Healing

 "You can only live in the past inside your mind." 

~Augusten Burroughs

Two of my dear high school friends were in a very serious car accident just five short, very long, months ago.   SHE has been home for a few months already and HE just went home this week.  He's alive and is walking, both miracles!  There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think of both of them and their journey of healing. 


In Augusten Burroughs' latest brilliant book (I think all his books are brilliant)  This is How: Help for The self  he writes in the chapter entitled:  "How to Remain Unhealed"  

I had mistakenly assumed that healed meant restored.....

Heal is a television word.  It's satisfying to see somebody who 

has gone through adversity and come out the other side, healed.....

That's almost word for word, how they might introduce a segment on 

healing on a talk show.  'Come out the other side' Like a tunnel.  

But here's the thing:  there are some things in life from which you do not 

heal....The pressure to heal can cause enduring damage.....

He goes on to say that after a loss or tragedy there is a hole that is never filled.   But not to despair because look where he takes this.  


He says that humans are able to live 

....just fine with many holes of many sizes and shapes.  

And pleasure, love, compassion, fulfillment-these things 

do not leak out of holes of any size.

So we can be filled with holes and at the same time hold the feelings that might seem to be opposistes-like joy and excitement.  The feelings of loss return frequently and we will reside in them once and awhile, but he says 

.....loss creates a greater overall surface area within a person.  

You expand as a result of it..... even though it may feel like the opposite.....

Huge loss resets you in a way.....the pain of your loss will remain 

with you for the rest of your life, but great joy will be there right beside it....

Deep sorrow and deep joy can exist within you, side by side.  

At every moment.  And it's not confusing.  And it's not a conflict.  

This is among the oldest, deepest, most primal truths:  

the facts of life may be, at times, unbearably painful.  

But the core, the bones of life are generous beyond all reason or belief.  

Those things that ought to kill us do not.  

This should be taken as encouragement to continue....

And this is what my dear friends are doing.  They are continuing....  and they are my teachers.    

My, how 2 years flew by.....

Today is my dad's 2nd yartzheit. two years ago today, according the Jewish lunar calendar, my father died.    In some ways, it feels like just yesterday and in other ways it feels like it was ages ago.  I suppose, as I've said (and written) before, that must be what eternity is like, timeless.....not time bound.....

I am filled with so many emotions on this day of commemoration, but the predominate one is a feeling of profound existential loneliness.  I guess that's the status of someone without parents, being existentially alone......

Today, there are so many wonderful memories that are flooding in, and they almost feel like a soothing salve.  Yet,  I can't seem to be able to smear that salve on fast enough to soothe the grief and pain that still linger two years later......

There is the memory of my daddy and me in Washington, DC when I was about 5.

And there is the memory of us together at his synagogue's 100th anniversary dinner.  I cherish this picture, because it is the last one we have of us together before his health started to fail.

I am no longer someone's daughter.  I am existentially alone, yet the wonderful life lessons he taught me, along with the wonderful memories of him, nurture and cradle me and I am deeply grateful for those lessons and for those memories.  I have taken his lessons to heart and have become a strong and independent woman with fierce intuition and I know he would be proud of me.  Thank you for everything daddy!  May your nishamah (soul) have a complete aliyah (return to its eternal resting place).  I love you, always. 

.

My Mom's 10th Year Yartzheit


Ten years ago today, my mom left this world.   I had 43 years with her, and now ten years without her.  I'm just beginning to grasp how wonderful she was.





When I was growing up people said we looked alike.  I never saw that.  We have drastically different coloring, she had olive skin, black hair and very dark eyes and I have fair skin, blonde hair and green eyes.  Despite these coloring differences,  I am able, through adult eyes, to finally look at us and  see the resemblance.

About 20 years ago, when I was in my 30s, and mom was in her 70s she was diagnosed with OCD.   I never wanted to look like her because that would mean, that maybe I was like her, OCD and all. There I said it.

She wasn't diagnosed until she was in her 70s because OCD wasn't "trendy" until late in her life.  That's a shame because once the diagnosis came things got better for her,  and us, her family.  We were able to refer to the "monster" as separate from her.  How refreshing was that! But despite the progress of having a diagnosis for her "craziness" the taboo of mental illness was still hovering over the disease and it wasn't until she died in 2001 that I finally could begin to truly process it.  And it has taken me 10 years to actually say the words, my mother had OCD.  And I still shudder a bit as I write these words.   It almost feels like I am betraying her, like giving away her secret.  I'm told that this kind of protection is common among families of OCD sufferers, as I'm sure is the case for other kinds of illnesses, like OCD.

Mom, it is an honor to look like you.  May your soul rest in peace.  I love you. 

Memories

In a few short days, the year of mourning for my Dad will be over.  So many memories and emotions are flooding back to me.  I recently found two of my brief journal entries during his last year of life, as I watched his physical decline.

A full year before he died on February 16, 2009 I wrote:  

Make it go away, this sense of torment and grief. I don't know where to put myself or what to do with it all. It is too huge.  I am raw.


Then on March 1, 2009 I wrote:  
First driving was taken away from him, now walking. How do we cope with these things?  The driving ban came after his heart surgery about 10 years before he died. The rehab center at the time gave us a pamphlet to read about seniors not driving, which was meant to metaphorically hold the family's collective hand through the process.  There is no one now, holding anyone's hand.  Harsh reality that my Dad will never walk again. 

Dad and me in Atlantic City, 1963

And now a year after Dad's death, a pretty profound thought has occurred to me and it has given me so much relief, and dare I say even joy?  I have come to realize that his death has given me something pretty amazing:   in my memories we can be any age I want us to be.  That is really cool! Not being in real time is one advantage of death, a small consolation....


So I am floating in and out of decades, months and minutes.  I'm a little girl in some, a teenager or grown woman in others.  Watching as my entire life with Dad floats in and out of sweet and tender memories ....  


I am blessed and grateful!  I learned that from you, Daddy.  Thank you. 

The Kabbalah of Snow

"It says in the Zohar that snow is beneficial to both spirit and matter, body and soul of the human being.  When it snows it means that there is an element of Divine energy being bestowed upon us from heaven.  It blankets the earth and allows us to experience, if we're open to it, a higher form of wisdom.

Snow is the concept of explaining knowledge in metaphor.  Its cosmic significance is this:  To understand the process of how G-d created the universe, G-d could not allow the borders of divinity and spirituality to just flow ceasefully and annihilate the boundaries of existence.  G-d had to contain it, and the way He contained it is reflected in snow.  

The mystique of snow is precisely because of its dual quality of heaven meeting earth, water meeting land. Next time you look at the snowflakes gently dropping from heaven, blanketing earth in its white embrace, remember that you are witnessing a kiss-the kiss of the Divine and the mundane." 

~Rabbi Simon Jacobson 

Balance

Last June I attended a conference given by psychologist Dr. Daniel Siegel and neuroscientist Dr. Norman Doige.  It was an amazing conference, and I learned so much from those two brilliant minds.  One of the things they discussed, that I am still processing all these months later, was the concept of balance.

They showed a movie featuring a woman who had lost her balance, literally.  She had some sort of neurological problem that impaired her sense of balance.  She could barely hold up her head.  She kept wobbling forward.  So frightening to watch, but the good news was that the movie highlighted the successful brain treatment that helped her regain her physical balance.  What a relief that was, and not just for her!

In our fast-paced culture where frenetic seems to be the speed of choice, what would it take (short of brain treatment), to help us regain balance?  I think we take our metaphoric balance for granted.  Watching that women lose her physical balance was startling, yet we challenge our sense of balance nearly everyday with our over scheduling and overachieving mentality.   Multi-tasking is not only expected of us, but it is lauded.  The better you mulit-task the more accolades you will receive, certainly in the work place.

In my opinion, though, I think we are short changing ourselves.   I think we try too hard to juggle our lives.

I think the trick is to find the balance. It is right there, waiting for us in each moment.

Authenticity

‎"Our lives improve only when we take chances - 

and the first and most difficult risk we can take is 

to be honest with ourselves."
~Walter Anderson

Brene Brown, social worker/researcher, has devoted her career to studying shame.  Her focus has been on how shame works, why it is so debilitating and how we develop shame resilience.  As she researched these issues, she found that she was being pulled to answer deeper questions like:  -What truly important experiences, emotions, or qualities are we missing when we don't understand shame or when we don't develop shame resilience?  and -How do our lives change when we stop living in shame, fear, and disconnection, and start living with courage, compassion and connection?

What emerged for Brown, as a result of asking these questions, was the idea that our deepest search is for a life lived with three elements:  1. authenticity  2. love/belonging  and 3. a resilient spirit.  She coined the term "WholeHearted living", for this honest way of living.  

Brown says that choosing authenticity means taking these actions:

• cultivating the courage to be emotionally honest, to set boundaries, and to allow ourselves to be vulnerable
• exercising the compassion that comes from knowing that we are all made of strength and struggle and are connected to each other through a loving and resilient human spirit
• nurturing the connection and sense of belonging that can only happen when we let go of what we are supposed to be and embrace who we are

Authenticity, according to Brown, demands "WholeHearted living" and loving-even when it's hard, when we're wrestling with the shame and fear of not being good enough, and especially when the joy is so intense that we're afraid to let ourselves feel it.  

Pretty potent and powerful stuff, don't you think?