Kris Carr's Golden Ticket

I recently wrote about some of the good things I learned about surviving a personal trauma in the ten years after my husband's death (No Lifeguard On Duty).  After that post was published, many people told me they found it helpful to know how things feel ten years after a loss.

 

No matter how crazy and afraid you feel after a loss, it's essential to keep trying to find the support you need until you discover a different way to live.  Even though change is the last thing you want to do, change is possible.  It feels as though nothing will ever go right for you ever again, but that my friends, is a feeling that eventually will pass if you give it some time.

There is always hope.

 

The idea of changing and rebuilding your life, working on personal development or sustaining a lifestyle change over a ten years period is so interesting to me.  How do other people do it?  What keeps them committed to their new way of life?  I was Googling to see if I could find out more about how others mark their personal benchmarks of change when up on the computer screen popped the name of one of my favorite inspirational people: Kris Carr.

 

Photos Courtesy of Kris Carr

 

Kris Carr is truly amazing to me.  I have written about her many times on Cry, Laugh, Heal and never tire of her enthusiastic, original and generous way of approaching life as a person diagnosed with a Stage 4 cancer. 

 

Kris Carr is a New York Times bestselling author and wellness activist who brings you to the idea of change in a best girlfriend, let's do this together kind of way.  Whenever I am in a rut or feel the need to kick myself in the butt to get motivated, I either pick up one of her books or read her blog, Crazy, Sexy Cancer (www.kriscarr.com).  Kris Carr recently went in to the doctor's for her ten year check up and talked about it on Oprah's amazing weekly program called Super Soul Sunday.

 

Please watch this short YouTube clip and listen to Kris Carr talk about her changed life ten years after being diagnosed with the Big C:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5cE3OnOZR4&feature=player_embedded

Amazing You!

A significant and ongoing part of the grieving process is learning what to do with the confusing feelings you experience.

 

What am I supposed to do with the sad, angry, and surreal emotions I have inside me about the person who used to be in my life?  That person who was here yesterday, but is not here today, and won't ever be here for a lot more todays in the future.  How can I turn those sad, angry, surreal feelings into constructive feelings so that I can make a future for myself?

Acceptance of my new life and my new status is something I work on all the time.  Sometimes I push myself even when I'm not really sure where I am going because I know I have to challenge myself.  We all need to have something in our lives, something that we are passionate about, that makes us want to get out of bed in the morning and get dressed and go out in the world and interact with others.

 

In the beginning, getting out of bed was the last thing I wanted to do after my husband died.  Fortunately, my wonderful son needed to go to school and more importantly, needed to see that his only parent was functioning on some level as a regular human being.  I ignored my desire to pull the covers over my head and numb myself.  It was hard, very hard, and I felt as though I was walking through cotton candy, but I put one foot in front of the other every day and somehow managed to push forward to rebuild our lives.

 

I found that these confusing feelings were their most intense after my husband's death but even now, nine years later, I still can have a wave of sadness come out of nowhere and totally wash over me.  Last week it was a beautiful, sunny, picture perfect September day and I left my office for a walk down to the Whole Foods store near George Washington University.

Nothing in particular was on my mind so when a slide show of memories of me, my husband and our son started playing in my head I really felt down.  "I don't want to go backwards," I said to myself.  "If I do, I will only feel sad." I kept walking and breathing deeply and eventually got back to my office.

  

It takes a while to wrap your brain around the fact that someone you love very much has died and they won't be with you anymore to do the things that the two of you did over and over again and probably always thought you would do over and over again.

 

In a sense, it is as if some gigantic arm swept across the table of your life and wiped it clean, pushing everything away and laying it bare.  Your life as you know it has disappeared and all the routines you established with this person have collapsed.



Photo Courtesy of Dr. Rennie

But there is still you.  Amazing you!

 

Don't count yourself out.  Ever.

You may feel broken into pieces right now but you are still beautiful and full of possibilities.  You just need to find some glue in the form of love and comfort from friends, family and even support groups.  You do have reserves of inner strength within you and as strange as it sounds, you'll find these reserves when you allow yourself to feel the pain of your loss.  You also find them when you do something by yourself that you never have done before.  I promise.

Naturally, no one wants to feel the pain or put themselves out there in a vulnerable way, but that's when you truly and authentically live life.  I have memories that are so painful that I have mentally put them in an imaginary box.  They are raw and scary feelings but experiencing them has made me live my life differently.

Don't be afraid to spend some quiet time; time thinking about what you have been through and where you may want to go in the future.  Eventually the pieces of your life will start to come together and slowly mend, forming a stronger person.

Let's go forward, for you and I are on new paths, and together we will accept and persevere.
 

Lean In To Laughter

One of my brothers has a wacky way of making a joke exactly when it's needed.

His timing and dry delivery are impeccable.  Just when the situation is starting to get either too serious or is totally out of hand, I can always depend on my brother to throw an exclamation point into the conversation.

 

It's not an easy thing to do.  There's a fine line between funny and unfunny and once you cross over into unfunny, it's hard to undo and recover your mojo.

I've delivered some whoppers that have crashed on delivery but I don't try to cover it up by saying, "I'm only joking."  Usually when someone says that to me I know they are not really joking.  They're usually trying to tell me something by making it seem as if it's a joke.  NOT!

If I fall flat on my face, I try to own it immediately.  It's really the only way to go.

But the point is, making a joke gets me and maybe you through some rough times.

And humor also get writer Veronica Chambers through some life-changing moments with her husband.  As Chambers says, "I promise to laugh with my husband -- in sickness, in health, and everything in between."

Here's a short piece Veronica Chambers wrote for the February 2013 issue of O magazine that I think shows how humor diffuses those tense and  scary moments and puts life in perspective:

There's A Joke In There Somewhere
By Veronica Chambers
O Magazine/February 2013

Five years ago, I had an awful, soul-sucking year: During the birth of my child, my body went into organ failure, to the point where the doctors told my husband, Jason, I had begun to die.

Then my daughter, who was born weighing less than two pounds, spent three months in the hospital fighting for her life.  Then, just 14 weeks after we brought her home, my youngest brother, who was 28, died in a car accident, a crash that ended with an explosion so total there was nothing left to bury.

After his funeral, I drove to the Himalayan Institute in Pennsylvania for a three-day Ayurvedic retreat meant to bring things back into balance.  Thanks to 72 hours of vegetarian meals, yoga classes and sessions with a holistic doctor, I returned home hopeful.

But less than two weeks later, a chaplain from my local hospital called to inform me that my husband had been the victim of a hit-and-run.  "Are you f--ing kidding me," I shrieked.

At the hospital, when I saw his face, so bruised it was almost unrecognizable, I realized there was no right way to absorb this kind of pain.  My life had become a cruel joke.

And yet.  When Jason came home, he immediately began cracking wise.  And that set the tone for how we regarded his situation: with levity and something like grace.

Him: "My arm hurts.  Take your top off -- it's the only thing that will help."

Me: "You got hit in a crosswalk at 7 A.M.?  Dude, I think God smited you."

When a stranger asked how he broke his arm, he said: "Arm wrestling with my mother-in-law.  I won."

We laughed every day, and despite all that we had endured, I was happy.  I won't go so far as to say that his being run over was a gift.  I will say that the accident reminded me how remarkable humor can be.

My husband's laughter is like medicine.  When times get tough, he finds the funny -- and I just lean in for the joke.

Isn't this an amazing way to look at life?

It's Your Road

Thought For The Day. . .

I know this picture is a bit on the grainy side, but I really liked the sentiment of the saying:

"It's your road, and yours alone. 

 

 Others may walk it with you, But no one can walk it for you."

 

It would be nice if someone could take our place and walk on our road for awhile; perhaps making it less painful. 

Wouldn't that be nice?

But we don't know where our road is going to take us, do we?  I believe that my road has been painful but it also has been a road full of love, laughter and many other blessings.

I'm excited to see what may be down the road for me this year!!

I'd love to hear from you about your road and what it had brought you and what you hope it brings you this year!!

Breaking Out of Expectations

 

 

Photo Courtesy NY Daily News

 

When I write in my posts to you about rebuilding our lives after a loss, I don't mean to make it sound as though I suddenly woke up one morning and decided "today is the day I'm going to try to put together a new life."

 

Instead, what I really mean to say is that the step-by-step process of figuring out what to do after your loved one has died is a much more subtle process that usually happens slowly, almost as though you were putting your toes into a cold ocean and getting used to the temperature.

 

There is a lot of trial and error and I still find it to be scary.  Yet, when I try something I have never tried before and it turns out to be a good experience, it is definitely a confidence booster.  There have been times when some financial decisions I made by myself were not exactly the right ones, but then there were other good and solid decisions which lead to funny experiences, such as giving a party by myself and driving from Washington, DC to Connecticut with my son for the first time.  I learned a lot about myself and my comfort levels.

 

It's a weird time because the person who you used to talk to about plans, ideas and dreams is no longer there and you are flying solo.  Out there pretty much all by your lonesome.  So yes, you can basically do whatever you want to do, but do you really know what you want to do?  Not really.

 

Do I want to stay in the house we shared?  Do I want to stay in this city?  Do I want to keep the person's belongings?  How do I want to spend my free time?  What do I want to do next?  These and thousands of other questions are spinning around in your brain which just feels like Jell-O.

 

Nine years later, it still is scary but not as much as it used to be.  It took a long time for me to land in this place but I think I have finally given myself permission to live my life; to try things that are new and to not feel guilty about enjoying good times.  The sad and bittersweet times still visit me but not as often as they did in the beginning of my grief journey.

 

Today I think I can truthfully say I'm daring me to be more of myself, whatever that may be.

 

And that's a good kind of scary.

 

As Joan Juliet Buck writes in the following essay that was published in the October 2012 issue of Harper's Bazaar magazine: be bold in your life choices because true audacity can never be overlooked.  (For background purposes, you should know Ms. Buck's father was the American film producer Jules Buck).

  

 

Marilyn Monroe

 

Daring

By Joan Juliet Buck

Harper's Bazaar Magazine

10/24/12

 

I was with my parents at Idlewild Airport when Marilyn Monroe came toward us, escorts on each side, a big coat over her arm.  She'd been in one of my father's movies, so she stopped to hug him and shake my mother's hand, and continued along her way.  As he watched her wriggle down the corridor, my father shook his head and said, "Christ, still no girdle."  The retreating bottom looked soft, uncontrolled, and very present, as if a cat was lolling inside the tight skirt of her dress.  In those days, women's lower torsos were carefully caged up in rubber mesh.  I was five, and I was shocked.

 

Daring is about shocking children while you set free something that was seriously caged up.  It's about breaking rules.  The first rule that everyone breaks -- in art, fashion and conversation -- is modesty.  (You don't believe that about conversation?  Try going without "I" for two hours.)  Marilyn Monroe could challenge the zeitgeist and perturb the composure of men by forgetting her underwear.  My generation challenged the zeitgeist in the name of freedom, but it was really to perturb men: political and social acts were secondary to our true work of raising our hemlines, ditching our bras, unbuttoning our blouses, neglecting to shave our armpits, and consistently failing to grasp what the word sheer truly meant.

 

It's harder to shock today, when the actual part of a body that a garment might hide is often a random choice, and the Brazilian wax had to invented to disguise any evidence of the bull's-eye.  In the past few years, shoes had to carry most of the burden of shocking, but by now the sight of young women six and a half feet tall holding on to walls and doorways so as not to fall off the Trump City edifices on their feet are no longer remarkable.  No herd animal is ever daring. 

 

Acts of daring are always committed alone; even if they lead you to another person.  Once I kissed a man who was just a friend.  The only reason was that I couldn't understand why he had not yet tried to kiss me.  It set off something that lasted for decades.  I haven't tried that again with other men friends; truly  daring acts only happen once.

 

The daring are angels and geniuses and demons and divas and clowns, and sometimes also patsies, stooges, and fools.  Daring is not safe.  The impresario Serge Diaghilev said to the poet and painter Jean Cocteau, "Amaze me."  He did not say, "Reassure me," "Tell me I'm right," "Admire me," or "Stay in line and you'll get a nice pension."  Diaghilev could have been speaking for every good agent, every real gallery owner, every disconcerting collector, every casting director, even, I hate to say this but we have evidence, every TV judge.

 

Art demands daring.  It demands the new, the untested, the unproven.  And if you try, you will at some point fall on your face, just like the first wearers of impossible shoes.  My fashion life was born from little moments of daring; asking a new acquaintance called Karl Lagerfeld, "What are those brooches on your lapel?"  Pretending I could speak Italian so John Fairchild would send me to Rome for Women's Wear Daily.  Saying, "Why not?" when I was offered French Vogue.  It was daring, also, to let go when I realized how little the job suited my character.  I had no idea that would leadd to performing in black-box basement theaters and telling stories on the road, though I could have guessed; I love the unknown and am not afraid of ridicule.

 

The moment of greatest fear comes just before going onstage, because an audience is out there, and shared time is real time, no rewinds or rewrites.  The tension between wanting to flee and needing to stay and pierce through the fear is one of the most uncomfortable and delicious moments I know.  There are pills against stage fright; I would like a pill to get stage fright more often.

 

I believe, like the Surrealists, that everything creative arrives without calculation, but you must be prepared.  You need the skills to transmit unconscious impulses, but you also have to be humble.  The moment I think what an ace I am, I'm lost.  This is not an advantage in New York; where modesty is not welcome.  Performing has taught me that the second time I do something the same way, I'm developing a routine, and a routine is just shtick, the performing equivalent of a pink-slime hot dog.

 

You cannot standardize the moment when you break out of expectation and biography into something real.  You have to be uncontrolled and very present.  That's what I learned from watching Marilyn Monroe walk away when I was five.

 

Marilyn Monroe