Tag Archive for: grief

Cracks of Gold –by T.K. Thorne

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Writer, humanist,
          dog-mom, horse servant and cat-slave,
       Lover of solitude
          and the company of good friends,
        New places, new ideas
           and old wisdom.

We are all broken.

Life just does that. No matter how much joy and happiness we have in a moment or even, if we are fortunate, in most of our lives, things will happen that will crack us open. Loss of a loved one (person or fur-person), the absorption of violence and hate close to us or elsewhere in the world, personal failure, loneliness, loss of hope, loss of meaning.

Life is always changing. We truly have nothing but the moment. And sometimes that moment is painful.


I am not talking about depression and lasting feelings of sadness.  If you feel that, please seek professional help. I’m talking about the moments of intense pain, intense grief. No one wants to hurt, but pain cannot be avoided and it is a reminder of the depth of love we’re capable of feeling. Heartbreak is the sword that cracks open your idea of reality and allows a refocusing of what matters.

Know this: A broken heart is an open heart.



It is in the breaking, when our hearts are peeled back on themselves, that our truths have passage to come in and out.



If we’re lucky, our hearts will break over and over again to reveal new ways of being, of thinking, and of loving.

 Each break allows our hearts to heal bigger than the time before.



Yes, there is pain every time we’re cracked open. Immeasurable pain. And with each break, each sting of pain, our hearts are able to expand and strengthen our capacity to love.–Jamie Greenwood, The Tiny Buddha

Recently, a friend, a long time citizen who was born in another country, found a hateful, racist note on his gym bag. When he posted about it, he was deluged with more hate mail, but also love from supporters.  He chose not to retreat into anger or to linger in darkness. He chose to be proud of his scars, to heal. He chose love over hate. That is how gold is forged. The Japanese have a beautiful tradition that illustrates this.




T.K. Thorne’s childhood passion for storytelling deepened when she became a police officer in Birmingham, Alabama.  “It was a crash course in life and what motivated and mattered to people.” In her newest novel, HOUSE OF ROSE, murder and mayhem mix with a little magic when a police officer discovers she’s a witch. 

Both her award-winning debut historical novels, NOAH’S WIFE and ANGELS AT THE GATE, tell the stories of unknown women in famous biblical tales—the wife of Noah and the wife of Lot. Her first non-fiction book, LAST CHANCE FOR JUSTICE,
the inside story of the investigation and trials of the 1963 Birmingham
church bombing, was featured on the New York Post’s “Books You Should
Be Reading” list. 

T.K.
loves traveling and speaking about her books and life lessons. She
writes at her mountaintop home near Birmingham, often with a dog and a
cat vying for her lap. 

More info at TKThorne.com. Join her private newsletter email list and receive a two free short stories at “TK’s Korner.”

Grief and the Holidays

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by J.M. Phillippe

Every year when the holidays come, I have to brace myself. I know that as the decorations go up and the celebrations begin, my frustration tolerance will shrink, my patience get strained. The stress of the holidays will feel heavy on me, not just because of all the prep I have to do and all the gifts I have to buy — but because of all the gifts I won’t be buying.

For those who have lost loved ones, the holidays are always bittersweet. All the joy of the season is tinged with this deep sadness, a hard nostalgia that shows up in every ritual and tradition. There are also those who are physically far from their loved ones, and those who just feel isolated and alone, not able to connect to others during the season.

Bad news hits harder at the holidays in part because the expectation for joy is so high. It’s difficult to make space for your own sadness while surrounded by others’ celebrations, and difficult to reach out to others when you feel like they are occupied with family and other obligations.

For me, I have to recognize why I feel tired all the time, why my energy drops lower than I want it to be, and why I struggle to connect to some parts of the season: grief is taking up space in my heart and body, and whether I acknowledge it or not, I carry the weight of loss with me in every activity I do.

So I acknowledge it, as much as I can, and make space for it along with the decorations I put up around my home. Because I don’t think sadness and joy are mutually exclusive. In fact, I believe that to feel one deeply we must allow ourselves to feel the other just as deeply.

So as we head into the home stretch of the holidays and another transition into a new year, I hope those of you dealing with heartache of any kind know that you are not alone, that it’s okay to be sad, and that it’s also okay to do the happy things anyway. Feel all the things.

And I hope you have as good a holiday season you can have, and that the new year brings you as many joyful moments as possible.

***

J.M. Phillippe is the author
of the novels Perfect
Likeness and Aurora One and the newly released The Christmas Spirit, a story about a Christmas ghost finding joy even after life.  J.M. has lived in the
deserts of California, the suburbs of Seattle, and the mad rush of New York
City. She works as a clinical social worker in Brooklyn, New York and spends
her free time binge-watching quality TV, drinking cider with amazing friends,
and learning the art of radical self-acceptance, one day at a time.

Regression to the Mean

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by J.M. Phillippe

Two days before Christmas, I had to put my beloved cat Oscar down.

The holidays have been hard for me for a very long time. Grief is like a shadow that is always with you, but changes size and shape depending on what light is around. On the brightest moments of the brightest days, the shadow can shrink down so small you can’t even tell it’s there. Other times, it stretches out so far, it’s the only thing you can see.

The shadows that bother me the most are the ones that come after dark; cast by the light of streetlamps and headlights, they pile up two or three at a time, and are rarely still. There is no true dark where I live in Brooklyn, just as there is no actual silence, just various levels of noise you learn to live with. As such, my nights are filled with shadows.

Christmas lights throw their own particular shadows. The lights are my favorite part of the holiday, and I relish in the opportunity to throw them up on windows, and keep my (fake) tree up as long as possible to help ease the passing of dark-too-long days. I am struggling now with wanting to keep them up even longer, because there is already so much change in my small apartment with my cat gone. I am haunted by the shape of his absence: the lack of warmth against my legs when I sleep, the missing noise of him jumping up or down from things, the many places and things he is not laying on or in. His loss thickens the others that have come before: my grandparents, my brother, and my mother, not to mention other beloved pets. Every time I look for him and he’s not there, I think of the phone calls I can’t make, the people I can no longer hug, and the memories that are fixed and fading.

The passing of a new year is of course something worth celebrating, but it is also something that triggers my grief. Every new turn of the calendar adds to the time after someone I love passed. Every time I count down how long it’s been, I am newly shocked and thrown back into those early days of denial. No, really? It can’t have been that long already… And yet, it is.

Recently I heard someone talk about regression to the mean, a concept in statistics that states that if a variable is extreme on the first measurement, it will be closer to the average on the second (and vice versa). How I understand it from a clinical standpoint is that all things in life — the very big moments either good or bad — eventually return to a sort of baseline. The baseline itself may change over time, but the mean, the average, the day-to-day — we all come back to it eventually.

What I tell my clients is that if you want to see your overall progress toward something, you can’t look at a single data point — a single good day or bad day. You have to look at the trend over time to see if it’s moving in the right direction.

I am not sure what direction I want my life to move in, other than a vague urge to want to have a sense of progress. The loss of a pet is inevitable, if you live long enough, and I knew what I was getting into when I adopted my cat. In fact, I was more aware of the potential of his loss than pretty much any other loss in my life, and that in itself is a gift he gave me. Knowing our days together were naturally numbered, helped me better understand the nature of life and loss.

We love, anyway. And eventually I think I will likely seek out that particular kind of love again, when I’m ready.

In the meantime, what I want most from 2018 is a regression to the mean. It will come — the grief will be less acute, the days will stay lighter longer, and the shadows will feel less omnipresent. I’ll adjust to a new normal, and, as heartbreaking as it sounds, not having him in my life will feel as normal as having him in life did for over a decade.

My one and only New Year’s Resolution is to give myself time. Time to grieve, time to heal, time to write, time to breathe, time to sleep, time to create, time to just be. Next year will come (if I am lucky), and I won’t have to do anything except let the days go by as they are wont to do.

In the meantime, I may keep my tree up until at least the end of January. Some things I’m just not ready to let go of yet.

***

J.M. Phillippe is the author of Perfect Likeness and the short story The Sight. She has lived in the deserts of California, the suburbs of Seattle, and the mad rush of New York City. She works as a clinical social worker in Brooklyn, New York and spends her free time binge-watching quality TV, drinking cider with amazing friends, and learning the art of radical self-love, one day at a time.