wednesday, February 26, 2025 Quote of the week

“Self pity is our worst enemy, and if we yield to it, we can never do anything wise in this world.”

Helen Keller

Helen Keller lost her sight and her hearing at a very young age from a ravaging fever. I cannot imagine the challenges her parents endured. There was little structure to teach Helen how to behave, and the Keller home was chaotic. When the time was right, Helen’s teacher, Anne Sullivan, presented to her the key, which unlocked her world. Helen chose to pick up the key and turn the lock, opening up her world and discovering life beyond her loss.

When we are in the early stages of our grief, our world and our thinking are in a state of chaos too. We wallow in self pity and shake our fist at the unfairness, which is understandable during this process of grieving, just as long we don’t stay there too long.

“Self-pity in its early stages,” Maya Angelou wrote, “is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.” Self-pity walks along with us for a while. But gradually a shift occurs within us. It feels quite unsettling at first as if we are stepping out onto sand. Gradually, however, we find our footing. Our world of fragmented chaos brings about a new level of fulfillment. When the time is right, a spark within us flickers suggesting that there is still more for us to do.

Parker Palmer writes that, “Self-care is never a selfish act–it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer others.” Let’s give ourselves the grace to feel pity for our loss. But just like Helen turned the lock, we too evolve. On the other side of self-pity, we discover self-compassion. Take care of yourself, so you can take care of others.

Thoughts you think, words you speak, and actions you take create attraction. If you become hardened by pity as Maya wrote, we attract negativity. Choose to experience compassion, empathy, and delve into what your purpose is. The world still needs you.

Rise and Whine, or Rise and Shine.

wednesday, February 19, 2025 Quote of the week

“Identity cannot be found or fabricated but emerges from within when one has the courage to let go.”

Doug Cooper

The young woman at the grocery checkout asked for my ID when I was buying a bottle of wine. The dewy glow of my makeup must have been exquisite enough to fool her, but I quickly realized that the system required it in order to ring up my purchase. Gravity and makeup failed me! She scanned the barcode of my driver’s license and slid the bottle across the counter over to my sixty-year-old self.

My license showed my photo and proved my name and birthdate, but it ineffectively defined me. It did not tell of the trials and the joys held within me. This revelation made me reflect how we greet one another in passing and how quick we are to judge. We lift our eyes away from our phones long enough to offer a smile, but we lack the ability to see past the surface. Only the labels are most obvious.

We experience many labels during our lives such as child, parent, accountant, artist, all representing relationships and careers. However, our ethics and our morals are what identifies our true self, but even those change as we ride life’s roller coaster.

The set of circumstances we are left with after the death of a loved one challenges our identity and our perspectives. This can be unsettling. The confrontation, however, enables us to let go of the past and recreate something new. In 2 Corinthians 5:17, it says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. The old has gone and the new is here.” Eventually, there comes a time during our grieving that we walk forward and into the new.

Fashion designer Helmut Lang stated that, "If you really have your own identity you'll keep on doing what you think is really right for you, and you'll also understand the next step you want to take." In your healing, who are you becoming as you take the steps forward? Author Mandy Hale, wrote that, "Sometimes you have to experience what you don't want in life to come to a full understanding of what you do want." As you continue to walk forward, allow yourself the grace to discover a new identity.

I am love, I am pain, and I am all that is in between.

wednesday, February 12, 2025 Quote of the week

"The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials."

Confucius

Maya Angelou said that “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you”, and after Jim’s death, I was compelled to tell his. What began as a tribute to my husband and the legacy he left, exceedingly transformed over time into something I never could have conceptualized for myself…a thriving life without him.

Jim had only been gone a few months when I learned that St. Louis was hosting a writer’s convention. The journals I had been writing after his passing were now organized and taking the shape of a memoir, so I registered for the event. Established authors and want-to-be-writers like myself, filled the convention room. Everyone was eager to pitch their stories out into the publishing field. In all my life, I have never felt so unmoored, but I had Jim’s story to tell.

After submitting my piece, I sat among other authors awaiting my turn with an editor. A woman in her late thirties summoned me over, and I approached her with a nervous apprehension, for I had spilled my heart onto the pages she so delicately held. Peering up at me through her compassionate, teary eyes, she simply responded, “You aren’t ready yet.” She was right. My piece was a syrupy accolade, not a story, but rather a diary entry commiserating my loss. It was a fragmented conglomerate rock, sharp and unrefined. It needed time.

Rumi stated that, “If you’re irritated by every rub, how can you be polished?” Her rejection was hard to hear, but I needed her candid advice. I had yet to experience the stages and processes of loss that have led me now over to the healing side of grief. Grief will always walk alongside me, but I am now taking the lead and walking in front of it. Like a stone polished by time and grit, I too needed to refine, and as Romans 12:2 says, “be transformed by the renewing of your (my) mind.”

The journals I filled told not just our story but also the new one that I am now left to write. Singer Sheryl Crow said, “We talk about defining moments, but I think nothing can define you. They’re all refining moments. You’re constantly refining yourself and refining your life.” I feel once we all embrace refinement, we understand that love refines us, not grief.

Oh how we will flourish!

Storylight A transformational journey SHARON M WIBLE

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