wednesday january 25, 2023 Poem of the day

“One ship drives east another west with the self-same winds that blow,

‘Tis the set of the sails and not the gales, which tells us where to go.”

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Two stanzas from her poem, “Thanksgiving” by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, composes an eloquent and profound confirmation that gratitude is the other side of grief.

There’s not a day in all the year

But holds some hidden pleasure,

And looking back, joys oft appear

To brim the past’s wide measure.

But blessings are like friends, I hold,

Who love and labor near us.

We ought to raise our notes of praise

While living hearts can hear us.

Full many a blessing wears the guise

Of worry or of trouble;

Far-seeing is the soul, and wise,

Who knows the mask is double.

But he who has the faith and strength

To thank his God for sorrow

Has found a joy without alloy

To gladden every morrow.

Thank you to my father-in-law for introducing me to this wonderful poet. See you Wednesday

tuesday january 24, 2023 Quote of the day

“Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation of abundance.”

Eckhart Tolle

One of the first books of healing I discovered after my husband's passing was Tolle’s The Power of Now. Some books are meant to be quick reads and others are meant to be savored, and this particular one is definitely one to be read gently and at the reader’s own pace. Tolle masterfully embraces the ideology that suffering exists because we fail to live in the present moment.

All aspects of grieving are important to recognize and to honor; however, grieving is a passage and not meant to be a permanent residence. There was a time when I thought the losses of my loved ones would soon take me with them. The notion of living fully again was unthinkable. But as I took the next few steps, I realized that I am gifted with an incredible and honorable responsibility to accept and enfold my future!

We are human, so we experience a myriad of emotions. It is acceptable to have those moments of paralysis. A song or an event will bring a cascade of delicious memories that now taste rancid. Cry, shout, curse. Then pack up and move forward.

Thinking about the past with ingratitude prevents healing. One of the principles of Buddhism explains it like this: “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is not. Suffering arises from grasping. Release grasping and be free of suffering.” When a flash of memory hits me, I turn my pain to gratitude. My awareness then shifts because, with gratitude, I am no longer clutching at what I wished I had but appreciating the gift of what I did.

Author, Melody Beattie agrees that, “Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.

What is your tomorrow?

wednesday january 18, 2023 Quote of the day

"When you accept rather than fight your circumstances, even though you don’t understand them, you open your heart's gate to God’s love, peace, joy and contentment.”

Amy Carmichael

As a youngster, I recall that a day at an amusement park or an afternoon of swimming with friends promised to be the best that could ever happen! “Just one more ride, Mom? Just one more time on the diving board, pleeease?” Sometimes the pleading worked, and one more hour was squeezed in, but the day would end. With heavy hearts and much reluctance, we headed back to the car and went home. Only the memories lingered behind.

No matter how long we lived with our loved ones, we wished to have had more time. I suppose we could feel bitter and cheated, or we could allow love to energize our souls and push us forward. Because love is stronger than grief, all the love we shared with our departed loved ones we get to keep. Love is what fuels us to move forward.

In an article posted in PositivePsychology.com., Seph Fontane Pennock writes that the reason why humans are never satisfied is because we take things and people for granted and fail to be thankful. “The most powerful way I’ve found to overcome the danger of getting used to things is to be actively grateful for them. So I hereby invite you to lift the veil that is clouding the wonders life has in store for you, every day again, by expressing your gratitude."

Taking Seph’s advice, I am training to shift my grief to gratitude. I am incredibly grateful for the life I shared with my soulmate for nearly twenty years! I am grateful for my faith that led me out of the darkness, and I am grateful for those who carried me out from the sadness. I am simply grateful.

Our time will come, but for now, we carry on and fulfill what is still yet to be…and there is so much to be done! Like Seph stated, there are still wonders that we have yet to explore. Do I wish Jim was here? Of course I do! Do I wish I could ring my mom and dad and stop over for a visit? Sure I do! Do I want to spend another crazy night in the West End with my brother? Oh, heck yeah! But did I get a chance to do all those things? Oh, yes I did, and I did it wholeheartedly and with gratitude!

Don’t take for granted your loved ones and the time you have left. Explore the wonders! See you Tuesday

tuesday january 17, 2023 Quote of the day

“What we once enjoyed and deeply loved we can never lose, for all that we love deeply becomes a part of us.”

Helen Keller

Many of us have to manage chronic health issues on a daily basis. A chronic illness never goes away. However, with awareness, education, diet, exercise and medication, the ailments are controllable, so a qualitative lifestyle can become a reality.

I used to have a cast iron stomach; there was no food that ever bothered me. Bring on the hot sauce and the cayenne pepper, but that is not so much the case any longer. During a checkup a couple of years ago, my blood work indicated a problem. I was diagnosed with celiac disease and a couple other problematic digestive complications.

In the beginning, it was quite an ordeal. Between the three issues, I had to map out and cross-check the foods that were tolerable on one list, but not on another. Once I determined which foods attacked my gut, my health greatly improved. I still have occasional flare-ups, but I am learning to manage them. With time, professional advice, and patience, I am determining what foods are safe and which ones trigger a reaction. Because of my awareness and my plan, I am restoring my health.

Chronic illness and grief are the same in many ways. Like a disease, grief never goes away. How can it? Ms. Keller exemplifies this very notion: the love we shared manifests into an integral part of who we have become. Even though they have transformed from form to formless, there is no division; they remain in our hearts, our narrative, and even into our new life still yet to be discovered!

Managing a chronic illness and managing our loss are unequivocally complex. Once we accept our circumstances, we can develop a plan of healing and peace. Flair-ups will still occur, but with less intensity. When they do, we have the wisdom to manage through them. Turn the grief into gratitude because as Cicero wrote, “gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.”

Acknowledge the love and carry it with you. You’ll be delighted to witness the miracles just ahead!

wednesday january 11, 2023 Quote of the day

“You make a life out of what you have, not what you’re missing.”

Kate Morton.

Time to take inventory! Open wide your eyes to notice the multitude of blessings embracing you at this very moment. Open wide your heart to accept them with gratitude.

Begin with the most simplistic: a warm bed, employment, friends, hot showers, and babies! A warm bed means you have safety and shelter. Employment provides necessities and niceties. Friends are the family we choose. Hot showers wash away the residue from the day, while promising a fresh tomorrow. And Babies! Babies are hope, life, and innocence!

So Now, take inventory of all the gifts your loved ones have left you! I will not impose upon you what those might be because those treasures belong to you. Author and professor, Nancy Berns wrote an inspiring article titled, “A Loved One Who Died Can Help Us Live.” She notes that those treasures are “gifts to help us move forward while staying connected to our past. Look for the gifts you have already received from those who died. We can honor their lives and keep some connections.”

Instead of feeling the void, we can empower ourselves with the inventory of what our loved ones left us. Grief and joy can coexist; we don’t have to be one or the other. In the deepest depth of my grief, I could not ever fathom feeling grateful. I could not ever imagine enjoying my life again. However, the mental picture of my love-inventory illuminates the vast richness of what remains. Wow, how incredibly invigorating!

Even though it is scary to move forward without them, we have been given all we need to do just that. God keeps pulling us out of bed every morning for a reason. Between our love and our faith, how can we fail? Randi Reisfield agrees when she writes to “…find peace and comfort, and maybe eventually inspiration in having known the loved one.”

Let gratitude illuminate your inventory list! See you Tuesday

tuesday january 10, 2023 Quote of the day

“I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.”

William Ernest Henley

My high school psychology teacher, Mr. Lawson said something one day in class that I have never forgotten: people don’t make us mad; we chose to be mad. Throughout the course, he continued to teach that we own our feelings, so we have a choice on how we want to react. Instead of blaming external forces, we can choose and own what we want to feel. This way of thinking changed my life.

I craved more and more of these empowering life hacks, so by the age of sixteen, I subscribed to Psychology Today and aspired to be a psychologist. After completing my undergraduate degree, I intended to pursue my masters in school counseling, but that changed. As a teacher, I realized that the classroom was where I needed to stay. Through the students’ writing, I gained so much more insight into their thoughts and experiences. We built a strong repour and created a safe learning space.

Even though I had been determined to seek a psychology degree, I couldn’t deny that my focus had changed. At first, I felt like I was letting others down because of what I first set out to accomplish. However, I had to let that go realizing that I was being taken to where I needed to be. I had to accept a different plan.

Whatever pain and loss we experience during our journey, we cannot deny them. As activist and writer Nicole Lyons stated, “the deepest pain I ever felt was denying my own feelings to make everyone else comfortable. To deny our feelings, is like what a kitten does after using its litter box. We all know what is buried underneath the pebbles of clay even though we can’t see it. Eventually, it will become obvious!

As William Ernest Henley wrote in his poem, “Invictus,” we are our own masters and captains of who we are and what we will become.

Grief is a passage, not an end.

wednesday January 4, 2023 Quote of the day

“One day we will remember how lucky we were to have known their love, with wonder, not grief.”

Elizabeth Postle

Throughout my grieving journey, I have joyously learned the transformative power of loss. When my husband, Jim, suddenly passed, the emptiness and loneliness was unbearable. Never has an emotion weighed so heavily. However, working through it and adjusting to the new life with which I have been left, enabled me to see something wonderfully new manifesting within my being.

Grief changes a person forever. I long to see the sparkle in my eye, which was once there. I long to reach for Jim’s hand or feel his arms around me. Both those are in the past, and if that’s where I choose to stay, I have extinguished my capacity to go forward and to feel love.

If we anticipate that we will get back to normal and will eventually feel like we used to, we have a very long wait ahead. Never do we return to normal; instead we discover wonder and delight of moving into another direction. The design of our new lives is a tapestry interwoven from who we were before the loss and into who we now are after. We will never get over it, but we can integrate together the grief and joy.

Because we’ve loved completely, we experience the opposite, which is suffering. However, grief isn’t a place we stay, but rather, it is a passage. Pleasure and pain are both temporary, whereas the joy we embrace of their memory is forever. Poet Kahil Gibran writes that “the deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.” Author, Don Miguel Ruiz, who wrote The Four Agreements quotes that we should “...begin every day at a higher level of love.” We are able to do such a thing because of the love they left with us!

Let their residual love carry us forward. See you Tuesday

Tuesday, January 3, 2023 Quote of the day

“We don’t move on from grief. We move forward with it.”

Nora McInerny

I love pumpkin spice. I love pumpkin spice everything. Whether it’s pumpkin coffee, pumpkin coffee creamer, pumpkin bread, or pumpkin pie, I love it all. However, it is now January, and there are new and exciting flavors awaiting, so it is time for me to let go of everything pumpkin (gasp) and move on.

As I welcome in yet another new year, I welcome the tantalizing flavors 2023 promises. Some will be decadent, and others will be bitter, but how can I fully appreciate life’s sweetness without knowing disappointment? To know one, I would need to have befriended the other first!

In Scripture, the lesson of opposites teaches that the bitter makes the sweet even sweeter. The second book of Corinthians 8:9 tells that the same God, who created the Universe and all existence, transformed into a poverty-stricken helpless infant. The gift of Jesus was to show how miracles happen and that everlasting life is promised. It is beyond measure for me to think that Mary accepted that her son’s purpose was to die. The bitter and the sweet.

In poetry, the lesson Kahil Gibran’s poem, “On Joy and Sorrow,” teaches that

“When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

So, how do we let go and move on from those beautiful souls we are grieving? We don’t. Letting go and moving on from my relationship with pumpkin spice is possible, but not with those taken back to Source. Moving on is something we can’t do because in doing so, we are ignoring the pain. Going forward, on the other hand, is possible because we have rightfully mourned. We have worked through the pain by doing what is healthy and what is right for us. The bitter and the sweet.

We don’t move on, but we can move forward, one step at a time, and at our own pace. There will be a time when we will look back at all the small steps taken and will be awed at the distance we’ve traversed!

May our small steps turn into leaps!

Storylight A transformational journey SHARON M WIBLE