I just came across this on one of my sites and thought it belonged here… one of those teary moments and some of the writing might have been healing then.  The reading and remembering is now part of the healing process.

9/14/05 – I have participated in many very powerful programs with Julie Jordan Scott.  Currently I am in Julie’s Dream Activation Program, see DREAMS and in a writing program of hers.  Part of the 42 days of Dream Activation is sharing one’s dreams and having them witnessed.  Today I shared my expression around my dreams.

“The soul would have no rainbows if the eyes had no tears.” Laurel Burch

This quote is on a mug that I purchased from Amazon shortly after Sam died. During those first few difficult months, I gave myself permission to buy little, what for me were, “luxury items” as comforts for my soul, I suppose.

I do have have several Laurel Burch mugs and hadn’t seen them since we moved here. The beauty of the image on this one initially drew me in and, even more importantly for me, the writing in the center of the mug was a reminder of tears… that tears are ok. Only I wasn’t doing much crying, permission or not. So that’s the story behind my having introduced the quote to our [writing] group today..

“Rainbows, I’m forever chasing,” I stated the other day when I went chasing a beautiful rainbow (to photograph) after a violent thunder storm. It seems to me that perhaps the most beautiful rainbows come after turbulent storms rather than gentle rains.

Does my soul , thus, need turbulence to have rainbows in it? Does it need to have the tears to create whatever combination creates a rainbow? Beautiful colors? Shapes? Purity?

(and the 4 minute timer called the end….Interestingly, for me, the next prompt somewhat continued the “conversation.”)

“Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass… It’s about learning to stand in the rain.” - Anonymous

This one brings up immediate memories… tearful ones now…of the hurricane of a couple of years ago. I recently came across photos of Sam sitting in my closet… me, too, when I got back in to join him after taking the photo. Close and secure, the two of us, as we waited for the hurricane and its threats to pass over.

Though we weren’t physically standing in the rain we were going with it, no protest, simply enjoying being with one another and whatever was going on… at least I’d like to think there was no fear there.

The effects of that hurricane left us powerless… in electricity that is.. for several days. And we got to appreciate being in the present. Instead of complaining I treasured the time for reading, resting, eating gooshy strawberries that had defrosted and were still cold when I took them out of the cooler.

How glad I was to have Sam with me, my companion, my lover, and, I guess,we were learning to stand in the rain of our lives over several years… the rain being the effects of Parkinson’s disease on him and, thus, us.

PS – For cheer when I bought the Rainbow Soul mug I also bought Laurel Burch’s Ponies and Parrots mug from Amazon -Final note on this post – Having created a miraculous life of beauty and love with her art and color and entrepeneurship, despite constant pain and broken bones, Laurel Burch sadly passed away at the age of 61. See her spirit and process in a 6-minute VIDEO interview. You can also read about her life on the same SITE.

“They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.” Carl W. Buechner

Once again, Sam comes up. I hope he forgot what I said and forgot how I made him feel in the moment.  When I screamed and yelled and cursed, he hated the “f” word. He felt like “sh” I know.  Sometimes he said it.  So the feeling was there.  And, thankfully, I think he did forget how I made him feel in those moments or he wouldn’t have been able to put up with it.

I’ll rest in peace and he is too, I’m sure, knowing that most of the feelings he would never forget are those of being loved and cherished, as was I, most of our times together,  throughout our 47 1/2 years of marriage.

If we worry about everything we say, it can be very stifling. On the other hand, a good practice always is to think before we speak.  Though we may not think about the feelings, if we ask ourselves, “Will this make a difference?”,  it  will, obviously, have an effect on feelings.

4 minute writing – 10/21/08 – eleven months after Sam’s death. – What had surfaced in response to that quote were the memories of my anger. When I was in the midst of them, unfortunately, nothing else mattered. And, I was truly blessed that Sam understood, and accepted, what was going on with me during those moments.

“You are wearing yourself out with all this searching. Go home and rest.” Oriah

Searching, searching, searching… well discovery anyway. That’s the juice of my life. It’s only when I’m consciously, purposefully, I think, searching for answers that I get worn out. Well maybe it’s the second and third searching that’s the ‘wearing out” part. It’s the initial searching… the being open to discovery that’s the excitement for me.

No That’s not accurate also. The excitement for me comes from discovering something new, unexpectedly, spontaneously. Therein lies my joy. Then sometimes I might search for answers let’s say on Google. For a while that’s fun. New discoveries and after a while truth be told it does get “wearing.” “Wearing”…do I actually put any of the stuff on as clothes?

Let me look momentarily at “go home and rest”. Where is that home? What is that rest? Home to myself. Simply being accepting and reveling in the joy of discovery. There is the “rest” – the “home.”

Note – Written 4-07-09, not all that long ago and reading it now is a reminder for me that sometimes all the “searching” I do is the “wearing-out”, “fatiguing” part… Sometimes the “rest” is simply “letting go” and accepting what is.

“Inner vision is perhaps the greatest change catalyst that the world has ever known.”  Diarsmid O’Murchu

Inner Vision – 2 words could be one word like television.  One Word – a screen into which we can look and see the secrets of our soul – a clear flat panel for fast moving pictures.  Could be delights and also could be nightmares.  I see now a sonogram with a moving baby.  Didn’t have those in my time, at least not for general use.

Inner Vision separated brings more of a mental-sensory thing/experience to me – a kind of intuition.  Innervision – we can see with our eyes.

Inner – coming from within.  Vision – coming from without – Can be a different experience.  I’m actually getting confused here.  Mixing up metaphors and combining things; a tendency of mine, to wander, mix, get off track.  Not sure I want to stay here, blocking out things I don’t want to see.

It is ok to turn off the innervision screen.  Needs rest sometimes.  Don’t we all?  And perhaps that is when the INNER VISION is the strongest – at Peace – a blank canvas, screen, that is!

“In the moment, sometimes the only way to find out what it is I want to do is go ahead and do something. Then the moment I start to act my feelings become clear.” Hugh Prather

This quote so sums up my life which almost always seems to be the act of creation. How well I know that all it takes to get me out of a slump is simple action – out of my head and the rights and wrongs that smack themselves around there, along with the dos and don’ts and shoulds and shouldn’ts. Anything, it doesn’t matter.

The act of taking a miniscule, seemingly infinitesimal, step is sufficient to light a path to wherever, whatever. It doesn’t matter. It’s the moving forward that sets in all in motion. The excitement comes. It builds and whole new things open up. Sometimes, not always, and it’s enough, more than enough, sometimes great – Yes, Picture to Ponder, the little girl sculpture on my table – so much more – my life.

written 1/29/08 – Free flow, timed writing to a quote and

Interestingly tonight, 7/28/09 , Dan Millman, The Peaceful Warrior, stated on a conference call that yes, it’s important to pay attention to our feelings AND to focus on our actions, moment to moment, what we need to do next and act.

“Where your power and the needs of the world cross, there lies your calling.” Aristotle

So many talents have I, my dilemma, my sticking point. “Where are the needs of the world that are wanting to be fulfilled by which of my talents?”

What comes up now, as I write, is “beauty”. “Everyone wants beauty,” so my friends tell me. I see “beauty in the ordinary”, “the extraordinary”, everywhere. And I suppose, when I start seeing that as an unfulfilled need for people, I can market accordingly and feel my power, my calling.

I hear my mastermind buddies yelling “yea”, as I write, for they tell me this all the time I think right now it’s simply that I’m suddenly seeing it a fraction differently, as a place where I can stand, from which I can come.

Interestingly in a way it all also fits with the Pollyanna in me. She, above Nancy Drew, was my favorite childhood heroine, or book anyway. Maybe Pollyanna precede Nancy in my age scale. Pollyanna’s talent for seeing the good in everything is what became, I think, an underlying pathway for me to live my life.

(And so, once more, timed writing from a prompt has given me an opening. Is that not what healing is about? Creating new openings?)

Timed writing (usually 4 minutes each from quotes) in my weekly writing group has been an important part of the healing process for me. The  healing I refer to today is that of mourning the loss of my beloved Sam (and still mourning 1 3/4 years later). In my commitment to post daily here, I will start sharing some of my Tuesday writings from released by the quotes suggested by group members.

I invite you to do your own timed responses, if you are so moved.

“Truly it is in the darkness that one finds the light, so when we are in sorrow then this light is nearest to us.” Meister Eckhardt

“Darkness” and “Light”.  I guess my deepest darkness is the passing of my beloved Sam.  How can there be light in that?  And yet the quote says “in the sorrow the light is nearest to me.”

So, my Beloved, were you nearer to me in those dark days of November, December, January?  Perhaps.  Though most of the time it showed up as pain.

Don’t know that I thought of particular darkness.  And, now, does this mean that as I move from sorrow to acceptance, though the “missing” is always there – that there will be no light for me, since the quote says “the light is nearest to us when we are in sorrow”?  Maybe the light is moving toward and into me.  Thus it’s an inner whole being thing, not an outer proximity.

You always will be with me, my Darling.  You were the light that lit me and moved my life.  Inside of me that will always remain and be.  (written 4/28/08 )

In previous posts here I’ve written about Haiku writing as a means of gaining control when angry and I’ve written about Morning Pages and free flow writing from prompts. There is also “letter writing”. Often simply the act of writing a letter expressing feelings, then tearing them up, never sending them is more than sufficient for healing.

This morning I was reminded that “Letters to the Editor” of our newspapers is also another access to freely expressing ourselves, powerfully so ,when there is a point rather than the act of simply “venting.”

Writing to my local newspaper was something I did quite frequently many years ago when I was involved in my community both in library organization and then when I was teaching art in the public schools in my town. Mostly they were to inform.

The particular letter I thought of today that’s the seed for this post was one I wrote during an election campaign for our local Board of Education, particularly volatile with one candidate who was president of the Board, or became president. I probably still have the letter, written more than 40 years ago.

One of the main phrases that I recall was my statement that “[he - the candidate] was doing nothing but throwing empty phrases to brew a burning cauldron of hostilities.”

During that same time period, I went back to college to get my degree in Fine Arts Education. Painting and Drawing was the first Art course I took. My professor, recently retired, had mostly criticism for whatever I produced. Toward the end of the semester she told me my “work lacked emotion” and I “should drop out of school and join a local guild to satisfy my housewifely ambitions!”

Anger flared and I immediately thought of the above-mentioned letter to the editor. “That was certainly FULL of emotion!” I went home grabbed a masonite board, a newspaper, paints, glue and match sticks and put together an assemblage – painting the fire and the cauldron, filling it with “hate” and other “anger” and “war” words cut from the newspaper, adding the matches to reinforce the fire.

I proceeded to bring it into the next class. I don’t recall what her response to it was. What I did realize years later was that, in fact, this piece did not convey the emotion of the feelings. What I had done was illustrate the seething emotions that had been behind the expressive words in the “letter to the editor”. Also, I still find it interesting that although I am known as a visual artist when it comes to expressing emotions I immediately go to words and writing. (The emotions expressed in my art, mainly my photography, come from a whole different, unidentified, subconscious level. )

Words in the Burning Cauldron of Hostilities

A close-up of the words, headlined in my newspapers in the late 60’s, used in the collage. I find it interesting observing now that the only word I cut up was “hate”, used three times.

In conclusion, several forms of self-expression were covered here. What is and are yours? If anything has opened up for you from my experiences described here, I’d love to read them in the comments here. Thank you.

(Note for those who may be curious about what happened insofar as “dropping out of school”: I did take the next semester off and then went back. I did not think one had to be a good or great artist to be an effective art teacher. Having stopped attending school board meetings, where I might be likely to speak out and ruffle feathers, I did get a job teaching art in the elementary school in my district where I taught for six years.

Thirty years later, an email from a former student attests to my having made the right decision! There were also many letters to the editor and School Board from parents and teachers when my teaching position was eliminated due to decline in enrollment.)