Do It Everyday...If You Dare.

Yesterday I decided to commit to writing in my journal every single day for at least 20 minutes every morning. I practice Kundalini yoga and yesterday in class my teacher challenged us to establish a Sadhana which is a discipline you undertake every day to connect with your authentic self, a spiritual practice which could be anything: praying, painting, doing yoga, walking, biking, running, meditating, playing music. You must do it alone without disturbance or distraction. Ideally, you do your Sadhana in the morning in preparation for your day. Regular daily practice, it is said, helps us face challenges as it purifies and refines our consciousness. (Read about Sadhana here.)

Ok. Whoa. I know I'm getting a little out there. But, I believe that a regularly practiced solo discipline can make a real difference in your life by crystallizing your intentions and making it easier to leave life's unimportant noise and distractions behind you.

The main purpose of The Heartbreak Diary, when I first began writing it, was to share what I've learned about the healing power of writing (which has been proven by research), give exercises for those in grief who need a jump start for writing, and to share some of my own writing about loss.  I am really amazed at how much writing this blog has helped me to recover from the loss of my husband at a relatively young age.

Perhaps from the outside it might look as though someone who has been writing about loss for years might be stuck in the past or still in pain. But I find the opposite to be true. By writing out my feelings, their hold on me lessens. While I might spend 20 minutes exploring the pain of loss in a blog post, I find that the hours that follow those 20 minutes feel pretty free and unencumbered.

I encourage you to think about Sadhana. If that word doesn't appeal to you, just think about something you can do for yourself every day, consistently without fail. It might take you a while to figure out what that practice might be. Or perhaps you know instinctively what you can do.

If it might be writing, you can start with this and see where it takes you for the next 10 minutes:


Today I will write about what it means to me to have a daily, disciplined practice:

Laugh about Death (Ha Ha Ha)

Grieving is heavy. Ugh. It's such a load on your back. It's all depressing and sad; it makes people want to turn away from you, change the subject, have a drink or drive really fast or eat too much or too little food just to get away from the heaviness of it all. (Ha ha ha!)

The sadness of grief can last a long time, longer than anyone wants to know. When you've lost someone integral to your daily life, especially: a spouse, a child, a sibling, a parent. Maybe you feel like you've got no right to be happy when someone that close to you can't be happy anymore, can't be anything anymore, has to be dead. Perhaps pure joy, silliness, levity, excitement, enthusiasm for your own vital future feels a tad wrong or out of place. (Ho! Ho! Ho!)

Grief changes you. It sucks the lightness from your life and hovers over you like a giant shadow, arms outstretched, threatening, looming, staying put. The shadow can block out the sun; with no sun there is no growth. (Tee hee!)

Major loss keeps rapping on your skull: hello in there, guess what, shit happens! It can happen to you -- again, so beware, don't trust and don't get too comfortable. (Hardy-har-har!)

Last night I had a great experience at Willow House in suburban Chicago www.willowhouse.org, where once a month I go to help facilitate grief groups for children and their families. Usually, a mother or father has died too young leaving young children and a spouse behind to carry on without them. The theme for last night's group was laughter, a wonderful theme, a fantastic departure from the weightiness of death, for people needing support as they heal and move forward past that heavy, heavy load of loss.

The evening was filled with exercises and activities that either had participants literally laugh together (on demand about absolutely nothing in particular), then share happy or silly memories of the loved one who had died. Oh! What a relief to laugh about death and to revive happy times! The energy last night was life-affirming and joyful. I couldn't help but think that the dead mothers and fathers would be grateful for their children having a good guffaw in their permanent absence, and that they would wish for more and more of these moments for their children, and their spouses as well. They would want their children to remember them in their funny moments and happy times, and not for messes left behind or scary moments of crisis. Being dead, they must be thinking...geez, get happy, you're not the one who died. LIVE WHILE YOU CAN!

So lighten up folks. Have a laugh thinking about the one who died. Let the funny and the happy push away that big old ghostly cloud. Put a smile on it. It's not that serious. It's just death and it ain't going away in your lifetime. Laugh about death for a change. Do it frequently. (Snicker.)

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Now's the time to get out your journal (what do you mean you don't have one?) OK then get out a piece of paper or since you're on the computer now, open up a new WORD file, and write for a full ten minutes. Here are a few prompts for you to use...use one or use them all, or make up your own.  It better be funny.

Remember five different occasions when your loved one made you laugh and write about it.

Describe some of the ridiculous habits of your loved one.

What did you and your loved one do for fun? When did you have the most fun?

Describe an amazing adventure or vacation you had with your loved one.

What kinds of gestures, gifts, or surprises did your loved one give you or do for you that made you feel loved and important.

Visit from a Bird or Bat (and a bear), and....

At 5AM this morning, a fetish fell off my windowsill, awakening me from my sleep. A Zuni carved fetish, that is. The Zuni of the southwest carve animals out of stone, bone, antler and such. Each animal is said to have different powers...Ken and I started collecting these fetishes in the early 90s while visiting Santa Fe and Taos one February before we had children. Over the years, we'd give them to each other for gifts. Let's say it was one of those sweet things between couples, less sugary than giving each other stuffed animals but not as formal as a monogrammed bathrobe.

What was perplexing was that there was no way one of these fetishes could just fall off the windowsill all by itself. They are stable where they rest.

So I got out of bed to find that the fetish that had fallen off the windowsill was a white bear. We have three of them. And what do you suppose are the mystical powers possessed by the white bear? Healing, powerful healing. I had once sent a white bear to my friend Pam, who during the same time Ken was going through treatment for Hodgkins Disease, was fighting her own battle against leukemia. Before Pam died she passed her white bear on to Ken.

Since Pam's bear hadn't possessed enough power to keep her alive, I got Ken another whiter bear. Like many fetishes it carried a little bundle on its back wrapped with string. The bundles add even more power. Ken would carry the bear around in his pocket, take it to work, for his chemo treatments, etc. It got so worn from being carried around that the string became frayed and undone. It went through a lot trying to keep Ken healthy but it just wasn't strong enough, so I bought Ken a third white bear...white as snow, smooth as ice. The last bear. This is the bear that fell off the windowsill last night. (OK, so obviously these bears are impostors since two great people died while the bears sat back and did nothing, however, the story continues....)

I couldn't understand how this bear had fallen off the windowsill. As I lay on my bed pondering this I heard a sound of movement throughout the upstairs of our house...something moving through my room, Natalie's room, and Alec's room, around and around. A bird! Or was it a bat? I'm still not quite sure what it was but it was flying around our upstairs going from one room to another.

Normally, any living intruder in our home would be handled by the man of the house, but since that wasn't possible at 5 am this morning, or at any morning in the last many months, it was up to me and my pounding heart. So I waited until the birdy flew into Alec's room, closed the two doors to his room, trapped the bird in there, took a screen off a window, lay down on his bed, and waited for the bird/bat to fly out. I did it!

Afterwards, I felt kind of proud of myself. Kind of strong and capable. A real match for the winged one.

I felt just a little, just a little tiny bit of healing had taken place. With my two little children fast asleep, with no one to help me, I ushered a living creature out of our upstairs with minimal fuss. And I must admit I wonder...what was that flying through each of our rooms last night? A bird? A bat? Or some other flying wonder that came by to check on us?

My only regret? I wish I had at least said "hello." Just in case, you know?