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Creative courage to move on in small steps – Tarot Narrative Monday 15 January 2018

January 15, 2018

You can never cross the ocean unless you have the courage

to lose sight of the shore.

Christopher Columbus – via The Art of Life Tarot

This is the first of weekly Quiet Writing deep-dive Tarot Narratives each Monday to share intuitive guidance and the wisdom and insights from aligned books.

Eight of Swords

Reflections on 2017

Welcome to Quiet Writing for 2018! 2017 was a most challenging year for me. I spent the year focused on supporting my beautiful mother as she battled terminal illness in the form of metastatic breast cancer. She passed away peacefully on Christmas Day after the toughest time. It’s all so very raw still and in some ways, grief has yet to fully hit. My mum was very special to me and so many people. The time we spent together in 2017 was such a treasure and the memory of our time then and over the long term is helping to ease the sense of emptiness and loss now. But there’s a long way to go on this journey I know. More on this as I move through this time and reflect further on 2017.

At the same time, I was planning a new future knowing I needed to find a new career and life path focused on creativity. I trained as a Life Coach with the Beautiful You Coaching Academy to complement training I had already completed in Jung/Myers-Briggs personality type assessment. And I spent a lot of time diving deep into my intuition via tarot and oracle cards.

I worked on my spirituality and the sacred side of my creativity via work with Amber Adrian. I’ve learnt to listen within for guidance and seek help from spirit guides, angels and ancestors.

I wrote 50,000 words in November for NaNoWriMo, finally embracing writing every day and in challenging circumstances.

Also during the year, my job of 30 plus years as a leader in the government vocational education sector was ‘deleted’ and I am soon to be made ‘redundant’. Even though this is a change I desire as I already knew I needed to move on, it is not without its own pain and grief. Certainly, it’s a time of shifting identity, but it’s a shift I embrace wholeheartedly.

Overall, it was an incredibly transformative year, but one of chronic uncertainty with a deep underlying sadness.

Tarot and oracle work

One of the three key platforms in making this shift in life focus heading into 2017 was a deeper dive into tarot and oracle work as a way of honing my intuition. As an INTJ personality type, Introverted Intuition is my dominant gift and this was a time of really leaning into it to discover its mysteries. I studied tarot more deeply via Susannah Conway’s 78 Mirrors e-course and I began a daily practice of tarot and oracle reading and journaling.

In June, I began to share this practice publicly in the form of Tarot Narratives on Instagram and Facebook. Each day, I would do an intuitive reading of two tarot and one oracle card and write a narrative of the overall message. Then I’d link this intuitively to a book, quote or song and share it with others. There was such a positive response to this sharing of intuitive messages over time which I so appreciated.

I did this every day from June up until mid-December when it all became too much. Whilst it had been a supportive practice in a time of change until then, I was in the hospital with my mum day and night for long shifts and everything else simply had to stop.

Coming back to life generally and to tarot and oracle work following this time has been challenging and I’ve been rethinking so much. Sharing my Tarot Narrative each day was a great support in 2017 and a practice that helped shape my journey and sharpen my intuition. But it’s not a sustainable practice on a daily basis in 2018 as I work on crafting a new life and concurrently deal with grief and the impact of loss.

I’ve thought about how to balance Tarot Narrative work with my other priorities – writing, life coaching, personality type work. And I’ve decided to do a weekly deep-dive Tarot Narrative each Monday. It seems the best way to share intuitive guidance and book wisdom in a sustainable way. This means I can also provide more insights on the reading and especially exploring the aligned books, songs and quotes.

So here’s the first weekly Tarot and Oracle Narrative for 2018!

Theme for the week beginning 15 January

Firstly, I want to share a theme for each week to guide our overall focus. For this, I will work with Lisa McLoughlin’s Life Design Cards. With their emphasis on ‘weave a different story’, these cards align so well with Quiet Writing’s focus on ‘creating your story’.

The card for this week is 21. Use small and slow solutions.

Life Design Cards

I love this card with its spiral imagery centred around a snail making progress slowly against the backdrop of an ammonite fossil which seems to suggest a larger version of time. It’s true in one way, we have plenty of time. Time is an arbitrary man-made concept and something we can work with by making small steps and changes day by day.

I found a real sense of comfort in receiving this card. It made me reflect on how I have tried to work in 2017 in challenging times to just do something every day towards my overall goals. This is a practice that has served me well in this transition phase of life.

Making slow movements and small commitments will take you in the direction of your dreams incrementally. Even in the most challenging of times.

As the guidebook for Life Design Cards suggests for this card: “find a way to monitor progress so you can see how far you have come.” This is an excellent idea. Whether it be word count, books read, blog posts written, days writing, time spent on an activity of value, the number of clients or subscribers you have – find a metric or a few metrics that help measure your progress so you can notice it. It’s often easy to forget how far we have come. Take time to recognise the value of these small, slow solutions in your life so you feel inspired.

Tarot Narrative for the week beginning 15 January

Tarot Narrative

Embrace creative courage

You’re embracing creativity and leadership, the lessons of years evolving into now. Notice where you are holding yourself back, keeping yourself trapped or feeling safe, lacking in courage. See also where you might even be dulling the feelings, the excitement of opportunity, out of habit from times past. Embrace this creative time you’re crafting and the chance for mastery so you can cross the ocean into more prosperity and abundance.

Reading notes: Cards: Father (King) of Wands and Eight of Swords from The Wild Unknown Tarot and #51 Milk and Honey in protection (reversed) position from Wisdom of the Oracle.

Book notes:

Reading fiction as you commute to a job you don’t like will make you feel somewhat more fulfilled; being in the right job will make you feel incredible.

Laura Vanderkam, 168 Hours: You Have More Time than You Think

I’m reading Laura Vanderkam’s ‘168 Hours’ – listening as an audiobook as I drive. The book provides a fresh perspective on units of time, suggesting we focus on priorities and productivity over a week or 168 hours rather than the typical 24-hour unit focus.

Research based on logbook keeping suggests people over-estimate the time they spend on some tasks such as the hours they work. Laura Vanderkam suggests collecting your own data and having an evidence-based approach to decisions about how you spend your time.

In this, it’s valuable to look at the bigger picture of how we are choosing to live and whether we have the courage to make the changes we desire. Just as our theme for the week reminds us, using small, slow solutions to make change can be a valuable way of working.

For example, working on NaNoWriMo was a real opportunity to look at the metrics of how I use my time to write. The aim was to write 50,000 words in November. I achieved it by realising that this was 1667 words a day and learning that I could do this in under an hour. This realisation and metric made it doable and helped break through resistance. I could make practical strategies for finding an hour or 2 x 30-minute spots in the day to write even when life was super-challenging.

So for this week, maybe re-examine your weekly allocation of hours and see where your time goes. See if you can make some small, incremental changes in line with where you want to be, that job you wish to be in or that project you really want to tackle. Having the courage to lose sight of the shore, be in action and notice self-sabotaging behaviours can be powerful steps in moving into the career we desire or finally achieving our creative dreams. And in this we can also practice self-care as well.

Laura Vanderkam reminds us:

If you love what you do, you’ll have more energy for the rest of your life, too.

All best wishes for this week for moving on with courage in small steps closer to doing what you love. And let me know what you think of this post and the idea of weekly Tarot Narratives!

Keep in touch & free ebook on the ’36 Books that Shaped my Story’

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love, loss & longing transition work life

Finishing on a high note – closure, letting go and moving on

May 25, 2017

 Some of us think holding on makes us strong;

but sometimes it is letting go.

Hermann Hesse

 

moving on

Finishing on a high note is important. As one thing ends and we cycle into new beginnings, it’s vital to pause and reflect on closure and tie up any loose ends. And depending on the situation, it’s also a moment to restore, forgive, show gratitude, bed down our learning and celebrate what we have achieved.

Here are some thoughts on unfinished symphonies and opportunities for ending on a high note and shifting into a positive journey in moving on.

Unfinished Symphonies

The beautiful ‘Unfinished Symphony’ card from Colette Baron-Reid’s Wisdom of the Oracle deck has popped up for me a few times in the past weeks. Each time, it’s reminded me of the power of appropriate closure and reflection on what has passed before moving on.

closure

The first time it appeared, it prompted me to focus on some administrative loose-ends – paperwork, small things I’d been putting off that were hanging over my head and stopping my forward movement.

The next time, it was about finishing off an e-course that was very valuable to me that I was close to completing and hadn’t quite finalised. It was a reminder to thank the creator personally for what they had given me through the process and to take the lessons forward and integrate them fully into my life.

Most recently, it was about honouring my skills, my body of work, as I reflect on my next steps in my career and vocational life. Skills are transferable and we develop many in our lifetime. It’s so easy to close the door on skills that are valuable as we shift into different roles or environments. It’s important to take stock of all the varied knowledge, experience and values we bring forward as we recreate ourselves again and again in career and vocational roles and through our own businesses.

Closure, completion and finishing off

As we shift to the end of something and into a cycle of completion and restarting, it’s so easy to rush forward and forget the reflection phase, the opportunity to pause and integrate what’s just happened.

As the Guidebook for the Wisdom of the Oracle says for the Unfinished Symphony card:

Take inventory so that emotional and psychological closure can occur and the answers you seek will be found. You can’t move forward if you are leaving things unfinished. Reflect on what has passed so that the symphony can finally end on a high note.
Page 37

We might be leaving something or somewhere because we choose to. It might be retirement or the end of a relationship or a move of location. Other times, it may not be through our choice. It might be a case of redundancy, betrayal, just not fitting in any more or circumstances beyond our control.

Whatever the situation of finishing up or leaving something behind, it’s valuable to reflect on how we can leave gracefully with wisdom and a sense of completion. We can move forward with a spirit of reflection and learning, and with a practical attitude of taking what will serve us well on the onward journey. It’s important not to leave loose ends, unfinished business or pieces of ourselves behind.

Ways to finish on a high note

Here are some practical ways to finish on a high note:

Tie up the loose ends

As Colette Baron-Reid says: “Tie up loose ends so you can move forward with surety, knowing you’re on a prosperous path.” It might be paperwork, it might be some difficult task still to be done you keep putting off, it might be picking up some special belongings from somewhere where they no longer belong. But this symbolic tying up and finishing can be a powerful way of stepping through into a new purpose.

See things through to completion and celebrate that

If you’ve created something valuable and special, see it through. Finish it, see how it can be developed further, update your CV to reflect your achievement and apply your learning in practice for positive outcomes. See where whatever you have created can shine brighter. Publish it, write about it, adapt it, finish off its potential and bed it down into the fabric of the world. Celebrate your part in it and let people know what you’ve achieved.

Say thank you

If you’ve finished a course, a book or time in a job role, say thank you to those who created the circumstances or the work. Finish the work, then round it off with appreciation and gratitude, sharing the joy of what you learned, what will take you forward and why it was important. The end of your cycle will help fuel your own and another’s journey.

If it’s a challenging thing like a relationship ending, the thank you might be in the form of an unsent letter or journalling, but still take the time to realise the benefits of what was given to you. Don’t lose the good in the shadow of the bad. Even if you feel bitter, it’s better to brainstorm the positives about what the disappointment or betrayal taught you than to drown in the juices of your anger. Find the pieces to take forward and let go of what’s not helpful.

Forgive

Danielle LaPorte’s White Hot Truth has wise advice on forgiveness. When you’re ready, it’s a powerful thing and it’s often as much about forgiving ourselves and our perceived complicit involvement as it is about others. That’s where a lot of energy is being drained away as we carry it unnecessarily:

As Lady Ninja of the Light put it to me: “I see forgiveness as releasing congested energy that’s not needed by the energy body. No stories, no players, simply time to release and move on to brighter ways.”
You stop letting past hurt affect you in the present. You rinse down the story, you take what you want, and let the rest go up to the Light so it can be put to better use. You give yourself forward.
Page 119

The ways we forgive can be many and varied and don’t always need to involve the other party; sometimes it’s just not possible anyway. But diluting the negative impact of that story and releasing the energy is so important in moving on.

Take what’s valuable with you

Don’t leave what’s valuable behind and take what you can with you into new circumstances. Reflect on the transferable and portable knowledge and experience you can carry forward.

You might have been in an organisation for a while and suddenly there are changes which mean that they no longer value your skills and experience. But you can. Identify the ingredients, skills and experiences that make up ‘you’, your brand, that you can market to a new employer or use to build up your own business.

As Pamela Slim says in Body of Work:

No one is looking out for your career any more. You must find meaning, locate opportunities, sell yourself, and plan for failure, calamity, and unexpected disasters. You must develop a set of skills that makes you able to earn an income in as many ways as possible.
Page 4

Cycles, abandoned success and the Eight of Cups

The Eight of Cups tarot card has reappeared many times in the past year as I negotiate a time of transition and reflect on endings and beginnings. It’s a deep card that speaks of abandoned success and choosing to walk away but it’s also a reminder not to leave pieces of ourselves behind.

closure

The Rider Waite image of the card shows a figure choosing to walk away from the cups. As Benebell Wen describes in it in Holistic Tarot:

There has been an abandonment of past fruits, the Eight of Cups is about a soul-searching journey; ascending to emotional higher ground. The Seeker is leaving behind something he or she spent much effort and care to nurture and develop. There was disappointment in a past undertaking and this the Seeker has abandoned his or her previous work.
Page 167

There’s a suggestion of leaving on our own terms, but there’s that future we imagined, our identity we shaped there that we feel we are leaving behind. So there’s sadness and a kind of grief. As Jessica Crispin explains it in The Creative Tarot:

And it’s not just our work but our actual selves that we pour into what we do. Leaving it, admitting that the end result is no longer worth it, is difficult.”
Page 195

So there is often a sense of loss even if we are choosing to do the leaving or the finishing. Everything is so inevitably bound up together.

The stunning and wise Art of Life Tarot Eight of Cups reminds us that in each ending there is a new beginning. So let’s start as fresh, unencumbered and as energetic as we can, taking the positive and valuable learnings and leaving any baggage or drag on our energy behind.

closure

Resilience is as much about letting go as it is about moving through. Whatever the circumstances, let’s finish our personal symphonies as positively as we can, on a high note, with gratitude and reflection, bringing it home with the brightness of a new song.

And your unfinished symphony?

Would love to hear about any unfinished symphonies you can work on or are working on as you move forward into new times. Share in the comments below or via the Quiet Writing Facebook page or on Instagram so we can support each other as a community to move ahead positively.

Keep in touch

Quiet Writing is on Facebook – Please visit here and ‘Like’ to keep in touch and interact with the growing Quiet Writing community. There are regular posts on coaching, books, tarot, intuition, influence, passion, creativity, productivity, writing, voice, introversion and Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).

Subscribe via email (see the link at the top and below) to make sure you receive updates from Quiet Writing and its passions in 2017. This includes tarot, MBTI developments, life coaching and other connections to help express your unique voice in the world.

If you enjoyed this post, please share via your preferred social media channel – links are below.

You might also enjoy:

Movement, stillness and navigating challenging times

Shining a quiet light: working the gifts of introversion

Intuition, writing and work: eight ways intuition can guide your creativity

Healing with words of gold: The Empress, Kintsugi and alchemy

Featured image by Roman Samborskyi via Shutterstock and used with permission and thanks.

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family history love, loss & longing poetry transcending

Remembrance and unconditional love: thoughts on ANZAC Day

April 28, 2017

unconditional love

Anzac Day

25 April is ANZAC Day here in Australia. It’s a day of remembrance for those of the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps who served and died in war and related activities including peacekeeping. And a day to remember those who serve now. Celebrated on the day of the Gallipoli landing on 25 April 1915, the spirit of Anzac and its qualities of sacrifice, courage and mateship have immense meaning for Australians and New Zealanders around national identity, bravery and freedom.

For me, it’s always a very emotional day. As a Queen of Swords, INTJ, Virgo, (some might say ice maiden) type, it’s surprising how this day seems to touch me so deeply and I am in tears for much of it.

I don’t know exactly why but it’s the stories that touch me, the young men and what they went through in World War I and II and other conflicts. Stories we really can’t fathom or ever truly know. And our own personal connections with that through our family history or people that we know directly involved now.

It’s the families and loved ones left behind and impacted when they came back. It’s those who serve now and what they face and experience. The solitary courage of it, the fear, the silence of those who cannot or could not tell their stories. The inner strength they need to search for and the support of each other. It’s the sadness of it all, that it just should not happen, the unnecessary waste of life; that people should not have to go through all this and the aftermath of physical, mental and spiritual pain and suffering.

It’s also that we can be thankful that we have people who can be strong when it’s needed to do this work for the freedom, support and safety of others. Mostly men, mostly young, mostly strong but also vulnerable.

Postcards from the war

In the last few years, I received a box of memorabilia and photos that belonged to my great aunt, Vivie, who died in 1992. A strong woman who never married, she was a connector and recorder within the family, capturing daily life in photographs and keeping in touch with many in the extended family.

In this box was a beautifully embroidered postcard sent from the Western Front in France in 1916 by my great uncle Walter to Vivie, his sister back in Australia.

WWI postcard

The stitching, perfect and precise, must have caught Walter’s eye and he has written on the back of the postcard. It’s a message saying he is well and not really saying much more except that he will be in touch with other family members too. What could you say about those horrors of war except that I am here, standing now? And I am thinking of you and love you.

I knew a little about Walter’s war service but I looked into his war records on Anzac Day this year. Joining up with the Australian Imperial Forces (AIF) on 1 February 1916 and leaving the country on 13 May that same year, he was on the Western Front in France in the 55th Battalion and saw active service amidst some of the most difficult conflicts of the war.

He served in the Anzac Light Rail as part of this, building and running light railways on the Western Front to provide transport through the difficult terrain. I cannot imagine how hard all of this work was and the terrible conditions in which it was carried out. He was discharged from the AIF on 16 July 1919.

Walter received a Military Medal in 1919 for:

“conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty during an attack on St Denis Wood Perone on 2/9/18. During the initial stages of the attack heavy machine gun fire was encountered. This man, noticing this with great courage and deliberation worked his way forward into a position from where, by sniping he was able to place an enemy machine gun out of action, not withstanding that he was under enemy observation and continually fired at the whole time. This soldier’s action in silencing the enemy machine gun enabled a Lewis Gun to be brought forward thereby greatly assisting the attack. The man’s courage and disregard for personal safety during the operation was most noticeable and his action through-out were a great incentive to his comrades.”[1]

This is not to condone violence or war in any way. Personally, I find violence in any form hard to contemplate or witness. But it happened and for Walter it was real. The postcard is a poignant reminder of the fragile and powerful connections with home in all of this – beauty amidst chaos and war; love of his sister and family sent from afar; such vulnerability and risk.

I cannot imagine how precious that card was once received in Newcastle in Australia on the other side of the word, in so few lines saying so much. Or hard it was for Walter to find words to say along the lines of “I am okay” when the reality was most likely far from that.

Closer to home

The other overlay of emotion for me on Anzac Day is about my brother. Martin served as an Australian Federal Police Officer in East Timor in 1999 as part of the United Nations peacekeeping effort and was awarded the Overseas Service Medal in 2003. Martin is no longer with us now, having passed away tragically in 2007.

The memory of Martin as an unarmed police officer who went to East Timor, now Timor Leste, to provide support, peace and justice to people in the most challenging of circumstances, fills me with pride and love. It symbolises the strong sense of justice and fairness that drove his passions and focus in his career and life.

Here he is in action in East Timor, featured at that time, in Time Magazine on 27 September 1999 and in Aussie Post Magazine in October 1999:

Martin Ryan

I don’t know what he saw there. I don’t know what he experienced there. Like many first responders and police officers, they cannot always talk about what they saw, experienced and felt. And whilst I am proud, I sense that the experiences in East Timor somehow had a deep impact on the sensitive soul that was and is my brother. How could they not.

A poem of remembrance and peace

So in the early hours of Anzac Day this year, these words come to me:

On Anzac Day

I lay a flower in the remembrance
of my heart,
wreathed there,
amidst the days, red poppy lights
flare occasionally,
lighting up your smile,
buried beneath granite, grass,
days of pain, cascading
hours of grief.

I lay a flower in the remembrance
of my heart,
at nearly dawn here,
for you, my own service,
my own dawn,
my own not forgetting
that war somehow
touched you
and led you down a path
I wish you had not gone.

I lay a flower in the remembrance
of my heart,
amidst tarot, words, books,
the morning’s nearly dawn,
the marching of feet,
to come,
the early days towards
ten years of remembering you,
to come.

I lay a flower in the remembrance of your heart.
I shift that stone of trauma laying there.
I hold the hands of our hearts in peace.

Rose, rosemary and remembrance

Shortly after on Anzac Day, in an Activate sessions with Amber Adrian, working with healing energies and guides, both rose and rosemary comes up as energies to work with, with remembrance as a strong message.

We are reminded to activate our inner love, work with remembrance and our true divine self, and to connect with that unconditional love that is our essence. We are reminded to work with protection techniques every day especially around protection of judgement of others and ourselves.

It’s an emotional day. You can see why the tears come.

Tears of memory, gratitude, appreciating sacrifice and remembrance. And the lessons I’m still learning of unconditional love.

Let us all keep focused on these immense qualities in moving forward:

  • focusing on the beauty in life
  • maintaining a passionate sense of fairness and justice in everything we do
  • and finding a love that can transcend every difficult moment.

And may we all be peacekeepers.

Sources

[1] Source: Ancestry.com. Australia, WWI Service Records, 1914-1920 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015. Original data: National Archives of Australia: B2455, First Australian Imperial Force Personnel Dossiers, 1914-1920. Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia.

The Rose of Unconditional Love in the featured photograph is from the beautiful Plant Ally Healing Cards deck by Lisa McLoughlin.

Thought pieces

Ask for help, talk to others

This was not an easy piece to write especially with regard to my dear brother. However, I felt it needed to be written as there is too much silence. I also want to highlight the power of remembrance and unconditional love in healing and moving towards peace.

I am aware it may not have been easy to read for some people. If anything I have written in this post triggers anything for you, I encourage you to reach out to others for support. Talk to a trusted family member or friend. Or contact organisations set up especially to provide support. In Australia our key organisations for support are Beyond Blue and Lifeline. International support organisations can all be found here.

Keep in touch

Quiet Writing is on Facebook – Please visit here and ‘Like’ to keep in touch and interact with the growing Quiet Writing community. There are regular posts on books, tarot, intuition, creativity, productivity, writing, voice, introversion and personality type.

Subscribe via email (see the link at the top and below) to make sure you receive updates from Quiet Writing and its passions. This includes tarot, personality type, coaching and other connections to help express your unique voice and truth in the world.

If you were moved by this post, please share via your preferred social media channel – links are below.

You might also enjoy:

Healing with words of gold: The Empress, Kintsugi and alchemy

Overwhelm, intuition and thinking

love, loss & longing transcending

This past week, this year

December 23, 2014

IMG_0869This past week was long and difficult. Monday last week started as it usually does – off to work, getting organised for the week and at this time, getting ready for Christmas celebrations and a final busy week before winding down for the festive season.

About 10am on that Monday, everything changed with the news of the siege close by in the Lindt Cafe in Martin Place. Like many other Sydney workers, I found myself in lockdown, then being evacuated, then unable to return to the workplace.

And emotionally connected to the unfolding events.

The overwhelming feelings were of horror for the hostages and intense terror for their helplessness and fate. Like much of the country, I watched for hours into the night, breath held in a surreal landscape of fear of what might happen.

The early hours brought the news of the tragic outcome.

In the following days, the mood has been sombre, a different atmosphere on the train into the city, a sense of collective sadness. The flowers cascading their way down Martin Place reflecting this.

Many of us, it seems, have in our individual ways reflected, been touched, reassessed much.

For me, the return to my office and buying my morning coffee filled me with sudden and overwhelming emotion. The ordinary every day action of so many Sydney-siders suddenly poignant in the aftermath.

The sense of vulnerability, that it could have been me or so many people close to me. The harsh reality of its randomness.

The collective response has been heartening though sad: the growing sea of flowers reflecting the grief of so many individuals pieced together; the emerging sweet fragrance in the air; the multi-faith ceremonies and statements of support and the solidarity across religious boundaries that re-emphasise that we are all one community; the wave of support for Muslim women and others possibly affected by intolerance arising from this event.

IMG_0856I have engaged with Susannah Conway’s December Reflections, 2014 this month. It has been a wonderful opportunity to reflect on the year and as always with Susannah’s initiatives, a chance to reignite our own creativity and look around us with new eyes.

At the end of the week, the day 20 prompt in December Reflections was “this year was…”. I have to say this year has been intense for many reasons. But as the events of recent days have reminded me, there is much to be thankful for: supportive and loving family, friends, work colleagues; having a beautiful city in which to live and work; summer arriving; creativity always; books to read; maybe books to write; and the power of collective feeling..

This year and these past days have reminded me of what is of value.

IMG_0860

 

 

 

love, loss & longing

I am not resigned

July 21, 2013

More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

IMG_4262

This week, two funerals within five days. They are both people very much loved and close to people I love and am close to.

And I feel the pain. Having been so close to this space, I feel it keenly. It’s a place I  have inhabited: I know the sharpness, the shock, the unreality, the sweetness of feeling, so full of love and loss concurrently.

This poem by Edna St Vincent Millay captures for me that rawness of death, the shock, the denial, the rejection of the idea that I still feel. In that, it celebrates love. It’s the poem I placed on my brother’s grave the first time I went back after the funeral, with flowers in my hand and that overwhelming sense of helplessness in my heart.

Dirge Without Music

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the
love,—
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

Sometimes poetry is almost the only solace.

love, loss & longing

Farewell Maisie girl

June 30, 2013

What you taught us:

Go to the beach
Stand in rock pools, feel the water and look out
Take a walk whatever the weather and be excited by it
Life is a minute to minute adventure
Stop to smell and sense the detail
Just be quietly close by when anyone is feeling sad or sick
Greetings are important and show how much you love
It’s okay just to be your beautiful self

I am sure there is more and this will evolve in our learning from you. But in these days of raw and recent grief for you, Maisie, these thoughts are the most immediate.
You taught us so much and we often didn’t realise it.

You will be very much missed.
xxoo
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThese beautiful photos are by my daughter Caitlin. Fortunately, Maisie loved the camera and Caitlin is a gifted photographer so much to reflect on.

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