For many of us, this month is filled with twinkle lights and good food and special movies and anticipation that reminds us of being children — or the anticipation of actual children if you have some around you — and there’s so much beauty to be found in all the different stories of all the different holy days that fall at this time of year.
And then there’s sadness. Deep sadness. Most of us have lost someone at some point in our lives — whether recently or in the far past — for whom we especially mourn this time of year.
Lately I am thinking about how much, especially as we age, that we are in a permanent state of always evolving grief, and if that is the case — if grief is able to be constantly present even as we go about our daily lives, even as we laugh — then isn’t the converse true? That JOY can be constantly present regardless of our life circumstances?
Yin and Yang. Dark and light. Grief and joy, living conjoined in our hearts. Perhaps that is what eventually moves us to deeper levels of compassion and patience and love. It does. Or it doesn’t. And that is where choice comes in, right?
We can decide that this grief/joy existence is an untenable and unbearable position. We decide that we just can’t. This path that is littered with self pity and anger, eventually, leads to something worse than grief… despair. And despair, left to grow and rot, leads inevitably to violence, whether toward ourselves (internally or otherwise) or toward others (the whole range of violence from judging people for who they are to physical harm).
The other choice is to allow all of this to soften our hearts and make more space for more of the good stuff.
I’m trying, since Peony’s death, to choose the softening, of course. And it’s not easy. I would never say it was. But it’s the better choice and it’s more honoring of the love I have had and have in my life.
Having said all of this, I’ll share some things that have been helping me lately and that I count as definite sources of joy.
This Reiki practitioner is just WHOA! I found her accidentally on a live TikTok and I thought, NO WAY! REIKI CAN’T BE GOOD LIKE THIS! HA! As if. She is freaking amazing. I’ve used her work, in particular, to help with my sleep. Here’s her YouTube.
My Morning Nutbags. Do you not know what I’m talking about!?!? GO HERE. But seriously, this morning group of women and the space we share has changed my freaking life. (You can still join. It’s free. And there’s no pressure to be there every single day.)
Speaking of the Morning Nutbags, one of the things I’m doing during that time is reading this book of Buddhist Prayer to the Bodhisattva of Compassion. I’m changing the references to specific Buddhist deities to Our Lady of Guadalupe, which any Buddhist would tell me is totally cool… all forms are legit. Anyway, I am loving the simplicity and beauty of how Buddhism approaches this. You could say all of these “prayers” quite simply to your inner self.
During this time of grief, I’ve found my way back to studying Buddhism in general. I studied it pretty seriously for many years long ago, but I was still struggling with deep depression and resisting anything that helped. So now I’m back and it’s really the thing that has helped me the most when it comes to trying to make sense out of this whole shitty death thing. Here’s my current favorite text.
Simultaneously, of course, I’m studying Mother Mary. And this book about the origins of the rosary and how it can be used so differently from what most people think is a favorite.
Crystals. Just looking at them. Discovering new ones. Reading about them. Craig loves to tease me about my rocks, my precious… but anything that brings us an ounce of joy is worth its weight in gold. Here’s a small start if you’ve never really looked into their uses.
It’s a smaller list than usual, but again, I’m just glad that anything at all can give me some joy right now as I make my way through this life without Peony. I’m still trying to just get my bearings.
And a big joy right now that I forgot about is just having some time off from teaching to settle into this new reality.
OH! And of course, all of YOU bring me so much joy. You ground me and I am so grateful for you.