Category Archives: loss

going….going…..

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While my mom fades slowly away, we are dealing with another crisis in the family, and that’s why I haven’t been blogging. I haven’t been here; I’ve been in Albany with my daughter as she struggles her way through the health care systems to get support for her dad when he leaves the hospital.
My role was moral support, source of experiential information, and entertainer of my grandson, who had to come with her from Massachusetts. There was no one with whom to leave him for four full days while his own dad went to work and also monitored the construction process on their house addition.
Other patients came and went throughout those four days that we sat in and out of his hospital room. We watched them being taken to surgery, watched them come back and get going again.
But my offspring’s dad didn’t get up and didn’t go anywhere. His lungs are waging war against hope. We are waiting to hear where he will be going.
And now I’m back here with my mother, and my daughter is back in her home as well. I am worried about her own health, as her commitment and persistence kick in and she continues her long distance struggle to manage her dad’s care (with crucial help from a close friend of his who lives nearby).
I help from here as best I can — checking out a county program that provides financial assistance with home care for eligible elders, local home care agencies, walkers, tub chairs, recliner lift chairs…..
Whatever the outcome of his final tests today, he will need an awful lot of help. And our small family is scattered, each with his/her own responsibilities. But we are doing all we can from where we are, knowing there will come a time, too soon, when we will all be gathering for the final going.

my heart in the wrong place

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That’s what it felt like when my therapist sent me on a guided visualization into my body.

Having one’s heart in the right place is a metaphor. For example, according to here,
if someone’s heart is in the right place, they are a good and kind person even if they do not always seem to be.
I “saw” my heart lower down and centered in that place where one usually gets “heartburn.” So, if my heart’s NOT in the right place, does that mean that I am NOT a good and kind person even though I often seem so?

After being home a while and contemplating the visualization experience, and after making a connection between feeling my visualized heart (which was radiating energy) where heartburn occurs, I’m pretty sure what I was sensing was the place in my body that stores up all the stress/agita of my living situation. My heart is burning. In other words, I have heartburn.

During the visualization experience in my therapist’s office, I released the burning energy I saw radiating from my heart out through my hands (which, as the therapist noted, rarely lie still).

Now, that formerly “burning heart” is still in that same place, sitting like the lump of cold coal that I once found in the toe of my childhood Christmas stocking (disobedient child that I was).

During my next therapist’s visit, I will ask to go back into my imaginal body and find out if I can do something to get rid of that lump. At least, for now, I am feeling more energized, less constricted in my breathing.

Yes, I do believe that there’s a strong connection between mind and body, and that many so called “miracles” of healing have something to do with the power of that connection. As are many so called “diseases.”

I’m not discounting medical science at all. I’ve had my share of surgeries and take my share of medications. But there often is more to the healing process than all of those tangible treatments.

As a poet, I know how powerful metaphors can be. As you enter into a personal metaphor, guided by a therapist trained to support you in that journey, you discover truths that you might never feel if you chose to engage in traditional “talk therapy.”

I don’t know where my inner journey will lead this time. My goal is to survive here until my mother doesn’t.

Here’s a good short guided visualization to try if you’ve never done one before. If you try it, please consider leaving a comment here to share what happened.

Whose Truth?

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The other evening I went to an event held to give some visibility to the Glass Lake Studio (Expressive Arts Therapy Program) and to bid farewell to its founder and his wife, who are moving to Canada to join a community led by “guru” John de Ruiter.

According to de Ruiter’s site,
Canadian born John de Ruiter responds to invitations World-wide, addressing audiences from “core splitting honesty” and his unconditional way of absolute surrender and servitude to Truth.

Because I steer clear of anyone who spells Truth with a capital “T” (and run fast in the other direction from concepts like “surrender” and “servitude”), I am always a little taken aback when people who have been among my circle of friends go off to embrace such Truth so blissfully and assuredly. With the de Ruiter Truth, it’s not just the couple to whom I recently wished “safe journey.” Another couple I know — both well-trained psychologists with successful practices — have already moved, at least temporarily, north to de Ruiter’s Canadian enclave.

Without a doubt, truth is very important. Look at the mess the world is in because so many of our leaders have forgotten how to tell it. It’s interesting that de Ruiter’s wife recently left him because he is sleeping with two of his lovely blonde followers. I think that he has some sort of rationalization of the difference between his own “personal truth” (small “t”) and Ultimate Truth (capital “T”).

Heh.

It all makes me stop to think about how many ways of defining “truth” there are out there. There’s scientific truth, historical truth, personal truth, mythic truth. And then there’s the capital “T” Truth, the idea of which always seems so compelling. It also tends to be the idea behind many of the most gruesome murdering sprees of mankind, from the Crusades to the war on terrorism.

Scientific truths change and evolve as new information is added to the mix. Historical truths often are a combination of actual facts colored by personal truths. It’s all so messy, so chaotic, so lacking in surety — kind of like life. To believe or not to believe. We make our choices and we take our chances.
Personally, my choice for truth usually is to try to match up my personal truths with the kinds of mythic ones that Joseph Campbell so eloquently and artfully described and analyzed in his too-soon-forgotten series of PBS programs and books. I guess it’s my way of integrating the big picture with the little picture, the personal with the planetary. Because, for me, it’s the only way for me to arrive at truths that I can count on, that provides the loom on which I can weave that chaos of science and history and personalities into the fabric of a life that I can wrap around myself for safety and sustenance.

All the rest is someone else’s truth. Someone else’s Truth.

That’s why the current American intrusion into the Middle East is so confusing to most people. (Makes you want to run way and hide in the bosom of de Ruiter Truth, doesn’t it?)
To help you get at some of the truths about Middle East Truths, you might want to link over to Bob Harris’ post on here , which begins:
It may be anything from a play for leverage in Iraq to the opening drumbeat for another war, but the White House, Rumsfeld, and Blair have all gotten on Iran’s case for allegedly harboring Al-Qaeda suspects, which supposedly even led to this week’s increased terror warning.
Iran denies the charge.
Who’s telling the truth? I don’t know. But keep reading.

It’s well-worth reading.

And to get a better fix on the continuing un-truths being thrown at us by the Bushies, check out Peter Beinart’s article in The New Republic Online that spells out “the record over the last eight months.”

Whose truth. Yes, indeed.

Mother Load

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“I sent you to college. You’re a teacher. You should be perfect.”

That’s what she said to me yesterday, my mother.

I don’t even remember what it was I did this time that didn’t meet with her approval. Not that it matters. I’ve spent my entire life repelling her disapprovals. But it does burn my butt that she still doesn’t get it.

Over on her weblog, Jeneane Sessum shares her current struggles to get beyond the load her mother laid on her. Mother-daughter stuff. Tough stuff.

I think I managed to do the mothering thing less destructively than my mother, although I certainly didn’t do it perfectly. Of course not.