Truly Breathing

Breathing, centering, finding my inner peace.  That is what today is about.

Thich Nhat Hanh is a Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, author, poet and peace activist.

Just typing the combination of those words makes me feel calmer.

I know that somewhere, under all the rushing and running around and multi-tasking is a peaceful inner core, and I want to find it.

But first I have to create the conditions to get to it.

What is the hurry?

With the help of Thich Nhat Hanh's quote below, I will decrease the speed with which I am living my life.  I will do one thing.  Slowly.

So that I may reach a peaceful place.

Photo Courtesy of Wuestenhagen Imagery

"Breathing in, I calm my body.

 

Breathing out, I smile.

 

Dwelling in the present moment I know

 

this is a wonderful moment."

 

                         ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Within The Morning Light

I am an early riser.  I find the morning to be peaceful and so quiet.  I use my morning time to collect my thoughts about what I think is going to happen during that particular day and pray for other things that I hope will happen.

 

So the morning is when a lot happens for me.  With my trusty cups of hot tea, I appreciate the solitude of the wee early hours of the day.  Quiet allows me to think and to breathe and pull myself together.

 

I am always writing down blog ideas and collecting different points of view on the subjects of resilience, rebuilding a new life and grief but the morning is usually when I actually post my thoughts.  I try to write whenever I get the chance so I don't lose my ideas, but that is sometimes difficult because I also have a full time job that I work during the day.

 

You may not be a morning person but perhaps you find quiet for yourself at other times of the day.  Try to spend some quiet time with your thoughts.

 

Short periods of time spent in solitude can be a good thing.

Solitude

By Garnett Ann Schultz

 

The sighing wind so slowly passed

Across the rolling seas,

It climbed the hill and came to rest

Among the stately trees,

Each nodding flower nestled there

Within the morning light,

Protected by the still of dawn

As darkness crept from sight.

 

The golden sun came stealing through

And lingered on the breeze,

As nature loaned an added charm,

A gentle little tease,

The dew that sparkled on the grass

The quiet, oh, so dear,

Within the tender arms of Spring

A peacefulness and cheer.

 

No sound within the forest glade

But that of singing birds,

A music sweet upon the air-

No human voice is heard,

Just Mother Nature lingers there

A carefree, happy mood,

The world in quietness supreme

God's wondrous solitude.

Picturing The Calm

I'm picturing myself in a place near the water that is quiet and calm.

Shutting out the noise and distractions.

Hoping this feeling will carry me through the day!

Photo courtesy of Delaware National Estuarine Research

A Delaware Bay Haiku (c) KBC

 

Horseshoe crabs spawning

 

Lots of shorebirds arriving

 

The Bay inviting

Roger Rosenblatt's Reflections

 

Some wonderful friends on the West Coast gave me Roger Rosenblatt's book, Kayak Morning, as a Christmas present.  I was familiar with Rosenblatt as a writer for Time magazine and also as a columnist for The Washington Post, but was unfamiliar with the tragic death of his daughter, Amy Solomon,  a 38-year-old wife and mother of three children, from a heart condition.

 

In Kayak Morning, which was written two years after Amy's death, Rosenblatt explores the human experience of loss.  His descriptions of his grief and his reflections about his daughter Amy's death are calm and straightforward yet poignant.

It is while Rosenblatt is kayaking in a creek not far from his home in Quogue, New York that he finds the solitude he needs to sort through his scattered thoughts about his grief and work through his deep sorrow to try and make sense out of what has happened to him and his wife, Ginny.  Rosenblatt recounts conversations that occured during this particular summer of kayaking and in an unusually striking discussion, he presents the idea that grief is a gift:


"You have to understand," she said. "Grief lasts forever."

"Like death," I said.

"Like death. Except death is someone else's condition, and grief is all yours."

"I feel worse now than I did shortly after she died."

"And you'll feel worse next year.  And worse the year after that, unless you find a way to transform your grief."

"We're back to that."

"We've never left it," she said. "Grief comes to you all at once, so you think it will be over all at once. But it is your guest for a lifetime."

"How should I treat this guest? This unwelcome, uninvited guest."

"Think of the one who sent it to you," she said.

I thought I had become familiar with most of the different ways that grief can be felt and presented to a person who has lost a loved one until I read the above excerpt.

It took me aback; the first time I read it, I thought to myself, "Grief is definitely not a present to be opened and cherished." But the more that I thought about the profound idea of it, the more I began to understand Rosenblatt's surprising point about grief being something personal given to you by the person you loved and lost. 

For it is in our grief, that we struggle to still keep our loved one alive.

 

Through writing down memories and sharing stories about the spouse, child, parent, friend or relative you loved and lost, you are  remembering your loved one, and as painful as your loss is in the beginning, grief, through the passing of time, does become more manageable.

 

Bringing your loved one back into your life through stories becomes a gift of sorts through the laughter, smiles and even tears that the person's life brings to others.

 

Quiet & Solitude

Give your mind a rest.  Just as your body needs sleep for renewal and optimal health, your mind needs periods of quiet and solitude.

A quiet mind reveals important things about your life, changes you may need to make to create a healthier and richer lifestyle. 

Inner information such as this cannot break through constant mental chatter.  A period of solitude "recharges" the brain and the body.

                                             --     By Elliot Dacher, MD, & author of Whole Healing: A Step-by-Step
                                                  Program to Reclaim Your Power To Heal