) Belief in unworthiness.
7) Prejudice.
8) Fear over love.
9) Isolation.
10) Need for vengeance, justice, payback.
11) Expecting help from “out there.”
12) Wounded inner child.
13) Turning a blind eye.
14) Disconnect from creative self.

I was realizing as I wrote all these things on the bars, that I was creating my own bars. The bars weren't there unless I built them. I was creating my own prison. Just as Emmortal said in our recent twittersation,"whenever you decide you're unwilling to experience anything, you put another bar in your personal prison."


After completing the collage, I wrote this:

First
You believe in the bars

Next
You pretend you have a captor

And
From that moment on you are a slave
to your own fears
A slave
to belief in lack
to belief in limit
to belief in your own unworthiness
Unworthiness
to own happiness
to be yourself only and truly
to express what is your God-given right and command to express

Let it go…
You will not die unfulfilled
Your story is important
and real
and true

And only you can tell it
can live it
can breathe life into it

Tear down the bars
They are not real
only false shadows
mind games
fears

The true you is
and always shall be
PERFECTION
a shining star that only you can be

Life is short
the days are numbered
The only sin is not
living each one
holding it close
making it shine
as only you can do

But even self-recrimination
is a waste
for it is impossible
to truly waste a day

Every step
Every breath
Every heartbeat
Is your unique unfoldment

What are your bars? And are you ready to tear them down?

Wishing you peace on the journey...

As always, I welcome your coments here or by email (Claire@DeepWaterLeafSociety.com)

Visit my website: http://www.deepwaterleafsociety.com/

It's Cameron's Birthday, But the Present's for YOU!

Today is my son Cameron’s 31st birthday, or would be if he was still here. I’m not sure how old he is where he lives now, or if age is even a concept there. It’s been nearly five years since his death and rather than feeling bittersweet, today I am feeling very happy about his birthday. I’m going to celebrate by giving away 10 copies of The Deep Water Leaf Society: Harnessing the Transformative Power of Grief in eBook format. The book has been available since September in paperback and I’ll be officially launching the eBook release within the coming month. Here is your chance to get a free pre-release copy of the eBook, which includes full-color illustrations.

The Deep Water Leaf Society tells the story of Cameron’s death and the journey of awakening I experienced in the aftermath. While it is autobiographical, it is also a guidebook to healing for anyone experiencing grief. You will learn how to use art, journaling, dreams and synchronicity to heal and grow. Even if you are not grieving, the tools, practices and messages of the book can show you a pathway to transformation and personal growth.

Many people have asked me what the title of the book means. The name was given to me in a dream. You can read the dream in the first chapter of the book, which you can download here, or you can read about it in my very first blog entry here. Even so, many people still scratch their heads over the title, so let me tell you what I think it means.

Most of us live our lives like a leaf floating on a very deep lake. Just as winds and currents move the leaf around, we allow much of the direction of our lives to be determined by the people and events around us. We drift along like sleepwalkers living surface level lives, never finding out who we really are. I think of the “deep water leaf” as one who has had that smooth surface shattered, one who has been pulled into the depths and found that rather than drowning the experience has left him or her more alive than ever. Because it’s only in the depths that we will see the mystery, the magic, the timelessness of who we are and how we are connected. We can only find those things by diving deeper. We can wait for a tragedy to shatter the surface for us, or we can just take a deep breath and dive.

So, if you’d like to receive your own copy of The Deep Water Leaf Society in eBook format (268 pages filled with color illustrations) totally free with no strings attached, be one of the first 10 people to post a comment on this blog entry telling me about one of your own “deep water leaf” experiences:

• when have you found yourself experiencing the magic and mystery of the deep?
• what triggered that experience?
• did something shatter the surface, or did you just dive in?

To post your comment, scroll down to the bottom of this blog entry and click on the “Comments” link. In addition, please send an email to Claire@DeepWaterLeafSociety that includes your name, your email address and some reference to the context of your post. I will confirm your winning status and send a link to your download within 48 hours of receiving your email and verifying your posted comment.

Now, I know Cameron’s listening, so everybody sing along with me:
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you…

As always, I welcome your coments here or by email (Claire@DeepWaterLeafSociety.com)

Visit my website: http://www.deepwaterleafsociety.com/

One Heart Singing

The tears hit me again on my morning walk. As long as it’s been (nearly 5 years) and as healed as I feel, sometimes something still sneaks up and hits me—blindsides me out of the blue. This morning it was the music on my iPod—my “Cameron” playlist (most of these are also on my playlist here on the blog). These are all songs that I love and that normally bring a smile to my face these days. Especially “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” which always makes me feel like Cameron is near. But today the words just broke me up and broke me open. There’s a line about “the day I set you free,” and suddenly the enormity of Cameron’s sacrifice and gift to me just overwhelmed me—not with sadness, but with gratitude. Because his death did set me free. Free from drama addiction, which was just as deadly and disabling as his own addiction to crystal meth.

And then “The Reason” came on with its apologies for all the pain caused and its assertion that because of it, the singer has found a reason to change everything about himself. The first time I heard this song was New Year’s Eve 2004. Cameron had died in May of that year. It was around 11pm and I was journaling and crying my heart out when the words to the song drifted into my consciousness from the TV where they were playing the top 10 songs of the year. That first time hearing it, I felt like it was Cameron talking directly to me through the lyrics. All this time, I’ve thought that it was Cameron apologizing, Cameron telling me he left here so he could start over and become something different. As I heard the words on this morning’s walk, I suddenly felt like I was singing the words back to him. I was apologizing for all the pain I caused and I was the one changing everything about me. When I think about all that’s going on in my life right now, all the writing and the coaching and the planning of workshops and presentations, I can truly say, there’s "a reason for all that I do, and the reason is you,” Cameron. The reason is you.

And then I wondered, is it Cameron singing to me, is it me singing to Cameron, or is it just One heart singing to Itself?

As always, I welcome your coments here or by email (Claire@DeepWaterLeafSociety.com)

Visit my website: www.DeepWaterLeafSociety.com

The Tides of Life

I've recently returned from a week at the beach in beautiful Rocky Point (Puerto Penasco) Mexico. Great time with the whole family, lovely beachfront home, 80 degree weather, good food, plenty of cerveza. In other words, a little slice of heaven.

Yet on one very still afternoon, I made the following observation:

Midafternoon Rocky Point

Today the sea is flat and smooth
Like a satin sheet
Pulled tightly over an empty bed
Black birds float
Stillness upon stillness
The raucous cries of the morning’s gulls
Silent now
No wing or feather moves the air
No boat breaks the horizon
Not a soul stirs on the beach
The tide itself seems suspended
Resting at its high water mark
Off to the hazy west
Sea blends horizonlessly into sky

I say that I crave peace
That at the core of my every prayer
Is the desire for peace, for stillness
But this stillness leaves me restless
I don’t want a life
Flat and still like this sea
I crave the motion of the waves
Their sparkling diamond light
The pull of the tides
The gentle slosh and roll
Of water greeting shore
The effervescent hiss
As thirsty sand drinks in
The delicious foamy brew
~~~

How often we resist the rise and fall of our own lives. How often we resist the changes that come. We cry out for peace, yet it is the very presence of ups and downs that lets us know we are alive.

In the past few days, I've had quite a few "ups" -- and yet, if I look at them honestly, they come directly from my biggest "down." They are all gifts that have come to me directly from my experience of loss with my son Cameron's death. Would I trade them all to have him back? Maybe. Would my life be as meaningful if I did? I don't think so. My loss has allowed me to begin to find a way to make a small contribution to this world.

I am now a Featured Writer at Open to Hope, a website that reaches 30,000 readers each month and whose mission is to offer hope to those who are grieving. You can read my first post here. I will be posting a few times each month.

I did a wonderful Internet radio interview on the Conscious Healing show with Sherry Anshara. You can listen to the archive here.

My book, The Deep Water Leaf Society, won First Place in the Self Help category and was chosen as the Best Non-Fiction Book of 2008 by Reader Views.

A new follower (see The Journey) of my blog honored me with her own "Top 10 Favs Award." I am equally honored by this award, because it means that my words are reaching real people. That makes my heart sing.

So, the next time you wish for peace and an end to your current drama, ask yourself if you are wishing your way out of living. Life comes with highs and lows. Let's make the best of all of it.

Wishing you peace on the journey...

As always, I welcome your coments here or by email (Claire@DeepWaterLeafSociety.com)

Visit my website: http://www.deepwaterleafsociety.com/

News

Just a few pieces of news to blog today:

I’m excited to announce that The Deep Water Leaf Society is a finalist (Self Help category) in the 2008 Reader Views Awards!! Wish me luck – winners will be announced at the end of March.

Also wanted to let you know that I’ll be on the Conscious Healing show on AchieveRadio at 5pm MST today. I’ll be talking with my host Sherry Anshara about finding a conscious and creative pathway through grief. Just go to AchieveRadio.com, scroll down the page and click on one of the Listen Live links (some are geared for broadband and some for dial-up). If you can’t listen live today, you’ll be able to listen to the archive at your convenience later. Just go straight to the Conscious Healing page and scroll down until you see the show for March 4, 2009.

Check out the Open to Hope website for more resources on healing grief. They have invited me to be a featured writer. You can read my first Open to Hope post here.

If you scroll down to the bottom of this post, you'll find a couple of new widgets on my blog page:

1) I'm now tweeting on Twitter - you can follow my tweets at the bottom of my blog, or better yet get your own Twitter account and follow me there.

2) I've also added a bookshelf of some of my favorite reads care of shelfari.com. I'll be adding more titles over time. Check them out. Many are great resources for healing grief and personal growth.

And finally, I came across a few interesting articles on the web. Just thought I’d share…

If the U.S. were a person, would it be an emotionally disconnected addict?

And here is a fascinating look at how creativity happens in dreams.


As always, I welcome your coments here or by email (Claire@DeepWaterLeafSociety.com)

Visit my website: http://www.deepwaterleafsociety.com/

Dream Goddess

Dreamwork and expressive art were two powerful pathways through grief for me. Today the two came together as my dream group and I each created a mask to represent and honor our Dream Self. Here is my Dream Goddess:

Her lower face is midnight blue with gold filigree and her upper face is a cloudy sky. Her eyes are rimmed with gold in the way the ancient Egyptians rimmed theirs with khol. She has a jewel within a labyrinth for her third eye and wears stars and feathers in her hair. Her mouth is green, for she speaks only the truth of my heart (green is the color of the heart chakra).

She is made from a purchased plastic mask form decoupaged with scrapbook paper and embellished with acrylic paint, gold leaves, heart-shaped sequins, rhinstones, gold metallic marker, gold glitter glue, eyelash yarn, feathers and wire garland.

Plastic mask form: $3.99
Hot glue gun and glue sticks: $10.00
Embellishments: $3.00
Therapeutic Value: PRICELESS

While this was a more light-hearted project for me, mask making can be extremely therapeutic in processing grief. The first mask I ever made was a grief mask. I had a friend create a plaster mask of my face, which I painted and embellished. The journaling and dialogue work I did with that mask was very powerful for me. She became a container for my grief. It helps to be able to pull your feelings out into an object you can stand back and look at. It helps to separate your grief from your identity. Over time, I transferred more and more of my grief into the mask, allowing the mask to hold the pain for me when I just couldn't do it anymore.

I also created an anger mask while I was grieving. I created it out of a brown paper grocery sack and crayons. I put on some angry music, put the mask on my head and stomped around the house yelling and roaring for about 20 minutes until I fell to the floor laughing. What a great venting process that was!

You can make masks out of paper plates, construction paper, sheets of colored foam, plastic or papier mache forms, plaster cast over a form, or sculpted clay. You can make a mask of your grief, any emotion, your inner healer, your inner child, an animal totem, your spirit guide or anything else you might think of. Use your imagination, tune into your feelings and see what comes out.

Afterward, you can put the mask on and look into a mirror. Speaking out loud, complete the sentence, "I am the one who...." over and over again until you can't think of anything else to complete the sentence with. This is a great way to get in touch with what you are feeling deeply.

You can also do some journaling dialogue with the mask. Put the mask where you can look at it and with your dominant hand, write a question. Let the mask answer the question through your non-dominant hand (the one you don't normally write with). Some great questions to ask are, Who are you? How do you feel? Why do you feel that way? How can I help you? What gift do you hold for me?

I hope you will enjoy exploring the magic of mask-making as a path to healing. I'd love to see what you create!

Wishing you peace on the journey...

As always, I welcome your coments here or by email (Claire@DeepWaterLeafSociety.com)

Visit my website: http://www.deepwaterleafsociety.com/

A New Blog Gadget

I stumbled across this awesome new blog gadget today at playlist.com and I just had to add it to The Deep Water Leaf Society blog page.

If you've read my book, The Deep Water Leaf Society, you know that music plays an incredibly important role in my continuing connection to my son Cameron, who died of a drug overdose on May 3, 2004. Before Cameron's death, there were songs that always made me think of him and since his death there have been a number of songs through which he speaks to me. I always know when he's around, because one of these songs will play for me, often in the strangest places and situations. When I had a reading with the psychic medium Jamie Clark, I was told "He wants you to listen to the music...He wants you to listen and know that's him talking." So, speak to me in music, Cameron -- I'm always listening!

The playlist at the top of this page contains all the songs mentioned in my book (except for Michael Franks' String of Pearls, for which an authorized version is not available on the web). The songs are listed in the order in which they appear in the book, although I've set the player to play them randomly. I hope you will enjoy this new addition to my blog and that the music will convey my story and feelings and maybe speak to your heart as well.

Wishing you peace on the journey...

As always, I welcome your coments here or by email (Claire@DeepWaterLeafSociety.com)

Visit my website: http://www.deepwaterleafsociety.com/

Garden Clippings

I really let my garden yard, full of roses, grape vines and fruit trees, get away from me last year. When the heat of summer hit, I abandoned the little side yard and cowered inside with the AC running non-stop. When fall came, well…it was still summer. It stayed hot–well into the 100s—all the way through October. It stayed hot, and I stayed in. Every man, woman and rosebush for themselves! Winter came and went in the blink of an eye and here we are again with spring arriving in January.

And January finds the once lovely oasis is now a shambles of weeds, fallen leaves and scraggly, overgrown bushes. My little fountain sits empty and silent, its pump having given up many moons ago. Instead of blooming annuals, dull dry brown weeds as tall as trees surround the fountain. Climbing vines meant to soften the arched trellis seem rather to have swallowed it whole. The now leafless grapevines have spread and climbed into trees and trellises more than ten feet beyond their allotted corner. Let’s just say the garden is in chaos.

~~

These past few weekends, I finally got out and got to work on clearing out last year’s residue from the garden yard. As I worked, random thoughts, ideas and questions came to me. Some relate to grieving and others just to life in general. Garden metaphors are certainly not new, but here, in no particular order, are a few of my “garden clippings.”

January is the optimum time in this part of Arizona to prune roses and non-citrus fruit trees, but calendar time is so arbitrary. It’s time to plant tomatoes here – but not back east or up north. There are rhythms and cycles and weather patterns that just don’t know how to read calendars. When does the grieving season end and the healing season begin? It’s not a date on a calendar. It’s not a set of five stages that you go through one after the other and then you’re done. There’s a rhythm and a pattern unique to each person and unique to each loss. Rather than measuring progress against the yardstick of time, we need to feel our own rhythms to know when we need the rest of lying fallow and when it’s time to bloom once again.

~~

It’s been in the high 70’s for two weeks now and the peach tree is already beginning to bud out. I begin trimming anyway, hoping that new buds will form below where I’ve cut. Clip, clip, clip. Unopened buds fall to the ground around me. Then I find two large branches that have to go – one looks diseased, the other will be unstable when full of ripe fruit. Better to cut it than have it break later. Out comes the chain saw. Buzz, buzz, buzz. I stand back to admire my work and shake my head at what’s left of the tree. No minor pruning—this was major surgery. I console myself by saying that the poor little tree can only bear so many buds. Every year we lose at least one branch under the weight of all the peaches. Better to be brutal now, to select the strong branches. And later, to be brutal thinning down the little green fuzzy peach infants so that the remaining branches can hold their weight. At this cavalier snipping and chopping, does the peach tree register the same numbing shock that I did losing Cameron? Will it wither and die from the pain of it? I hope that, like me, it will bloom all the more and grow strong enough to birth its sweet juicy fruits without breaking.

What branches need cutting out in my life? How much blooming can I stand? How many peaches can I juggle without collapsing under their weight? I’ve got a million ideas, but I can’t see them all to fruition. Possibilities flood through me in profusion, but I’ve got to pick and choose, to weigh and balance, to cut out a whole lot of ideas, even really good ones, and focus on nurturing those blooms that remain.

~~

Why is it so much easier to prune my fruit trees than it is to clean up my office? Cut and toss, cut and toss, cut and toss. With a discerning eye, I easily identify what stays and what goes. This branch stays, this branch goes, these shoots along the top can stay, these going off at odd angles have to go. Yet in my office I can stare at a pile of year old paper and the best I can muster is to move the pile to the other end of the desk or put it into a basket to sort through later. Maybe I need to tackle my office with pruning shears!

~~

I keep working my way around the fountain and it’s entourage of weeds. Thinking about clearing them away feels overwhelming. Yet I’ve already purchased the annuals that will take their place. This is what I do. I get ahead of myself, put the cart before the horse. I want the blooming garden before the ground’s even prepared to hold it. I don’t want to do the weeding. I don’t want to do the tilling. I don’t even want to do the planting. I want to cut to the chase and enjoy the blossoms!

Maybe cleaning my office is more like pulling weeds than pruning trees.

~~

Thank God for husbands! My DH musta read my mind, cuz he cleared all those weeds around the pond for me. Procrastination does pay sometimes! Did I say the weeds were as tall as trees? That was no exaggeration – when the weeds were finally cleared away, they revealed a “volunteer” oak sapling about 7 feet high with a trunk as big around as my thumb! First of all, how’d that get there? I don’t have any trees like that on or near my property. Second of all, what kind of 7 foot interlopers do I have in the inner garden of my subconscious, buried behind the weeds? Or in my office, buried under a stack of paper for that matter… Oh, Deeeeeee aaaayyccchH? Wanna clean up this mess for me too?

~~

There’s an elegant and austere beauty to the newly pruned garden. It has a Zen-like quality. The little fountain, cleared of its weeds, stands ready to host the sound of trickling water, the newly pruned roses await their first unfurling leaves and bare tree branches curve up into the blue sky like an empty bowl holding space for the growth yet to come.


Wishing you peace on the journey...


As always, I welcome your coments here or by email (Claire@DeepWaterLeafSociety.com)

Visit my website: http://www.deepwaterleafsociety.com/

The Changing Face of Grief

The morning after my Dad died, he came to me in a dream.

In my dream, my Dad is sitting in a chair with a large Tefla bandage on the upper right side of his head. His blue eyes are clear and twinkling and he’s wearing a sort of self-satisfied, cat-that-ate-the-canary grin. Without any words, he communicates to me that he’s been fixed up good as new. The damage from his right-hemisphere stroke and the debilitations of dementia he experienced in the last year of his life (and even longer than that, to a milder degree) have been healed. I smile and say, “Well, look at you, Dad!” I give him a hug and a kiss and tell him I love him.

I am amazed at how differently this loss is affecting me compared to Cameron’s death nearly five years ago now. Cameron visited me in dreams, too. But at first, every time he visited my grief and anger were so powerful that I ended up pushing him away. I would awaken from those dreams full of pain and sadness. My dream of Dad left me filled only with peace. It puzzles me a bit how unemotional I have been about my Dad’s death. I’m trying not to beat myself up over it, but I have been giving it a lot of thought. People offer me condolences and I feel like there’s no consoling needed.

Recently, as I was perusing other blogs on the theme of grief, I came across this post called "Good Grief," which contains some good, basic information about grieving. The post includes a list of things that can affect a person’s response to a loss. I can see how some of the ideas presented there have applied in my own experiences of grief.

Anticipatory grief, for example, happens when death is anticipated over a long period of time due to illness or other circumstances. The reaction to an expected death is very different than the reaction to a sudden, unexpected death. It doesn’t necessarily mean the grief is lessened, but the shock is lessened. There is a level of anticipation or expectation that we will outlive our parents, but we don’t expect to outlive our children. The difference in feeling about these two deaths is partly because of that, but it’s more than that, too. With my Dad, I think my grieving happened before he passed. I felt more sadness in watching his brilliant mind fade away than I did at the passing of his body, which, at the end, seemed only a shell of him anyway. I had some anticipatory grief with Cameron’s death, too. He’d been struggling with addiction for years and I kept waiting for something terrible to happen. Yet, I was not prepared for his unexpected death in the county jail. I thought that there, of all places, he’d be forcibly protected from his self-destructive addiction. When the detectives from the jail came to tell me he was dead, the shock was incredible. While there was anticipatory grief with both my Dad and my son, in the end I expected and even hoped for my Dad’s passing while I resisted the idea of Cameron’s death right up to the moment I learned of it.

Another thing that impacts the grief experience is the relationship you had with the person who died. I was certainly much closer to my son than I was to my Dad. Even though I had been a caretaker for my Dad for the last several years, it was more out of necessity than closeness. Prior to the decline of his and my Mom’s health, I really didn’t see my folks much. Even though I love my Dad, my life was very separate from his life. Cameron and I, on the other hand, were extremely entangled – probably unhealthily so. I believe it is called co-dependence. So his death left a gaping hole in my own sense of identity. There was also a lot of unresolved business with Cameron, where with my Dad I felt I had no loose ends, no grievances, nothing I felt guilty about. Cameron’s death left a lot of things unsaid and undone. Over time, since his death, we have had an opportunity to resolve all those issues and to heal our relationship so that now I can think of him with love and with peace in my heart. But in the beginning, there was only pain and guilt and anger. So I guess it’s easier to let go of my Dad because there’s no baggage there.

One more thing the post mentions is that what you’ve learned about loss in the past will inform any future experiences of grief. This certainly seems true in my case. Cameron’s death and all the amazing experiences that followed have completely transformed my understanding of and feelings about death. Where before I supposed (or at least hoped) that death was not a final ending, I now know it without any doubt at all. I have had too many amazing communications with Cameron since he passed to think of him as “dead.” His passing also taught me that the bond of love survives the apparent separation of death. It not only survives, but becomes stronger and healthier. My sense of death now is that it is a return to our true soul state, while our adventures here on Earth are temporary challenges—learning and growing experiences. Rather than grieving my Dad’s passing, I can celebrate his homecoming and know that our hearts remain connected.

Wishing you peace on the journey…

As always, I welcome your coments here or by email (Claire@DeepWaterLeafSociety.com)

Visit my website: http://www.deepwaterleafsociety.com/

Love Never Dies

I sat with my father for the last time on Thursday the 18th of December. His condition was not much different from the past several days; he was sleeping and unresponsive. I was scheduled to leave the next morning on a 6 am flight to Colorado to go see my daughter graduate from CSU. I had a feeling he wouldn’t be here anymore when I returned on Sunday.

After turning on one of his favorite CDs of Tahitian music, I sat by his bedside and held his hand. I sang and hummed along with the music I’d heard a million times, as he used to play that CD over and over again before he began to slip away so completely. I told him once again that he didn’t have to keep fighting. I told him not to worry about Mom – that we’d keep taking good care of her. I told him I loved him and what a good Dad he’d been, what a great family he’d created. What an extraordinary life he’d led, winding his way from Quebec, Canada all the way down here to Arizona! He really had had some adventures in his time.

My eyes wandered to a poster of a palm dotted white sandy beach and azure sea that we’d tacked to the wall by his bed. I asked him if he remembered his trip to Tahiti, his time in Hawaii, and all his years of sailing. “Wouldn’t it be nice to just drift away on a beautiful blue expanse of sea?” I asked him. “To just let go and let the wind fill your sails as you glide over the waters? It feels almost like flying, doesn’t it?”

The rest of the day was busy, getting Mom picked up from dialysis and settled back at home and then visiting with a dear friend who lives in the same retirement complex as my mother. The parking lot was strewn with golden fall leaves as I walked out to my car at the end of the day. With the sun just beginning to set, each leaf seemed to glow. It was quite beautiful. One leaf, a perfect heart, caught my eye. “Well, look at you,” I said, as I bent to pick it up. None of the other fallen leaves were heart shaped. They were more ovalish and elongated. I craned my neck and looked at every tree surrounding the parking lot. Not one of them had heart shaped leaves. I believe they were ash trees. I smiled and said an inward hello to Cameron. He’d been sending me hearts since just after he died and I felt him there with me. When I got into the car and started the engine, the radio played Michael McDonald’s version of “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher.”

The next morning, as my plane lifted up off the tarmac and into the clouds, my Dad died peacefully in his sleep. I wonder now if that heart-shaped leaf was from Cameron or from my Dad – if the song on the radio was a message from Cameron or from my Dad. I suppose it doesn’t matter, really. The bottom line is that love is what matters and love never dies.

The Sweater

It is the third of December. I sit by my Dad’s bedside holding his hand and watching him breathe, holding my breath as his stops for several seconds, only exhaling when he finally takes another faltering breath. I count: ten seconds of silence followed by a gasping breath, then fifteen seconds of shallow noisy breathing. Over and over the cycle repeats. His mouth opens and closes with a little pop on each exhale—“guppy breathing” the Hospice nurse calls it.

His left hand reaches up, as if grasping for something—or maybe pushing something away. I read to him: Jonathan Livingston Seagull, The Five People You Meet in Heaven. I wonder if the stories penetrate his mind, if even my voice reaches him. There is no change in his breathing and no apparent response. Still, I read because at least it feels like I’m doing something.

I see both of my brother’s faces in his, but I do not see my own. I used to see my eyes in his, but his eyes remain closed most of the time now. Even when open, the once clear blue eyes are now cloudy gray and focused on some other place and time than the room in which we sit. A few weeks ago, when he was still somewhat communicative, my Dad insisted that my brother Ray had been to visit. Ray died in August 2000. I tell my Dad Ray’s gone, he’s been gone a long time. “Gone where?” my Dad wants to know. When I suggest he may have visited from “the other side,” my Dad rolls his eyes as if I am the demented one. But this day, and for the last many days, there is no communication. Just this labored breathing.

A part of me is impatient for this to be over. This is not living. What part of him still holds on and why? I have recently been reassured that Cameron will be there for him when the time comes to cross over. I tell my Dad this—that Cameron will be there, that Ray will be there, that everything will be alright. I tell him he doesn’t have to fight anymore. He can relax. His work is over. I tell him—promise him—that it will be wonderful and peaceful where he’s going. I don’t know if my words get through. If they do, I imagine once again I’m getting an eye roll.

And then, remarkably, he rallies. For the past few days, he’s been more alert. He’s been able to eat a little. He’s been able to communicate minimally with one-word questions and answers: What? Why? Yes. No.

Perhaps I have been pushing too hard for him to let go. Perhaps he’s not as ready as I think I would be in his position. I am not expecting him to “recover”—his dementia is too far along for that kind of optimism. But maybe he’ll still be here for my birthday. Maybe he’ll still be here for Christmas. Who knows?

This watching and waiting, not knowing from one day to the next how he’ll be or if he’ll still be with us, is so draining. I wish there was something I could do that might make this easier for him.

I remember a fall evening when I was 13. I was really a wicked child at that age, all full of rebellion and contrariness. My mother and I fought constantly and I thought nothing of swearing at her and calling her every foul name I could think of. Somehow, my Dad always managed to stay out of it. I was already drinking and smoking at that age, unbeknownst to my parents.

This particular evening, I’d gone to a neighborhood carnival about a mile away from home with a friend of mine. We weren’t really interested in the carnival, but it made a good excuse for getting out of the house. I’d been there about an hour, hanging out and smoking cigarettes, when it started to get a little windy. I was just sitting there with my friend on a parking curb with a cigarette dangling from my hand when I heard my Dad’s voice behind me. “Do you need that to keep you warm?”

I jumped and dropped the cigarette. Shit! Caught smoking. And here was my Dad making some sarcastic remark about staying warm. I figured I was in for it now. I stood and turned to face him, and found he was simply holding out my sweater. He’d made a special trip over just to bring me my sweater because it was getting windy and chilly. I don’t know if he’d seen the cigarette in my hand, but it would have been hard to miss. At any rate, he never said a thing about it. Just handed me my sweater and went back home.

Somehow that evening stands out in my mind as one of my warmest (no pun intended) memories of Dad. That was his way—to gently provide simple comfort and security without getting caught up in the angst and drama of my teenage years. He was watching me make a transition from his baby girl to this wild and angry teenager. He was watching me make mistakes and bad decisions, but biting his tongue and letting me find my own way. He was letting me go and bringing me a sweater to keep me warm, all at the same time.

Oh, Daddy. I wish I had a magic sweater for you right now. Some perfect combination of holding on and letting go that could keep you warm and safe as you make this final transition. Because I can’t go with you, any more than you could go with me during those painful teenage years. I can only stand behind you, watching, and offering the warmth of my love.

Wishing you peace on the journey. . .

Navigating Change

I can’t believe it’s November! Halloween has come and gone and a historic election day is behind us, but I’m still wondering where September and October went!

October was a busy month with the release of The Deep Water Leaf Society finally becoming a reality. I attended a writer’s conference in Tucson the last weekend in September and that marked the official release of the book as I received my first box of printed copies just in time to take them with me.

Most of the workshops I attended were about marketing, promotion and branding. One of the workshop leaders began by saying, “Once your book has been written, your fulltime job is now marketing.” Not exactly what I wanted to hear as I much prefer writing to marketing. I left the conference with a list of about 50 “must do” items and a feeling of overwhelm.

Once I arrived home, it was time to ship out all the pre-orders. A GREAT BIG THANK YOU to all of you who ordered the book in advance. I had shipped out or hand delivered nearly 70 copies of the book by mid-October.

I even managed to get one or two items checked off of my “must do” list for promotion and marketing, one of which landed me a feature article in the East Valley Tribune’s Spiritual Life section.

Then it was off to the El Rocio Retreat in Mission, Texas, to present a workshop and hold my first “official” book signing event. This was really special because El Rocio is the home of the Creative Journal Expressive Arts program, which was my lifeline during my journey through grief.

My workshop, “Altared Futures,” focused on the process of transformation. Each participant created an altar in three pieces: the first piece expressing and exploring a current loss or challenge, the second piece identifying and honoring whatever means of support might help them through the change, and the third envisioning the positive transformation that would come from the experience.

The essential message of “Altared Futures” is that no matter what kind of change we are facing, and no matter whether that change was one of our own choosing, we do have a choice about where and how we go forward from the change point.

There was a point in my own healing journey, after losing my oldest son to a drug overdose, when I realized very clearly that I could choose to allow my grief to define me for the rest of my life, or I could choose to define my experience in a new light. I could choose to remain angry, bitter and depressed, or I could choose to reclaim joy. This choice is very much at the heart of the story I tell in The Deep Water Leaf Society.

Here in the U.S. we find ourselves at the doorway of change. Last night, Barack Obama, was elected to serve as the first African American president in our history. For the first time in eight years, a democrat will once again lead our nation. For some of you, this change came by choice – you voted for Obama. For others of you, this change came against your will – you voted for his opponent. For yet others of you, this change arrived by default – you didn’t vote, by choice or because you weren’t eligible to vote.

Regardless of your choice status in the election, the change has arrived. It’s up to you how it comes to affect your life. Senator McCain set a wonderful tone in his concession speech last night. Obviously, Obama’s victory came not by choice for McCain. And yet he immediately began to quiet the “boos” of the crowd and to emphasize unity, cooperation and support for his former opponent. He envisioned a positive future for himself, for his supporters and for this nation. He emphasized moving quickly past the inevitable disappointment into positive, future-oriented action.

Change is a challenge, even when it comes by choice. Obama will certainly face major changes in his personal life as he works to implement the changes he wishes to bring to our country. Serving as president is a huge responsibility to shoulder and carries with it an enormous amount of stress. Obama’s acceptance speech was equally positive and hopeful. Like McCain, he immediately sought to put divisiveness behind us and begin to envision a brighter future.

This is a choice we can all make in the face of ANY change. This is what my grief taught me. Certainly the loss of a loved one has a different quality of pain than the loss of an election. I am not suggesting that you can or should put the pain and grief of the loss of a loved one behind you in a day’s time, or a week’s time or any specific timeframe. Yet, at some point, you will begin to recognize where your choice points are. Every day, you will have the opportunity to choose between focusing on a past that’s gone or focusing on a future that is yours to shape.

Whether this election is a “win” or a “lose” for you, is totally up to you. You can make of it what you will. And whatever losses you have experienced in your life, your future is up to you. Dream big. Choose joy. And to paraphrase Obama’s tag line: YES YOU CAN.

Wishing you peace on the journey. . .

As always, I welcome your comments and invite you to visit my website, http://www.deepwaterleafsociety.com/.

Dancing with Fear

We had a great thunderstorm here a few nights ago. The flashing, crashing, wildly chaotic symphony of lightning, thunder and wind had the trees in my backyard swaying and gyrating in ecstasy. They seemed to revel in the chaos of it all, even though wind and lightning can often lead to their demise. Just within the past couple of weeks, two large parks in my area lost hundreds of trees each in microburst storms with winds up to 100 miles an hour. Our wind here the other night was not nearly so powerful, yet my trees seemed to move with frenzied anticipation of just such a possibility. It didn’t seem to me that they feared that eventuality. Instead they seemed to just dance with the amazing energy of it all. They soaked in the ion-charged rain water, which somehow greens them more quickly and dramatically than any drip system or garden hose can.

I have a Night-Blooming Cereus cactus in my front yard that blooms in profusion after each rain, no matter the season. After a good rain you can expect to see a dozen new blooms the next morning. No matter how much I water it by hand, that never happens. Only the rain can bring on that burst of growth.

Like the trees, I’ve always reveled in the rain—especially the monsoon storms here in this desert land. Maybe back east or up north where the rains tend to come too consistently it is easier to grow tired of the downpours. And obviously the hurricanes that have battered our coasts are another kind of storm altogether. My prayers are with everyone in Galveston and the Houston area as Ike bears down upon them. But here in the desert where, in recent years, the storms have been too few and far between, every drop is a blessing and a miracle.

I used to run barefoot and fully dressed into the soaking downpours when I was a child, heedless of the lightning. Now my adult self keeps the inner child in check, ensconced beneath my patio roof admiring the wet and the wind from dry safety. The child in me still wants to run out into it and dance the same frenzied dance as the trees.

I may be hiding out high and dry these days, but storms like this still energize me. Perhaps it’s the blend of Sagittarius (a fire sign) and water baby (I grew up in a swimming pool and love the ocean) in me that makes the fabulous mix of fire and water in the sky so mesmerizing. There is something so primal about a thunderstorm. It’s all sound and fury, wildness and chaos followed by the gift of rain which the hungry desert soil soaks up and turns into new life.

Sitting outside through this last storm put me in mind of an experience I had earlier this week. Each morning I walk to the park that is not far from my house. Once there, I pause to meditate for a few minutes on a bench by the playground before walking back home. This particular morning as I sat with my eyes closed, I heard voices approaching. As they drew nearer I could hear an excited child’s voice begging, “Grandma, push me on the swing. Push me really high!” Grandmother tells the child to hang on tight and soon I hear the little voice squealing with fear and with pleasure, “Oh, oh, oh! I’m going to die! I’m going to die!” Grandma slows the swing down and starts to calm the child, but immediately the child cries, “Push me again!”

What is it, I wonder, that continually draws us to the edge of our fear? What is it that we relish in that experience of dancing with winds that might topple us? We go to the edge and we back away, but we are drawn back to that edge again and again.

I think it may be exactly what we come here to experience: our ability to press through our fears seeking the next level of what we can cope with, assimilate, understand and grow from. When the things we fear most come to pass, we find that instead of falling apart we emerge stronger and clearer in our own Truth.

The fear of dying is on my mind a lot these days. My Dad’s health is failing and I’m watching him and Mom struggle with the letting go. It seems simpler to me than it used to, having lost Cameron and then realizing I hadn’t lost him at all. I suppose it is the biggest fear we ever face – our own mortality or the mortality of someone we love. But I am so certain that we really aren’t mortal at all. We are eternally evolving souls with so many stories to live. Like the trees, we can dance with the threat of death and grow stronger and greener by doing so. Like the little child on the swing, we can swing higher and higher until we are brave enough to just let go and fly.

When my day comes, I plan to run into the storm gleefully, barefoot and fully dressed. I will dance with my fear and awaken full of new blossoms, full of new life.

Wishing you peace on the journey. . .