News That Inspires

I don't know about you, but when I read newspapers, magazine or books, I am always looking for stories about people who have overcome a tragedy or some other kind of obstacle in their lives.

 

I am always amazed when I read about how someone who has experienced the death of a loved one or another kind of personal crisis then manages in the midst of this personal pain to find reserves of inner strength to work through their conflicting feelings and move forward to pursue something positive.  The same is true of someone whose life seems full of things going wrong yet somehow works through those obstacles and turns their life into something constructive.

 

In reading about someone else's story, no matter what the situation, I find that something clicks within me and I am reminded that I am not alone in my healing journey.  Life hands you choices that you don't expect and frankly don't like at all.

But life then also shows you that others have burdens or baggage, if you will, and I am inspired by people from all walks of life who expose their human and vulnerable side to the world and aren't afraid to recount what has happened to them and how that sadness affected their world but they decided to rise above it.

I love sharing these stories with you, my fantastic readers, and I hope you find them inspirational too!  I know I can't do it alone and I when I read about how other people handled their tragedies, I say to myself that if this person moved forward with their life then I can do it too!

This particular story that I read recently in The Washington Post is very uplifting to me.  It concerns a mother named Annette Weller and her daughter, Lauren Weller Sidorowicz, who sadly lost her valiant battle with bone cancer in 2011.  One day during Lauren's eight year stay at the pediatric unit of the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center, a pediatric cancer psychologist dropped off some colored markers and told Annette that she could draw on her daughter's window if she wanted.

Photo Courtesy of The Washington Post

The human spirit can be resilient in its ability to take a wide range of feelings and thoughts and channel them in a therapeutic way through drawing, painting, writing, singing or even sewing that can lead to a healing of broken heart.

Please read this touching story about Annette and Lauren and how Annette now uses her art to help others: 

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/colorful-murals-keep-a-daughters-memory-alive/2013/08/12/37f0234c-0105-11e3-9a3e-916de805f65d_story.html

Steve Martin Remembers His Father

Comedian Steve Martin in 2011

Comedian Steve Martin is obviously an incredibly multi-talented, award-winning funny guy.

 

To me, Steve Martin is one of those celebrities that I just accept as being the way they are as they present themselves in their work.  I don't think of him as a little boy or as having parents.  He is who he is as he appears in the roles of his television and his film work.

 

To the public, Steve Martin is the hysterical stand-up comedian who played the "wild and crazy guy" and many other characters on Saturday Night Live or he is the star of the movie "Father of the Bride" along with lots of other films.

 

So I was surprised when I was googling for an article on hospice care and up popped this story that Steve Martin wrote in 2008 about his father.  Thank you Google!

 

It is touching and sad and sweet and serious.  A whole other side of Steve Martin that is usually kept private.  I'm happy he decided to share this emotional story with us because it brings home and poignantly reveals how we all have complicated relationships with our parents whether you are a celebrity or not.

 

Steve Martin grew up thinking that his father didn't love him.  As a child, Steve Martin's father was stern and distant but all that changed as they both grew older.

Please read Steve Martin's story:


The Death of My Father
By Steve Martin
January 2008

 

In his death, my father, Glenn Vernon Martin, did something he could not do in life. He brought our family together.

 

After he died at age 83, many of his friends told me how much they loved him—how generous he was, how outgoing, how funny, how caring. I was surprised at these descriptions. During my teenage years, there was little said to me that was not criticism. I remember him as angry. But now, ten years after his death, I recall events that seem to contradict my memory of him. When I was 16, he handed down to me the family’s 1957 Chevy. Neither one of us knew at the time that it was the coolest car anyone my age could have. When I was in the third grade he proudly accompanied me to the school tumbling contest where I won first prize. One day, while I was in single digits, he suggested we play catch in the front yard. This offer to spend time together was so anomalous that I didn’t quite understand what I was supposed to do.

 

When I graduated from high school, my father offered to buy me a tuxedo. I refused because my father always shunned gifts. I felt with my refusal, that somehow in a convoluted, perverse logic, I was being a good son. I wish now that I could have let him buy me a tuxedo, let him be a dad.

 

My father sold real estate but he wanted to be in show business. I was probably five years old when I saw him in a bit part at the Call Board theater on Melrose Place in Hollywood. He came on in the second act and served a drink. The theater existed until a few years ago and is now finally defunct and, I believe, a lamp shop.

 

My father’s attitude toward my show business accomplishments was critical. After my first appearance on Saturday Night Live in 1976, he wrote a bad review of me in the newsletter of the Newport Board of Realtors where he was president. Later, he related this news to me slightly shamefaced, and said that after it appeared, his best friend came into his office holding the paper, placed it on his desk, and shook his head sternly, indicating a wordless “no.”

 

In the early ’80s, a close friend of mine, whose own father was killed walking across a street and whose mother committed suicide on Mother’s Day, said that if I had anything to work out with my parents, I should do it now, because one day that opportunity would be over. When I heard this remark, I had no idea that I would ever want to work anything out with them, that, in fact, there was anything to work out at all. But it stewed in my brain for years, and soon I decided to try and get to know my parents. I took them to lunch every Sunday I could, and would goad them into talking.

 

It was our routine that after I drove them home from our lunches, my mother and father, now in their 80s, would walk me to the car. I would kiss my mother on the cheek and my father and I would wave or awkwardly say goodbye. But this time we hugged each other and he whispered, “I love you,” with a voice barely audible. This would be the first time these words were ever spoken between us. I returned the phrase with the same awkward, broken delivery.

 

As my father ailed, he grew more irritable. He made unreasonable demands, such as waking his 24-hour help and insisting that they take him for drives at three a.m., as it was the only way he could relax. He also became heartrendingly emotional. He could be in the middle of a story and begin to laugh, which would provoke sudden tears, making him unable to continue.

 

In his early 80s, my father’s health declined further and he became bedridden. There must be an instinct about when the end is near, as we all found ourselves gathered at my parents’ home in Orange County, California. I walked into the house they had lived in for 35 years and my weeping sister said, “He’s saying goodbye to everyone.”

 

A hospice nurse said to me, “This is when it all happens.” I didn’t know what she meant, but soon I did.

 

I walked into the bedroom where he lay, his mind alert but his body failing. He said, almost buoyantly, “I’m ready now.” I understood that his intensifying rage of the last few years had been against death and now his resistance was abating. I stood at the end of the bed and we looked into each other’s eyes for a long, unbroken time. At last he said, “You did everything I wanted to do.”

 

I said the truth: “I did it for you.”

 

Looking back, I’m sure that we both had different interpretations of what I meant.

 

I sat on the edge of the bed and another silence fell over us. Then he said, “I wish I could cry, I wish I could cry.”

 

At first, I took this as a comment on his condition but am forever thankful that I pushed on. “What do you want to cry about?” I finally said.

 

“For all the love I received and couldn’t return.”

 

He had kept this secret, his desire to love his family, from me and from my mother his whole life. It was as though an early misstep had kept us forever out of stride. Now, two days from his death, our pace was aligning and we were able to speak.

 

My father’s death has a thousand endings. I continue to absorb its messages and meanings. He stripped death of its spooky morbidity and made it tangible and passionate. He prepared me in some way for my own death. He showed me the responsibility of the living to the dying. But the most enduring thought was expressed by my sister, Melinda. She told me she had learned something from all this. I asked her what it was. She said, “Nobody should have to die alone.”

© 2012 The Reader's Digest Association, Inc.

Healing Therapy

 

Drawing By NYC Multiple Medium Artist Joe Mangrum

One of my sister has a shoulder that is frozen and she is going to a physical therapist to work through the incredibly stiff shoulder muscles and joint.  If the physical therapy doesn't work, then she may have to have surgery and she really doesn't want that to happen.

 

We were talking about her physical therapy and she was telling me about how the therapist told her that to really get the exercises to work and unlock the muscles and joint that the therapy would have to increase to another level and she asked my sister if she was prepared for the "wall of pain" that she would have to work through to achieve her goal.

 

My sister said she was prepared and she knew it was going to be bad; that it would be so painful that she probably would cry.  But she still is committed to the next level of therapy, know that it's going to be awful, but also feeling hopeful that this increased therapy could be successful.

 

This may sound random to you but the more that I talked to my sister about her "wall of pain"  the more I felt I was talking to her about processing grief.

 

New grief can be so painful that it feels as though a part of your body has been amputated and you are walking around in a state of hemorrhaging.  You need to just take each day as it comes and little by little, you will start to feel that the pain is decreasing. 

 

But there is still a core amount of pain that requires work from you.

 

I think this concept was the hardest part for me.  When my husband died, I was stumbling around and in a state of numbness.  Every day I was full of grief and pain.  What was I going to do?  I had just lost my husband and everything was falling apart.  I thought I could read about grief and think about grief and it would eventually disappear.  Not!

 

Months and months of just feeling terrible finally made me realize that I had to do some of the work myself.  I had to actively figure out how to make myself feel better.  I found a support group at a local hospital and in the beginning I talked to someone on the phone for one-on-one time.  Later on, I joined a group and went to sessions twice a month to talk about grief and rebuilding my life all over again.

 

It was exhausting but I am so glad that I took the first step and asked for help.

 

It's important for you to recognize that you need time to work through this loss of your loved one.  There is no way to know how long it will take you to process your feelings.  Everyone grieves differently and takes different paths in their grief journey.  I do think it's fair to say that healing can come in cycles of ups and downs.

 

You have to confront your "wall of pain" and feel it.  The processing of this pain is hard for you are giving yourself permission to remember all the good things and all the bad things that your loved one was to you.  Write it down, shout it out, talk to a therapist, talk to a friend, paint it, take a shower and cry or go running and cry.

 

But get it out. 

 

Vent your feelings and thoughts and work through you "wall of pain."  You are releasing the pain and the hurt and the anger and the frustration and the confusion of not knowing what you are supposed to do next.

 

And in releasing your "wall of pain" you are empowering yourself and moving forward. 

 

For grief that you hold within yourself only keeps hurting and hurting.

 

 

Courtesy of NYC Multiple Medium Artist Joe Mangrum

 

 

Future Dream -- Pip

Pip Singing

Ouch!  Is it really Monday?

 

Four days off from work have been so great, can I repeat so great, for my mind and my soul!!  I went for some walks, did some yard work, caught up on my sleep, saw family and friends on Thanksgiving Day, did a little Christmas shopping and went to the movies and saw the new James Bond movie, "Skyfall."  It is excellent!! You really must see it if you haven't already.

 

But now I have Monday staring me in the face along with a brand new work week.  How do I get motivated to get out the door? 

 

Music, my dear friends, music! 

My cousin, Gina, posted a new song on her Facebook page that her nephew, Pip, wrote and sings.  He has a great voice!  Do you remember Pip?  He was a finalist on the second season of NBC's prime-time hit show, "The Voice."  Pip was on Adam Levine's team and since leaving the show he has been very busy in the recording studio.

His new song is called Future Dream and it features Pip singing and rockin' to some major drum beats.  I've listened to this a few times already this morning and I think I'm just about ready to groove out the door and face the week.

If you feel so inclined to spread the word of Pip's new song, please share this post/link.

Many thanks!  Go Pip!