What Do You Hear in These Sounds (Dar Williams)

There's no late in blogging, right?  All my good intentions to post Tuesdays and Fridays oft go awry, right, Mr. Burns? (the poet, not Homer Simpson's boss).  Thus we end up with Thursday.  In the grand scheme of things, it's most certainly a First World Problem.

My favorite day is every-other-Monday, during which I have a therapy appointment with L at 10 a.m. and my bereavement group from 12:30-2 p.m.  By mid-afternoon, I am ridiculously peaceful and relaxed; Ectoplasm R Us.  "Oh, how I loved everybody else when I finally got to talk so much about myself"; Dar is brilliant (brilliant... 💖)

When I arrived this week to see L, I wanted to talk about brain blips; I've done the research, and shared on this blog that grief causes brain fog, as a result of trauma.  My recent go-to, when I hit a blank, is: "I know there's a word for that." Sometimes it comes to me, sometimes not, and often I find a paltry substitute knowing, with my obsession with semantics, it's not the *intended* word. Ugh.

Um, here's a tip for you:  multi-tasking is over-rated (shockeroo). For the last few years, I've just been trying to do one-thing-at-a-time well, instead of many things poorly. It helps.  Then there's aging. And post-menopause. I am a big fat f*cking mess and I have to be okay with that for now, trying to be gentle with myself while still attempting All. The. Coping. Mechanisms... 🤷‍♀️

An example:  Sunday about noon I headed to the pop-up market in Hollywood (FL) and somehow mis-entered the address in my GPS, inadvertently leaving off the fourth number (zero), so... I was led substantially farther east than I needed to be, and there was a drawbridge, and my trip ended up taking an hour rather than the usual 30 minutes.

And as I was regaling L with this tale... she stopped me, leaned forward from her lotus position on the couch, and shared one word:  Pause... and it was as if an electric current went through my entire body.  Yes.  Of course.  Quelle nouvelle.  And then she added Patience.

Not one to be left out, I added my two favorite P words:  Ponder and Perspective... not to mention my Word of the Year:  (Be) Present.  And, after all that, I need to make it a Priority to Practice (see what I did there?) being in the stillness to clear my mind.  Whew.  I have indeed been practicing since Monday, and it's made a big difference.  Phenomenal (silent P... 🤣)

The day after Eric died, I resurrected my blog (best f*cking coping mechanism ever!)... daily until the end of October 2023, and twice-weekly since.  In late-November I pondered making a Spotify playlist of healing songs... then realized, rather than reinvent the wheel, I'd create an ongoing journey, in chronological order, of all the songs I've used to title my blog posts.  To be continued; I will add this Dar song as soon as I Publish this entry...

[It hasn't come to fruition yet, but I found Eric's former tattooist (the ship and octopus on his right shoulder/bicep; on E's recommendation, he actually did the family compass on my upper back, and Sarah's flowers/dragonfly/butterfly on her hip)... and will be following up soon... 🧭

P.S.  Tomorrow is the four-month mark of Eric's death.

SONG:  What Do You Hear in These Sounds by Dar Williams

BOOK:  Finding Your way Through Loss & Grief: A Therapist’s Guide to Working Through Any Grieving Process by Christine Hopfgarten

POEM(S):  Let Yourself Rest by Jeff Foster

If you’re exhausted, rest.

If you don’t feel like starting a new project, don’t.

If you don’t feel the urge to make something new, 

just rest in the beauty of the old, the familiar, the known.

If you don’t feel like talking, stay silent.

If you’re fed up with the news, turn it off.

If you want to postpone something until tomorrow, do it.

If you want to do nothing, let yourself do nothing today. 

Feel the fullness of the emptiness, the vastness of the silence, the sheer life in your unproductive moments.

Time does not always need to be filled.

You are enough, simply in your being.

Fierce Wild Joy by Beth Weaver-Kreider

May this year bring you joy

like crows rising from the fields

fierce

wild joy

yelling full-voice

into the wind

rowing through the tempest

with nothing but feathers.

In the Woods of Language, She Collects Beautiful Sticks by Valzhyna Mort

like a snail with a shell of sticks

    — she loads them on her back —

Like a camel with a hump of sticks

    — on her back, on her back —

Like a horse with a knight of sticks and a stick for a sword

Where is she taking this load of sticks?

    — on her hump, on her hump —

She has no house, where is she taking the house she doesn’t have?

    — in the fire she is taking it in the fire —

In the fire she is making a poem entirely out of sticks on fire and it goes like this

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////

QUOTE(S):  “Time does not heal all wounds; it just gives them space to sink into the subconscious, where they will continue to impact your emotions and behavior. What heals is going inward, loving yourself, accepting yourself, listening to your needs, addressing your attachments and emotional history, learning how to let go, and following your intuition.” ~ Yung Pueblo

“Death is our friend precisely because it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that is here, that is natural, that is love… Life always says Yes and No simultaneously. Death (I implore you to believe) is the true Yea-sayer. It stands before eternity and says only: Yes.” ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

"Not causing harm requires staying awake. Part of being awake is slowing down enough to notice what we say and do. The more we witness our emotional chain reactions and understand how they work, the easier it is to refrain. It becomes a way of life to stay awake, slow down, and notice." ~ Pema Chodron