Tiny Buddha

Author: Sarah Jeanne Browne

  • What’s Really Important: 3 Things I Realized When I Lost My Grandmother

    What’s Really Important: 3 Things I Realized When I Lost My Grandmother

    “We forget what we want to remember and remember what we want to forget.” ~The Road

    “Okay grandma, we’re going to run away!” I wheeled my grandma Jeanne in her wheelchair into the sunlight, through the courtyard, after we exited her nursing home. She knew though that she couldn’t leave, but she went along with the game. She knew she was stuck there. But we had fun with it, nonetheless.

    I really did want to run away with her. I’d had a dream the night before that she told me, “I’m at the end of my life. You will be judged for how you take care of me.” That shocked me. I felt fear and worry about the potential of losing her and not doing a good enough job at helping her through her last days. She’d had a stroke and then was diagnosed with dementia. I wanted to care for her and make her proud of me.

    “Do you work here?” My grandma looked at me, and suddenly I felt like I was failing her. It wasn’t my fault she didn’t recognize me. But I still felt like it was, like I wasn’t doing enough, especially due to that dream.

    “No, it’s me. Your granddaughter, Sarah.” I pleaded in my heart that she would recognize me. She looked confused then said, “Oh.” I knew she felt ashamed she didn’t know it was me.

    It was bittersweet when I left her. We had so much silly fun together. I knew I brightened her day. But it was darkened by her dementia and not knowing who I was at the end. It made me feel sad and defeated. Life’s unfairness hit me. Why did it have to be so hard for so many?

    Losing your memories seems like the worst thing to happen, and that was at times her reality. She could only escape it with me so much.

    If I could go back in time, I would visit her every day. I had already lost my other grandparents. She was the one who was there through to adulthood. I missed her so much after she passed.

    It made me think of what would happen to me as I got older. Would I look back and be proud of myself? What would my future self say to me now? Who would I become?

    Would I be an old woman wheeled around in a wheelchair by her granddaughter in a silly way? Was that success? That moment of love we shared was everything.

    And like that, it was also gone. Little moments like this can be so fleeting. Happiness can be so hard to hold onto. But her spirit stayed with me.

    That was also a time when I truly let go. I’d had a guard against love all my life due to the trauma of abusive boyfriends and more. I didn’t know how to truly feel it. But my grandma’s love sent me wisdom.

    Her love made me realize that I was special, worthy, and enough. I didn’t have to try to become someone. I was already someone. I was loved by her, and it was the type of love that changes you.

    I may have lost her to dementia and then death, but she taught me my value when I couldn’t see it myself. Even when she didn’t recognize me in the end, I knew that she was guiding me in this realization.

    That day with my grandmother made me think about life and what was really important. Here’s what I found.

    Life is a Gift

    And one day, you have to give it back. You’ve heard this a thousand times, but it’s short too. It goes by fast. This makes you think you have to hold on tighter, fight harder, and become better. What you should be doing is the opposite of that: letting go.

    Let go of the reasons you are afraid to be real in a relationship, go somewhere new, or be happy with yourself.

    Embrace the fleetingness of it all so you can make the most of your life while you have the chance. It’s okay to feel like things are not in your control. None of us can truly control anything or the outcome of a life.

    I couldn’t control my grandma losing her memories, but I made each moment with her count. That’s all I could do.

    Instead of trying harder, try softer. Release and surrender to the fact that you can’t make everything last. But some things do. The most important things do.

    Love is what stays when everything else has left us. Love is what we know even when we lose our memories of the past. The feeling remains even when the knowledge of it is lost. At least, that’s what happened with my grandma. I knew she felt my love even if she didn’t remember me. And that’s why I was able to see the impact of our time together anyway.

    You Are Enough

    When we look back at our lives, we will not say, “I should have had more achievements, greater wealth, more popularity, higher status, or a perfect body.”

    So why do we focus on these things?

    Society makes us feel like we have to be a celebrity or a massive success to be important. It makes us feel like we have to have a huge Instagram following to be an influencer. It makes us feel like we have to perform at all times on social media, only showing the highlight reel of our best moments. It makes us feel like we have to be thinner, richer, younger, more successful…

    Where is authenticity in all of this? Where are the poets, the artists, the ones that heal a hurting world?

    That’s what it really means to be important: to embrace our authentic selves so we can make a genuine difference in our sphere of influence, however big it may be. We don’t need to reach millions. We just need to reach into the hearts of the people we encounter knowing that truly is enough.

    Don’t feel like that’s enough—or that you’re enough?

    Do it anyway.

    Love anyway.

    Risk being yourself anyway.

    Forgive anyway.

    Show kindness (despite having experienced cruelty) anyway.

    Choose happiness anyway.

    Surrender anyway.

    That’s what saves the world. It’s not about being known and admired by everyone. It’s about being authentic in a world that makes us think we are not enough. Because authenticity connects us. And genuine connection is what heals.

    Very Little Matters in the Grand Scheme of Things (and That’s Okay)

    The missed opportunities, the exes you had to leave behind, that perfect situation you thought you had to maintain… none of it matters. I’m not saying these things didn’t matter to you, or that they shouldn’t have mattered. Just that in the grand scheme of things, our circumstances aren’t as important as our character.

    What really matters is who you are in those moments in between waiting for the next best thing to happen to you. It’s how you treat the people in your own little world when you’re wishing your world would change.

    What really matters is your attitude when you feel lost and confused. It’s letting yourself find reasons to smile even though you’re not sure where you’re going or what you’re even doing. It’s being happy with what you have, even if you aren’t where you want to be. And it’s loving life even when you don’t know what to live for.

    Cherish each second you are alive. Muster the strength to comfort and to be comforted. Inspire and lead whoever you can, help others through shared problems, and remember to talk about that which is hardest to talk about.

    Forgive who you can, most of all yourself, and remember that it is the small moments that make up our lives. It’s the little joys we share with the people who take up the biggest place in our hearts. I may not remember everything at the end of my life, but I know I’ll remember I loved, and that I was loved in return.

  • How I Saved Myself by Surrendering When Everything Fell Apart

    How I Saved Myself by Surrendering When Everything Fell Apart

    “And here you are, living despite it all.” ~Rupi Kaur

    “I surrender!” I said this mantra out loud as my life was spiraling out of control.

    I had spent a summer in college as a camp counselor separated from my fiancé. He sent me no letters and did not keep in touch. Still, I held on. By the time I came back home, we were broken. I had also realized he was emotionally abusing me. It took that separation to make me see it.

    I realized I had been truly alone in the relationship. I was never lonelier than being with someone who refused to listen to me. A summer of independence brought me a new love of solitude, but it also made me realize I didn’t have a soulmate in him after all.

    I was forced to face that this life wasn’t perfect. I wasn’t perfect. But… I was enough. I needed to believe that to keep moving.

    When I said my mantra of surrendering, I was on a rollercoaster of emotions. I didn’t know where my life was going. The wedding planning ended. He called it off through text. I was left emotional and without closure. I didn’t know what would happen next. I just decided to be curious rather than try to control it.

    I woke up to the fact that I didn’t have to know everything. I had to just trust. This both terrified me and propelled me forward. I didn’t know if things were going to be okay, but I knew I would make meaning out of whatever would happen.

    I wanted to teach youth how to surrender too. I figured that would be my legacy since it had healed me of so much in life.

    I had already applied to graduate school, and I would start at Brandeis very soon. I was worried about being on top of it all while going through this heartbreak. I was a Type A student, president of four clubs and an honors student. I didn’t exactly have time for love back then, but I didn’t realize I had a choice to let my ex go if I wasn’t satisfied. I put too much effort into trying to make it work when it wouldn’t.

    I didn’t see that my effort to make everything work was actually blocking better things from coming my way. In other words, I had to stop holding on so tightly to life. I had to let go. I had to surrender to survive. I had to go with the flow to find my flow. I had to learn how to be happy for no reason other than to simply be.

    When I did that, my whole life opened up for me. I practiced radical acceptance and realized my place in this world mattered. I stopped white-knuckling through my problems and pain. I stopped waiting for love and decided to love myself. I started to see myself as capable and good no matter how others mistreated me. I decided by letting go, I would not give up. I made a promise to myself to always be authentic.

    Life didn’t go as planned. I left Brandeis MAT program for teaching because I realized I didn’t want to be a high school English teacher anymore. It was the hardest decision of my life because I also did not have a backup plan.

    So, I surrendered again. And again and again through it all.

    I surrendered when I found other ways to help youth. I surrendered through a bipolar breakdown and a relapse to the hospital years later. I surrendered when I went on disability and all expectations of my life were changed. I surrendered through bad side effects to meds and awful doctors. I surrendered all through my life because I knew despite how hard things could be, I was still doing good. I was still helping others. I was still waking up each morning appreciating being alive.

    It came down to the simple things. I didn’t need certain labels or popularity. I needed to rest, to do nothing sometimes. To breathe. To just live.

    I saw myself as rising in my own ways.

    I realized I couldn’t look back. Here’s what I held onto instead:

    1. Finding Purpose

    When I let go of my need to control, I became more mindful. I started to think about how I wanted to spend my time. Was it for achievements or authenticity?

    I had nothing, so I had nothing to lose when I left Brandeis. Serendipitously, I had a branding internship the same time a brand manager of a large TV personality discovered me. The internship taught me how to manage my own image and ideas while the manager wanted to simply own me like a puppet master.

    I had a choice. I could live on my own terms or have someone take over my life. I turned down advances from this man. I wasn’t going to fall for the same red flags as I did with my ex-fiancé. I let go; I surrendered.

    I decided to make my own way and live authentically as a person, not a brand, sharing my story along the way. I used my mental health journey to help end stigma and my writing for sharing insights on life.

    I did not let walking away from the brand manager stop my story. Instead, I redefined it for myself. I was enough as I was. I didn’t need anyone to discover who I was meant to be. I would live my life for me.

    My purpose became in proving him wrong, that I could make it on my own. Then, it became for me, to show myself I was worth it. I focused on living in the moment and just following my passions without a plan. That’s what saved me. But it wasn’t the only thing.

    Purpose dawned on me one day while I was simply walking my dog through the woods in my backyard. I listened to birds chirping. I grounded myself by looking up at the blue sky. I touched the bark on the trees. I felt my inner voice beckoning me to love this life as it was, not as I wanted it to be. I didn’t have to do anything. I just had to be in this moment. That’s all life was asking of me.

    It took simplicity to make me realize my purpose wasn’t just a to-do list. It wasn’t fixing everything. It wasn’t mastering every skill. It wasn’t making things work when they wouldn’t.

    I had to separate myself from the “shoulds.” I had to find the gift in what I was going through. In taking the time to do nothing but think, far away from a stressful schedule, I realized that my purpose was to be happy without needing a reason to be. That took a different kind of bravery.

    2. Forgiveness

    I wasn’t able to move on from the injustices of my life very easily. I had anger in me from living under others’ control and abuse. I had loss, which I felt every day, etched into my skin. I knew what it was to be alone. I had settled too often and always saw the best in people.

    I grew up walking on eggshells surrounded by abusers. It was an endless pattern I stopped in my twenties. After my ex-fiancé left me, I found a new type of strength. I realized the only power anyone could ever have over me was the one I consented. No one could steal the core of who I was. No one could take certain things away. No one could define me but me.

    I took my power back through forgiveness. It didn’t happen right away. I meant “I love you” to my ex, but then I realized it was governed in fear. Fear of doing this life on my own.

    Sometimes life makes you continually face the very thing you’ve been avoiding. You keep getting redirected to it even as you resist. You find yourself with the same lessons you needed to learn before.

    There’s a quote that reads “You repeat what you don’t repair.” Well, I was there. I was back there constantly in my anger and hate of those who I thought stole something from me.

    But when I decided to forgive them, I released it. I gave it back to the universe and pulled my heart from the chaos. They didn’t deserve it. It wasn’t for them. It was for me. I had to let them go and surrender so I could heal myself. I forgave myself in the process, too, for not knowing enough, for not seeing the truth.

    My heart wanted to hold onto the anger so that I could do something with it. I soothed it, though, with self-compassion. I made meaning of the events of my life by helping others through similar things.

    That meant I had to say goodbye. Goodbye to those who didn’t know me enough to love me right. Goodbye to the me that was in survival mode and didn’t know I could just let go and live. Goodbye to the dark nights of the soul where I felt like giving up and suicidal ideations crossed my mind. Goodbye to the past. Goodbye to the insecurities. Goodbye to the pain. Goodbye to the worst of it all.

    And then I said it. “I forgive you.” I salvaged myself from the wreckage of the storms I had suffered. I pulled myself out of the ruins of an old life. I realized I was the one who decided my fate. I was the captain of my soul. I was finally free.

    3. The Reason

    I found my way by allowing myself to go on the detour. I realized that I was meant to go down the wrong road so I would be sure of the right one. My road was brilliant, one of authenticity, that uplifted me above all that I had gone through. I was able to look at my life and see what really mattered. I suddenly knew what I was here to do.

    I was here to share my gift. Any insight I could. To love.

    I started volunteering, writing, speaking to youth, and advocating for mental health awareness.

    I stopped living in the stigma of struggling and became open about my story.

    I surrendered to what was happening.

    I stopped fighting every little thing that came my way.

    I didn’t need to know what would happen with the lives I touched and the good things I did along the way. I just had to follow my path hoping others would follow it too, making it a little easier for someone else.

    All I had to do was surrender—be still, quiet my mind, allow rather than resist, let go, and find myself even when losing it all.

    Surrendering isn’t easy. In fact, it’s one of the hardest things we can do. That’s because we want control. But sometimes, surrendering is seeing uncertainty as beautiful. We don’t have to know what lies ahead in order to move forward.

    What will you do when you surrender, stop fighting reality, and allow yourself to live in your life as it is?

    Can you improve a situation, share a kindness, give to a greater cause, become a better you, and build a better world? Can you dream of doing such things? That is the first step to resilience. Focus on the beauty found in the broken situation and in you. Focus on the light you can bring into the darkness.

    It doesn’t take away from the horror of any hardship to believe in yourself and your ability to make change from it. That takes its own grieving time. But during that time, you can’t let it consume you. The tragedy that befell you, the heartbreak that happened, the hurt inside that you can’t let go… they are indeed senseless. Hence, it is imperative you don’t get stuck on asking why, as many do.

    Instead of viewing yourself as a victim, it’s time to be a victor. Overcome the odds. Let what hurts and irks you be the fuel to your fire.

    Hardships do not define us.

    What you have been through, your circumstances, do not define you.

    There will be days where you need to prioritize self-care and forgiveness for who you had to be to get to this point. Maybe you were white-knuckling through the pain in your self-care journey, maybe you did what you did in order to survive, but the good news is that today is a new day for you.

    Hold space for the sacred gift of simply being alive on those days.

    It works like a cycle. You will feel all the emotions on the spectrum, which means you will feel anger and sadness and doubt, but you will also feel joy and love and hope again the longer you hold on, the more patience you practice with yourself.

    A reason not for why this happened but why to go on will come to you.

    That reason is everything.

    When you want to give up, that’s when you say, “I surrender,” which isn’t the same thing. Giving up is shutting down. Surrendering is letting go.

    When you surrender, you don’t need things to work out a certain way. You accept life as it comes, which leads to a breakthrough. When you give up, you breakdown. Surrendering is the sacred step to realizing your full potential. It’s realizing you are your own hero, and you must not stop now.

    When you let go, you realize everything could change tomorrow. All it takes is choosing this very moment and living it. Mindfully surrendering is about releasing your fears and doubts so you can see clearly and letting the light come through.

    Don’t wait for life to change to create peace, joy, and purpose. Choose to make the best of what you have in your life, right now as it is. Surrender. Say the words, and it will change your life.

  • You Never Know How Much Time You Have, So Forgive While You Can

    You Never Know How Much Time You Have, So Forgive While You Can

    “Forgiveness is to set a prisoner free and discover the prisoner was you.” ~Corrie ten Boom

    I sat next to my stepmother Elaine in her hospital room. I was thirteen. We’d met six years prior as she took a stepmother’s role and had a strained relationship and didn’t speak to each other for parts of it.

    Elaine was facing terminal brain cancer. So far she had kept herself together and composed, remaining strong on the outside. I was trying my hardest to do the same for her.

    It had all started back when I was seven and my dad took me to a carnival. My parents were still together at the time. It was there I first met Elaine and her son, four years my junior.

    Her son and I played a many carnival games together and we bonded quickly. Even as we grew more competitive, I found myself continually distracted by Elaine’s close presence and her friendliness with my dad. All I saw was that she was taking my dad away.

    A year later, my father sat me down and told me he was leaving for a little while. This immediately caused an internal alarm to sound. A little while?

    They didn’t really expect me to believe that, did they? He must’ve thought I wouldn’t understand. But deep down I knew this was only going to mean one thing: divorce.

    I even told my best friend about it. “My parents are fighting a lot. I think they’re getting a divorce.”

    “My parents fight too. It’s fine,” she said. But I thought to myself that it wasn’t the same, that everything wasn’t fine.

    Elaine was a strong, independent businesswoman who thrived in her sales occupation and went for runs religiously every morning at five o’clock. She placed a lot of importance on eating right and an overall healthy lifestyle. The mere fact she would be the one of all people to end up with terminal cancer shocked everyone.

    The cancer started in her stomach but soon afterward it rapidly began to metastasize and spread to her brain. It became brain cancer, something she strived to fight against. She still wound up staying in the hospital, defying her strong will and intent to get better.

    Although I visited her in the hospital many times, we never grew as close as I felt we should have. It’s one of my greatest regrets.

    I resented the fact that Elaine took my dad away from my mom. Or at least, that was my perception of what happened. As the resentment grew within me, so did the void between me and Elaine.

    During the course of Elaine’s relationship with my father, I fell under the impression that she was trying to buy my affection with material things. She took me to the mall more than once to buy clothes, jewelry, and other items for me—but why? On the inside, I refused to allow myself be bought.

    Then one Christmas, she wrote a poem about our relationship and how it really wasn’t where she hoped it would be. Upon reading this, I kept my head down and didn’t respond. She also presented me with a number of certificates one day each month to go places and do things.

    Such gifts included the spa, Barnes and Noble, the mall, various other stores, and more. These acts of generosity were overwhelming me, and not in a good way. I was beginning to feel like being bought was entirely unforgivable.

    One day, in a blaze of frustration, I asked Elaine if she knew my mother cried at night because of her. Elaine burst into tears. With my words, I’d stopped her in tracks in the middle of the many acts of generosity, but I felt it had to be said.

    These events had fractured our relationship even further.

    From that point on things didn’t improve much, until one day when I’d been running around outside of our lake house in the woods and became lost. I wandered for hours, growing more hopeless by the moment, until I heard something in the distance. It was a bell, and by some miracle it seemed to be ringing for me!

    Immediately, I began sprinting in the direction of the sound. To my amazement it was Elaine. She’d rung the bell in an effort to guide me back.

    I ran into her outstretched arms and collapsed into them while crying. “Everything’s okay now,” she said, holding me tighter than ever before.

    In this moment, something drastic happened. All of the previous animosity I had been holding onto began to melt away. She finally had me; she’d won.

    At first I felt defeated at the fact that I’d finally given in and accepted Elaine’s genuineness of her care for me. But these feelings would soon turn to regret when she first spoke to us of the cancer. As the word spread, people from all corners of life gave her gifts in wake of her diagnosis.

    I was amazed at the outpouring of generosity for Elaine. I gained more respect for her. She didn’t hesitate to pass many of the gifts on to myself and her son.

    One day, toward the end, I’d been reading one of Elaine’s books. It was about Corrie Ten Boom, a former holocaust survivor of World War II who forgave a former and repented Nazi concentration camp guard who approached her after listening to her speak. I was moved by her astounding compassion and I closed the book, in tears.

    I knew that I had to try and find that same forgiveness in myself.

    At the hospital, Elaine was deteriorating. As she’d become greatly overheated, I suggested that we pat her down with a wet washcloth. Without hesitation, she said, “I want Sarah to do it.”

    Something happened when I ran the washcloth across her forehead and body. I forgave her. In doing this, I’d become her servant and given her all the attention I had to give.

    During this experience, I learned that forgiving someone is easiest when they are in their humblest, most vulnerable state of being. When someone is on their deathbed, it doesn’t so much matter anymore what they’ve done or didn’t do during their lifetime. Their sins seem to dissipate or almost wash clean away.

    Soon after Elaine was moved to a hospice for care and I was set to attend a formal dance at my school. She was very excited and couldn’t wait to see me in my dress, which surprised me pleasantly. I entered her room in grand fashion, twirling from side to side in my blue gown with a matching blue rose in my hair.

    Before I departed for the dance, she gave me a long hug. Thinking the embrace had ended, I tried to pull back out of it, but she wasn’t letting go. She lingered and stared at me, which caught me off guard.

    At the time I had no real idea what was happening and what it all meant, but this was goodbye. She must’ve been sure of this on the inside but refused to let on to that. And in that moment she protected us from that knowledge and in a reassuring way said, “I think I’m getting better.”

    We left shortly afterward. Not long after that, Elaine passed.

    Later, I thought back to the conversation I had with Elaine in the hospital, when we were stuck in an awkward silence and both looking in opposite directions.

    I told her that I had been going through a hard time and I was feeling depressed. She said that she had struggled with multiple bouts of depression in her own life.

    This surprised me more than anything. “But you’re such a strong businesswoman and mom!” I said. She smiled and didn’t respond.

    She always held it together, staying strong in the face of adversity, and I was surprised to learn that even she struggled. In learning this, we had the chance to both share our stories and gain some common ground, giving us compassion for one another.

    In Elaine’s absence, I remembered what Corrie Ten Boom taught me about forgiveness: you can do it without feeling it. The faith in forgiveness comes first. Act in goodness and the feeling will come.

    “Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart.” Corrie Ten Boom’s famous words have never left me.

    Even when I didn’t know which visit to Elaine’s hospice would be the last, when I couldn’t change my circumstances, I changed myself. In forgiving her, I forgave myself. And although I didn’t get the chance to say goodbye the way I wanted to, I felt there was peace and understanding between us.

    Forgiving myself was a harder, longer journey than forgiving Elaine. After she passed, I still regretted how much I resisted her. Her gifts now meant so much more.

    She had been seeking appreciation, and I had been withholding it from her. Life found a way to pull it from me through grief and time.

    She had been in my life for so long, yet I was only just beginning to realize the worth she sometimes lacked, the struggle she had with our strained relationship, and the persona she put on to make sure everyone knew she was okay.

    She wasn’t always okay. I never saw her vulnerability until the end, just a hardened exterior that only fate could unravel and reveal.

    She wasn’t my mother; she could never take that role. She wasn’t my stepmom really because she didn’t marry my dad. But she never gave up on me.

    Now when I think back to the poem that she read to me, I reflect on the lines

    “I was writing my list to bring Christmas joy…
    And I couldn’t think of anything to buy you but a boy;
    Since that was not practical and not really right;
    I thought I’d be more creative and shed some light;
    Like on our relationship that’s not quite there;
    But my heart still tells me I care.”

    I know now to live in the moment, appreciate the time I have with people, and in my heart try to forgive even when it’s hard. People still alive need me here and now, even though I want to turn back time. I can’t live in the past.

    Self-forgiveness is hard. It’s harder than forgiving those that hurt you. Imagine if they were on their last days, though. What would you say to them?

    Say that to them now. Learn from the mistakes of the past, don’t live in them. I had no idea there was a time limit to knowing Elaine, but there is a time limit on us all.

    We don’t feel this limit. We don’t realize how quickly time passes us by. Any day could be an unwarranted goodbye.

    We can’t control the outcome. I couldn’t stop the cancer, but I could stand up to it. I could make a difference in her life however limited in time we were.

    I wish now that I had let her in. I would have had a best friend. I should have shown her my feelings and given myself the chance to be reconciled with her.

    Even though I will never have that chance again, I served her at the end of her life. I believe we should all be serving each other.

    I was lucky.

    I didn’t learn this lesson too late even though I was running out of time.

    It is never too late to love someone, to forgive, to mend—until you run out of time. Even if it’s not reciprocated, you can respect another’s choice by leading in love yourself. Elaine never gave up on me.

    So I’m not giving up on you. You too can do this. You can live again once you forgive.

    It doesn’t mean everything will change, but the most important thing will be: You will be set right, set apart, and make a difference in someone’s life. Maybe even more than in your own.

    The world is a broken one, but there is beauty in the brokenness. It takes bravery to see it, to act on it, to respect it. Things aren’t perfect, but through forgiveness you can make the world just a little bit better.

    You need only allow yourself to.