I apologize for missing last month. It was a standard Lila pattern -- write it, edit it, and never send it. I plead a massive amount of processing.
But what were I processing, you ask?
Well, death and grief is at the top of the list, as I recently finished my volunteer training for Denver Hospice. The varied ways humans feel and express is a continued source of amazement for me.
Naturally, the training led to processing my personal griefs and deaths. We did an exercise - the time line of loss. And we listed, on this time line, all of our losses. Of course, at my awesomely enlightened age, I know that loss doesn't just include death. It includes all the changes we go through, and all the things - homes, cars, jobs - we attach too and eventually release.
In fact, it reminded me of Inside Out. (And if you haven't seen the movie, this is a bit of a spoiler.) When the main character went through something huge, something that required new tools to deal with, she ended up releasing a lot of her childhood attachments, crumbling foundations to rebuild something new and stronger. I think, as we grow and expand our experiences, we do the same, constantly. We build, redesign, tear down, rebuild, redecorate, release, rebuild… Perhaps all of us have a fantastical Escher-like construction inside to represent our most stable foundation.
So, to sum up, I've been processing loss and learning (most importantly?) there is no time-line for grief, and no exact pattern for grieving. And that loss affects more than just the relationship between me & the one who died. I've been finding a peace with a lot of changes in my life. Which, naturally, signaled an explosion of new things to process about myself.
What else I want for, with, and from my writing; the comfort of cargo pants; changing taste buds; that I have certain habits in new situations. And realizing I like my self-improvement process better than anyone else's.
Which of course led to more processing about my personal truths, perspectives, goals for the future.
Obviously, the processing, and the growing hasn't stopped. It might never. But one of the things I processed about my writing is I really like it. So much, I'm now practicing how much time to give where. Meandering? Stories? So much to say, but what do I really, really want to share? And how?
Meanwhile, here's the next newsletter.
Let's hear it for adventures, the kind we look back on with a kind of dazed and hazy memory and scratch our heads and say, "I worked through that? I so rock."
I hope you have a great month!
-lila
