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

Monkey Bars

Yesterday I wrote about one small aspect of holding on to a deceased loved one's material things for a long time.  It's a rather large emotional minefield of an issue but if you ride along with me for a bit more today maybe we can make some progress together and get on with it.

 

Let's be real:  nobody wants to hurt and nobody wants to feel pain.  It's in our DNA to try and protect ourselves and so we naturally want to run away from pain and suffering; even sometimes to deny its existence.  I think this is one of the main reasons why painful issues hang around for so long and aren't resolved quickly.  They just plain hurt.

Unfortunately, I know this for sure:  you are only delaying the inevitable.  At some point, you're going to have to feel the hurt and pain to get to the other side which actually can be very freeing.  This time around for me, it was a jar of Ovaltine, but it could be anything the next time: a possession, a feeling, a person or even a situation.

I think it's almost similiar to that feeling you may have had as a child while working your way across the metal monkey bars on the school playground.  You notice I said metal.  I'm old enough that those playground structures like monkey bars were made of metal so when you put your hands on them they were either blistering cold in the winter or burning hot in the summer.

 

 

While hanging from the bars and trying to swing my body back and forth, I knew I was in safe territory as I slowly but surely moved forward to the other side.  It was familiar and all I wanted to do was reach the other side and let go.  And then there were those times when I would miscalculate and I would get tired and be hanging somewhere in the middle.  "Oh no," I would think, "I'm almost over to the other side.  I don't want to drop and fall to the ground."  The ground seemed so far away and I didn't want to release my hands from the bars as much as my arms and hands might hurt.  I wanted to stay on the bars.

 

It's the same with being hooked on a comforting feeling that a possession, a person or a situation can give you.  You've convinced yourself that everything will be okay if you have that possession, person or are in that set of circumstances.  It helps you ride through the pain, at least for awhile. 

 

For me, pieces of paper with my husband's writing on it were comforting.  It didn't matter what he had written.  It was just the quick glance at his distinctive handwriting that would make me feel better, as though he had just handed them to me.  I would fold them and put them in my purse, pin them on the bulletin board behind my computer at home and generally just leave them lying around. 

 

Then one day, and I would say it took about a year for me to feel this way, I started to actually read the papers and really look at them and I realized that keeping all these papers was getting to be messy; that keeping one or two significant handwritten notes was enough and I could toss the rest in the trash.  The papers were getting in the way of moving forward.

 

The process of learning to let go happens at a different pace for all of us.  Sometimes we move quickly through anger or frustration and slowly through anxiety or it can be the other way around for another person.  We are all different in our ways of handling and expressing grief.

 

Just as we work our way across the monkey bars one by one, we work our way slowly but surely through the grief process, step by step, beginning to heal and feeling oh so much stronger as we reach the other side.

Over You -- Miranda Lambert

 

Miranda Lambert

 

We like to think that the people we love will remain with us forever.

 

No one wants to think of a time or be faced with a time when a loved one gets sick, is in an accident or worse and will no longer be here. 

 

But unfortunately, sadly and even tragically, life does not work the way we want, as hard as we always try to will it to work our way.

 

The reason why I am drawn to the haunting song, "Over You," sung here by award-winning country music singer Miranda Lambert, who also co-wrote this song with her husband, Blake Shelton, is the line, "But you went away.  How dare you?  I miss you."

 

I don't care how many stages of grief you go through and which way you go through them, those words are universal in their sentiment.  I don't think of the words in an angry way; just more of a human plea to the person to come back because it's lonely without them.

 

 

Back to Kindergarten

My Dad is the kind of guy who is constantly ripping and cutting articles out of newspapers and magazines and mailing them to people he thinks will appreciate what he has found.  It drives my Mom crazy that he does this before she has even had a chance to read the paper or the magazine.  But after 60 years of marriage, my father continues to clip away in his own little world.

 

 

When I saw my Dad this past weekend for Father's Day, he had a column that he had recently cut from a newsletter and he handed it to me and said, "I know you think you're too old to be told anything, but I thought you would enjoy this column.  You've probably already read it but it's the kind of thing that everyone needs to be reminded about.  Just think about it."

I did think about it and my Dad was right.  This column below is a good basic reminder about how to navigate the ups and downs of that magical ride we call life.  For anyone who is sad, confused or frustrated about what is going on in their life right now, this column, which was written almost 25 years ago, may help you reset yourself and start again with a fresh outlook: 

 

All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten

By Robert Fulghum

 

All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten.  Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the sandpile at Sunday School.  These are the things I learned:

 

-- Share everything.

-- Play fair.

-- Don't hit people.

-- Clean up your own mess.

-- Don't take things that aren't yours.

-- Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.

-- Wash your hands before you eat.

-- Flush.

-- Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.

-- Live a balanced life -- learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some

-- Take a nap every afternoon.

-- When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.

-- Be aware of wonder.  Remember the little seed in the styrofoam cup: The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why but we are all like that.

-- Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even little seeds in the styrofoam cup--they all die.  So do we.

-- And remember the Dick-and-Jane boks and the first word you learned -- the biggest word of all -- LOOK.

 

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere.  The Golden Rule and the love and basic sanitation.  Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.

 

Take any one of those items and extrapolate it inoto sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or your government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm.  Think what a better world it would be if we all -- the whole world -- had cookies and milk bout three o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap.  Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.

 

And it is still true -- no matter how old you are -- when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.