Tiny Buddha

Tag: death

  • Lessons from Almost Dying: How to Appreciate the Everyday Awesome

    Lessons from Almost Dying: How to Appreciate the Everyday Awesome

    “We’re so busy watching out for what’s just ahead of us that we don’t take time to enjoy where we are.” ~Bill Watterson

    “Rare as hell.” That’s how my doctor described my leukemia.

    The cancer had gotten real aggressive, real quick, and I’d need some heavy-duty chemo and a risky bone marrow transplant if I had any chance of surviving. How good a chance? “Forty to fifty percent,” said my doctor.

    Oof.

    As an otherwise healthy twenty-seven-year-old, cancer had been the furthest thing from my mind. Now, every waking thought was consumed by it. But I wasn’t ready to die. I decided to do whatever I could to beat the odds. It started with a list.

    One night during my initial stay at Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto, I pulled out my journal.

    At the top of a new page I wrote the words “reasons to fight.” I then proceeded to write anything and everything that came to mind about what made life so awesome and so worth fighting for. Before I knew it, my list was 118 items long.

    Reviewing my hastily scrawled list, a number of things stood out. First, I was surprised how much food made the cut. The fact that “bagels with cream cheese” preceded “mom” should tell you something about how hungry and sick of hospital food I was when I wrote the list.

    Food bias aside, the people in my life certainly made a strong appearance—parents, brothers, sisters, friends, cousins, aunts, uncles. Finally, the list burst at the seams with life’s simple pleasures and experiential riches. Things like:

    • Gin and tonics (#40)
    • Hiking in the Fall (#19)
    • Tobogganing (#22)
    • Summer road trips (#81)
    • Building a fire (#35)
    • Slow-dancing (#46)
    • Writing (#66)
    • Beach sunsets (#77)
    • Skinny-dipping (#79)
    • Summer parties (#82)
    • Good conversation (#90)
    • The smell of campfires (#72)
    • Wedding receptions (#110)

    In our goal-oriented culture that places so much emphasis on reaching the next milestone, it was interesting to look back at my list.

    Lying on what could very well have been my deathbed, I wasn’t worried I’d miss out on getting a bigger house, fatter paycheck, or sexier job title. I wanted to live so I could continue to enjoy the little, everyday things with the people I loved.

    The Power of Being Present

    My near-death revelation call is hardly a new idea. For millennia, philosophers and world religions have been touting the virtues of living in the moment and appreciating the little things.

    In Buddhism, the Eightfold Path to achieving enlightenment includes Right Mindfulness: the practice of being completely present and paying full attention to the situation at hand.

    In 23 BC, the Greek poet Horace was penning Odes, famously reminding us to carpe diem—to seize the day and place no trust in the uncertainty of tomorrow.

    And in the 1800s, Henry David Thoreau strove to “live deep and suck out all the marrow of life” during his simple living experiment at Walden Pond. “You must live in the present,” he concluded, “launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.”

    Even 900-year-old Yoda had strong feelings about living in the moment, chiding Luke for having his head in the clouds. “All his life has he looked away… to the future, to the horizon,” the Jedi Master scolded. “Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing. Hmph.”

    That ancient wisdom is backed up with a growing body of modern research.

    In one study, researchers out of Harvard University developed an iPhone app to track the happiness levels of its participants at random intervals.

    The volunteers would reply with information about what they had just been focused on and how happy they felt. The results? People are at their happiest when they are living in the moment and focused on what they are doing.

    Other research shows that learning to savor small, positive moments can significantly increase your happiness.

    Similarly, studies show people who foster an “attitude of gratitude” for everyday activities are shown to sleep better, be in better physical health, and have lower stress levels.

    Mind Your Mibs

    Whether it’s daydreaming about the weekend, brooding about an argument you had last week, or burying your head in your smart phone, it’s easy to find ourselves in a million places other than the here and now.

    Furthermore, in our milestone-obsessed society, we tend to look to achievements down the road for fulfillment.

    I’ll be happy when I’m married… when I’m making 80k… when my I have a thousand followers on Twitter. We become so preoccupied with the destination that we lose sight of the journey, of the adventure in getting there.

    And don’t get me wrong: goals and milestones are important. They inspire us to be better, to try harder, to reach new heights.

    But as my list reminded me, as great as accomplishments are, there’s tremendous satisfaction to be found in the little Moments In Between—or “mibs” as I like to call them.

    Learning to embrace your mibs and live in the moment is an important way to find happiness on a daily basis.

    Easier said than done, of course, and I certainly still struggle with it. I even caught myself obsessing about edits I wanted to make to this article while I was out for a walk, instead of appreciating the fresh air and sunshine.

    But I’m trying. And with a little discipline, I think anyone can get better at minding their mibs. Here are a few suggestions:

    1. Enforce a no-phone rule.

    Sure, technology has the power to connect. But it’s also got a nasty habit of pulling us away from the moment. Commit to phone-free dinners and give your full attention to the people you’re with.

    2. Go for a “one-sense walk.”

    If you find yourself worrying about the million things you need to get done or obsessing about something in the past, lace up your sneakers and go for a walk. Choose a sense to focus on and start a mental inventory of everything you encounter.

    For example, you may choose “sight” and pay close attention to the colours of the houses or the different types of trees in your neighbourhood. Or you might choose to focus on the things you hear, like the birds chirping or the crunch of your footsteps.

    3. Make your own list.

    My reasons to fight list was a great reminder of all the simple, amazing things around me. Whether it’s making a list of your own, starting a gratitude journal, or getting into the habit of thinking about the little things you’re grateful for while you’re brushing your teeth, make time to regularly acknowledge life’s everyday awesome.

    4. Collect memories, not things.

    My list overflowed with life’s little adventures and amazing experiences. When opportunities arise to try something new, say yes. If it’s a choice between a new pair of designer jeans or a weekend camping trip by the lake, choose the lake.

    More than six years after writing my reasons to fight list, I’m thrilled to say I’m completely cancer-free. And while it was a gruelling journey, it was an enlightening one as well.

    It taught me to not pin my hopes for happiness on far-off or one-off accomplishments. It reminded me to live in the moment and helped me embrace the everyday awesome—whether it’s sunrises (#78 on my list), sandwiches (#99) or a freshly made bed (#50).

    In short, it taught me to mind my mibs.

  • When You’re Hiding Your Pain: Why It’s Worth Letting People In

    When You’re Hiding Your Pain: Why It’s Worth Letting People In

    Hopeless Man

    “All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.” ~Martin Luther King, Jr.

    We are all interconnected, and we all need each other. Our ability to see and be seen by each other creates a beautiful depth of connection that we are privileged to experience.

    This has been a great lesson for me. I realized many years back that I had been hiding my struggles from those who wanted to help me.

    One of my close friends died when I was twenty-three. I’d thrown an art event the night before and had just come home from brunch with some friends.

    I was tired and processing something hurtful that had happened to me at the event. And then my phone made this little beep, and I found out that while I was mingling at a party my beloved friend was dying.

    Her sister, in her grief, sent me a text, “Lauren passed away last night. For service information email me…” I fell to the floor and simply stared at the words. I was numb and disoriented. Those words, there weren’t enough of them. It was too simple, too short, too fast.

    As I stared at the phone in shock, it began to ring. My friend and business partner called to talk about the event.

    I answered and told her my friend just died. And here comes the part that I’ve been ashamed of: instead of revealing my pain, I told her I was okay and began to talk about the drama from the previous night.

    In an instant, unconscious choice, I decided that it was easier for me to push aside my grief than to be vulnerable.

    That moment makes me cringe for a couple of reasons.

    First, I’ve held on to the guilt that I wasn’t honoring my friend in having a casual conversation after learning of her passing. Yes, I was in shock, but there was something deeper happening.

    I’ve realized that I wasn’t allowing myself to be authentic in my grief because I was afraid to be seen.

    To be seen by our community is to recognize that we are worthy of being here, of taking up space, of needing support. I was unwilling to allow others to see me in my time of grief because on some level I didn’t believe I was worthy of it.

    In some way it felt too risky. To open up would mean that the friendship was being tested, and what if the other person couldn’t be there for me? I wasn’t willing to find out.

    And now I can see that there were so many more times throughout my life where I didn’t allow people to be there for me. I’d force my friends to take money when they wanted to pay for our meal. If I was sick I’d order take out instead of letting my friend pick up some soup and bring it over.

    The only people I felt comfortable allowing to be there for me were my family members, the people who have known me forever and who accept me as I am.

    When I lost Lauren I took the train to my parents’ house and fell into my mother’s arms sobbing. I knew how my mom would react to me; I knew she would embrace me and show me the love I needed.

    It’s risky to open up to people when we’re not sure the outcome, but it’s important to be willing to be surprised. 

    The beautiful thing is that most people want to do for each other without getting anything in return. It makes us feel good to help someone else. We want to be of service, and we’re actually getting something in exchange.

    We feel good about ourselves, about being alive, about being able to help someone. It gives us value and worth. It reminds us of the beauty in being human; it reminds us that we’re interconnected.

    I want to live in a more authentic world. A place where we can show each other the truth about ourselves. I want to give my friends the privilege of being there to support me, and I hope they give me that same honor in return.

    I hope we learn to stop filtering the parts of ourselves that make us human; because that humanness, that part of you that is unique to you, that is the part of you that you ought to be and the part of me that I ought to be.

    And only when we show that part of ourselves to each other are we really living authentically. We need each other, and we want to need each other. You are no exception.

    So when you’re in pain, share it. When you need help, ask for it. Trust that people will be there for you when you need it. All you have to do is share your truth.

    Hopeless man image via Shutterstock

  • Accepting the Loss of a Loved One and Finding Peace Again

    Accepting the Loss of a Loved One and Finding Peace Again

    “Life is a process of becoming. A combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.” ~Anais Nin

    Meaningful relationships are crucial to our happiness. We need the human bond to feel connected and joyful, and we enjoy life much more when we share it with people we love.

    There are times, however, when we are forcefully separated from our loved ones. Coping with loss can be one of the most difficult things we ever have to do. Everyone copes with grief differently, and some of us never do.

    When we lose someone we love, it distorts our universe and our peace, and nothing seems right. There is a future that will never exist and a past that we want to go back to, and we feel like we can’t be further from the present moment and reality.

    For a long time, whenever I thought of a friend that I lost last August, I saw all of the vanished possibilities, all of the things he wouldn’t experience and I couldn’t share with him.

    I lost my wedding’s best man, my childhood partner in crime, at a very young age from a medical condition that nobody knew about. It happened in such a snap that nobody could believe it.

    I used to walk the beach and burst into tears because he could never come and walk it with me again.

    I kept thinking about all of the future events that would never happen, and I couldn’t find peace and acceptance.

    I asked questions like “why?” and “how?” and didn’t receive any answers.

    One day while I was sitting in my garden, playing with my dogs, and wishing that my friend could be there to enjoy the day with me, the answer that I was waiting for came to me:

    He was not gone; he had just changed.

    He was there—in the garden, in the air, in the wind, in the sunshine, in the leaves of the trees, in my heart.

    I finally realized that what I was trying to cope with was not a loss but a change.

    We tend to resist change as strongly as we can, trying to stay in our current state of comfort and security because change is hard.

    But life is a constant change—sometimes severe, like the loss of someone we love; sometimes wanted, like a new home; and sometimes surprising, like moving to another country and discovering that you love it.

    Our loved ones change, life changes, and we have to change too.

    Nothing is actually lost in the universe. Everything is energy and energy is never lost. My friend might not be a part of the material world anymore, he might not be a person in the sense of a human being, but he is a part of the world somehow. I don’t know how, but I know he is.

    I believe that the people we think we lose transform into something else and move on to the next stage of life. They are still here, but not in the same way as before.

    They are in everything we have learned from them, in their creations, in their children, in our hearts and memories. I know my friend is still here when I hear his voice telling me how to do something or where to look for something I can’t find.

    Knowing that my friend is not gone but rather changed into something I don’t understand makes it easier to accept reality. It gives me peace of mind.

    I can finally accept that he has moved on, and I need to do the same.

    When we lose someone we love, everything changes.

    This is not a change that we have anticipated or wanted. We may wonder if we will ever be the same, if we will go back to our old self. We can’t and we won’t. After such a traumatic change we have only one way to cope: change ourselves too.

    Nothing can bring them back. Nothing can “undo” anything that happens in life. We have to move forward. Without accepting the change, we make it much harder to do so. We can’t find peace because we feel that something is broken or wrong, but it isn’t; it is just different.

    If you lost someone, know that they are not gone; they, too, are different.

    For a long time, I resisted the fact that I would need to change my plans and my visions.

    But eventually, I had to do it. Now, instead of dreaming about how my future kids will one day meet their parents’ best man and learn so much from him, I dream about telling them stories about a friend that changed my life.

  • 10 Things Everyone Should Learn as a Kid

    10 Things Everyone Should Learn as a Kid

    Smiling Kid

    “There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other wings.” ~Johann Wolfang von Goethe

    In 2010 two major life events marked my life forever: my father lost his battle with melanoma and I become a mother.

    Both events came unexpectedly. My father was only fifty-six years old and had never been sick for one day of his entire life. Also, I had other plans at the time, focusing heavily on my career, so I did not want to have a baby just yet.

    But life is what actually happens to us while we are making all those plans. I remember being six months pregnant at my dad’s funeral, and my baby did not move at all throughout the entire day. It’s like she wanted to stay quiet so that she would allow me to focus on my grief.

    In 2010 I lost someone I loved and then I gained someone else. Here I am now, four years later, enjoying my life as a mother, simply adoring my daughter and being very clear about all the things I want her to know. And still, so desperately, missing my father.

    This is my list. I could add another 100 things, of course, but I learned to keep things simple. And really meaningful. So here it is:

    1. Cherish every moment you spend with your loved ones, and don’t take them for granted.

    To say “I’m sorry” or “I love you” to a picture on a grave is the most painful experience ever. Be careful to not get there.

    2. Sometimes, your only available transportation will be a giant leap of faith.

    Take a deep breath and take that leap.

    3. Other times you’ll be afraid of failure.

    It’s okay, we all are. Just go for it. You’ll either succeed or you won’t. Either way, you’ll not live with the regret of never trying.

    4. Do more of those things you enjoy doing.

    Explore as many activities as you can. Finding your passion is not a myth, but it is surely not as easy as it sounds, so be open and curious. Experiment. Learn.

    5. Embrace challenges.

    And don’t be afraid of change. Look for opportunities all around you.

    6. Happiness is a right you give yourself.

    Be happy with who you are. Accept yourself, have patience with yourself, and love yourself unconditionally.

    7. What you see in the movies about love is not all the truth.

    Love is not only about passion and romance. It is also about doing the dishes together after a Christmas family dinner and then falling asleep exhausted in each other’s arms.

    8. Nobody is perfect.

    So don’t look for the perfect person. Just look for the flawed one who still makes your heart sing.

    9. Be present.

    Go only to those events or meetings  you actually want to attend. Saying no will not hurt other as much as you’d think. They will get over it. What you can’t do is recover a lost moment of time.

    10. Don’t settle.

    If you are not satisfied with one result, take action, go deeper, or try a new approach. Don’t do anything only because “you have to” or because others expect that of you.

    You can’t avoid pain; it comes with life. The only thing you can control is how you react to it. This is one of the most important life lessons I learned back in 2010. I will never forget my father. And I will continue to teach the lessons above to my daughter for as long as I live.

    Smiling boy image via Shutterstock

  • How To Change The Past By Changing Your Thinking

    How To Change The Past By Changing Your Thinking

    “The most positive action we can take about the past is to change our perception of it.” ~Deepak Chopra

    Death didn’t happen quickly like in the movies.

    A compassionate nurse set the tone and gently guided us through the ordeal. Mom, Dad, my other brother, and I spread out so that one of us held each of Chris’ hands and feet with a person at his head. Time passed in slow motion.

    In horror, I watched for more than an hour as his breathing abated, with the pauses in between his raspy, strained breaths becoming longer and longer. I fervently sent him love and light and wished him peace as I watched the scene unfold through my tears.

    Chris’ lips were chapped and cracked from breathing oxygen through a mask for weeks. A piece of skin on his upper lip fluttered with each breath, but in the prolonged pauses between breaths, it lay still. Each time the skin went inert, I thought, “This is it.”

    But he would take another shallow breath one more time until the flap was frozen and his chest motionless forever. Putting a stethoscope over his heart, the nurse said, “It’s awfully quiet in there.”

    It was New Year’s Eve 1995. After two years of rapidly declining health, Chris, my brother with the wicked sense of humor, flawless taste, and the ability to make me believe he was invincible, succumbed to AIDs at the age of thirty-three.

    In the years following his death, I numbly went on with my life, like I was supposed to, like I had to. Being the mother of two beautiful, energetic young boys, there was plenty to be happy about and thankful for, but I only grew more depressed as the gruesome scenes of Chris’ sickness and death played on an endless loop in my head.

    As time passed, Chris became a distant memory, like a book I knew I’d read once but couldn’t quite recall. I knew how the story ended, but the details were blurred behind a cloud of hurt.

    Over the years, the highlights reel of the ugliness from my eighteen-year marriage and divorce got equal mental airtime along with the drama from a subsequent tumultuous three-year relationship.

    Eleven years after that New Year’s Eve in the hospital, I found myself a depressed, divorced, single mother with no idea who I was or why I was here.

    I couldn’t find anything resembling the strong, smart, feisty sister Chris had loved. In a pill-popping stunt, I tried to commit suicide, which only made things worse—much worse—resulting in a serious brain injury and losing custody of my boys.

    While healing from the suicide attempt, I realized that I had been torturing myself with the painful memories. I was doing it to myself! While this point may be apparent to some, it was a huge “aha” for me, and I also realized that if I was doing it, I could stop it.

    Yes, Chris died and went through a horrible illness. Yes, there were many messy times from my marriage, and hurts from the following relationship. All of it really did happen—no denying that—but I was the one keeping the pain alive and bringing it into the present.

    It really boiled down to making the decision not to do this to myself anymore.

    Because of neuroplasticity, the scientifically proven ability of our brains to change form and function based on repeated behaviors, emotions, and thoughts, the more I dwelled on the sad memories, the more I reinforced them.   

    “Neurons that fire together, wire together.” This saying, from the work of Donald Hebb, means that synapses, the connections between neurons, get more sensitive and new neurons grow when activated repeatedly together.

    Our brains also add a subjective tint to our memories by subconsciously factoring in who you are and what you believe and feel at the time of the recollection. The act of remembering changes a memory. So, as I became more depressed and hopeless, the memories became darker.

    But the good news is that the reverse is also true. Neural connections that are relatively inactive wither away, and a person can consciously influence the process in a positive, healthier way. I made the memories stronger and more painful, and I could make them weaker and more loving.

    Through mindfulness and meditation, I learned to become aware of and take control of my thoughts and mind. By realizing my subconscious influences and consciously choosing which ones I allowed to have impact and intentionally inserting new ones, I changed my past.

    Not literally, of course. But by pairing more positive thoughts and emotions with negative memories and feelings and modifying my perspective about past events, I changed their role in my present, which, in turn, altered my brain and life for the better.

    The goal is not to resist painful memories or experiences and grasp at or try to force positive ones instead. That’s almost impossible and leads to its own kind of suffering.

    In his book, Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom, Rick Hanson writes:

    To gradually replace negative implicit memories with positive ones, just make the positive aspects prominent and relatively intense in the foreground of your awareness while simultaneously placing the negative material in the background….

    Because of all the ways your brain changes its structure, your experience matters beyond its momentary, subjective impact. It makes enduring changes in the physical tissues of your brain which affect your well-being, functioning and relationships.  

    If your head is filled with painful memories of the past, I want you to know that you can change this! I did.

    I certainly still remember Chris’ tragic illness and death, but I choose to focus on the times we laughed so hard that we got the “gigglesnorts.” I prefer to see him on the dance floor working up a sweat. I recall how much he loved me and that adored feeling I had when I was with him.

    I even view his death differently now. Instead of feeling the horror and shock of that night, I can now feel the love and support for him and one another in that hospital room.

    In any life, past and present, there’s always going to be pain, joy, and everything in between. Your experience of your life and your brain are shaped by what you choose to focus on. You can torture yourself with the past or choose better feeling thoughts and memories.

    It really is that simple. Simple, but not easy.

  • When the People We Love No Longer Exist

    When the People We Love No Longer Exist

    “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.” ~Steve Jobs

    A week ago a woman I loved died. She was a member of my family and had been dying for a while from bone cancer, so her death did not come as a surprise.

    I was traveling when I got the email, and I sat in Abu Dhabi airport surrounded by the banging and steps of people and grieved.

    Yes, I knew her death was imminent, but at a deeper level I found the news confusing. When I last visited her in her hospital room, her eyes were open and her breath constant; we chatted, she laughed, and we talked about seeing each other again.

    What was deeply confusing, and still is, is the fact that she will never exist again—not in the same form. Some believe she has gone to another world, some believe she now exists as particles, but the reality is that her shape, the twinkle in her eyes, the way she held my hand will never exist again.

    All of us who have gone through loss will understand this deep confusion. How can something no longer exist? How can one not call or talk to or hug a person anymore within the space of a day?

    My husband and I sat on the pews in the small suburban church and listened to beautiful things said about her.

    People spoke of her struggles with self-doubt and loss, as well as her ability to inspire and support women to find their own path. She could be conflicted and generous at the same time—she was human.

    A friend of mine once said that light on fractured glass is more arresting than glass that is robust and flat. I couldn’t have agreed more, as the words in the church about the woman we had lost recreated her and we could feel her living, just for that moment, in all her light and shade.

    From everything I’ve read coping with grief, it’s all about letting it out, about not having expectations about when the grief will end, about communicating about it with family and friends who understand.

    I let it out yesterday; I couldn’t help myself. The real rain came, though, when I looked over at the coffin and knew there was a woman inside, and her lack of life, of existence, overwhelmed me.

    So, how do we process the confusion that occurs when people that are special to us are no longer in our lives? Death is just one way these people can disappear; they can also disappear through relationship breakups, geographical separation, or they can simply vanish.

    The overwhelming feeling I get is one of too much space. It becomes very obvious that that person occupied some space within my existence and the vacuum is very hard to bear.

    In practical terms, it may be that I saw that person once a week, once a month, once a year, and now my dance card is not as full because they are no longer on the floor. Even if they had a negative impact on my life, I miss them, some parts of them.

    I guess the comforting thing I’ve learned from experience is that eventually others will come onto the floor, that the vacuum is not permanent, that each person who comes and goes brings more and more to my life and my understanding of existence.

    As Salman Rushdie writes in Midnight’s Children, “I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I’m gone which would not have happened if I had not come.”

    When the people I care about no longer exist, I have the perfect opportunity to reflect on how I can integrate the best parts of them into my life.

    The woman I loved and lost was passionate about empowering women. I have carried the same flame, and her death inspires me to work even harder to encapsulate women’s voices into my writing.

    As a counselor, teacher, and friend, she also cared a lot about people and always wanted to help. When she spent the last year in and out of hospital, the love that she gave came back in spades with the constant stream of visitors and helpers by her bedside.

    Watching this really taught me the value of giving, not only to help others but also to develop relationships that were more about creation than destruction.

    We also have a choice to address the question of existence more broadly when people we were close to no longer exist in our lives.

    The older I get, the more I understand that existence really is very temporary. It makes sense, then, that the temporary nature of existence means that existence is, in itself, quite extraordinary.

    As science writer Lewis Thomas wrote, “Statistically, the probability of any one of us being here is so small that the mere fact of our existence should keep us all in a state of contented dazzlement.”

    We can choose to ignore just how temporary our lives are, or, we can choose to say, “Well, I’m only here for a bit so I’d better get on with it and work out how I want to live and give.”

    Steve Jobs said, “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.”

    Steve’s understanding of the temporary nature of existence motivated him to create an extraordinary life, and, ironically enough, he will live on through his creations for years to come.

    It’s the day following the funeral. There’s a bunch of bright purple, pink, white, and yellow flowers on my desk. Someone left them at the front of the church because they wanted to do something tangible that indicated just how much they appreciated the woman’s life.

    In writing this I’m also doing the same. My gift of flowers, of words, for the woman who no longer exists, but who is now a part of this temporary life that is extraordinary just because it is.

  • Stop Striving for Happiness and Start Practicing It Now

    Stop Striving for Happiness and Start Practicing It Now

    Happy People

    “Happiness is the absence of striving for happiness.” ~Chuang Tzu

    It all started when one of my boys asked me if I was happy, and of course I answered yes.

    Why wouldn’t I be happy? I have a handsome and kind husband, two boys of which I am very proud, I had a successful business, I had a house I loved, I was surrounded by friends, I was a sought after speaker in my community, and blah blah blah.

    Then my son asked why I didn’t have fun anymore. I began defending my happiness to him, explaining all the reasons why I was happy, and I began to realize I wasn’t really happy at all. I was “surface” happy.

    It was that day, almost four years ago, that I started my journey toward finding happiness. Needless to say, there were plenty of bumps in the road.

    The problem was that in typical “type A” fashion, I wanted happiness right then. I did my research and found things that made people happier, like spending time with friends and reducing stress. I made a bunch of changes that were supposed to make me happier but in the end only caused my stress levels to rise.

    It didn’t take long before I realized my quest for happiness made things worse. I spent more time worrying about trying to be happy then just allowing myself the freedom to feel happy. Bottom line: trying to be happy was stressing me out.

    Then my husband lost his job and we were in jeopardy of losing our house. With the circumstances surrounding us, my worry and stress were kicked into high gear. And instead of moving toward happiness, I felt as if I was moving further away.

    Things were getting a bit desperate when my husband was offered his dream job in Bangkok, Thailand. Yes, the same Thailand that is located halfway around the world. I fought it, I ignored it, and I laughed at it, but most of all I worried about it.

    Moving that far away was inconceivable to me. We had two teenagers, a home, and family and friends in a town we loved. How could we just leave?

    With little choice, off to Thailand we went with two suitcases each and my fingers crossed for a smooth transition. Soon after our arrival in Thailand, my life was shattered. I received a phone call from my sister telling me that my brother had been murdered.

    Twenty-seven years ago, my other sister’s life was cut too short because of a car accident. I physically did not think I could endure this pain again. My heart had yet to heal and now the hole in it just got bigger. 

    I immediately headed home to be with mom, leaving my husband and the boys behind, when what I wanted most was to hold them tight.

    It was a very surreal time. It was like I was watching someone else’s life as I went through the motions of supporting my mother, accepting condolences, and trying to wrap my head around all that was going on.

    It is always tragic to lose a loved one, but to have a loved one murdered takes grief to a whole new level.

    The time came for me to head back across the globe and back to my boys. It became clear I couldn’t go back as a barely functioning mother, and I knew my boys would learn about adversity and grief through my example.

    I took the time to re-evaluate my quest for happiness that I started what seemed like a lifetime ago. This time though, I started with some small actions instead of tackling everything at once. Here’s how I did it.

    Practice Gratitude

    You’ve probably read by now that gratitude has the power to change your life. It’s hard to imagine something so simple having such a big impact. It’s also hard to imagine why more people don’t do it.

    I wanted to practice gratitude, I really did, but it always seemed an inconvenient thing to do as I crawled into bed. I had to figure out a way to remind myself to do it every night before my head hit the pillow, because once I crawled into bed all bets were off.

    It dawned on me that I went into the bathroom every night, so I put my journal in the bathroom next to my toothbrush. Not the most glamorous place to write in your journal, but it worked.

    As I brushed my teeth, the journal beckoned and soon it became automatic, better known as a habit. A habit that was helping me focus on the good in my life.

    I am blessed to be surrounded by a loving and supportive family, have meaningful friendships for encouragement and guidance, and my boys have kind hearts. And that’s just the beginning of my list.

    I learned that even in the midst of the darkest day, there are moments of light. Sometimes you just have to search a little harder. Quiet your mind and look for it. Believe me, you will find something wonderful that fills you with gratitude.

    Trust That Things Will Work

    I am not going to lie; trusting that everything will work out is scary and hard—very, very hard. But it does. It might not work out the way you intended, but it usually works out somehow.

    It’s hard to break the habit of worrying because there is no visual cue around the stuff in your head. When I worried, I noticed I played with my hair. I admit I play with my hair when I’m not worried too, but my hands hang out in my hair more when I am.

    Now every time I play with my hair, I ask myself what I am worrying about. Then I remind myself to trust that whatever happens, I can handle it, and I probably will become stronger and happier because of it.

    Look for cues that indicate you might be worrying and when you encounter them, talk yourself through the process. Create a mantra for yourself that calms your mind and helps you release your worry. Your self-talk may take longer in the beginning, but keep at because eventually your mind will get on board.

    Choose Happiness

    I quickly found wanting happiness isn’t enough. You have to choose it and work for it.

    I added one more step to gratitude practice. At the end of the day I began setting my intention for the next day—something that will make me take time to enjoy the moment.

    My first intention was to take pictures of flowers because flowers make me smile. Then afterward, I wrote about how my intention made me feel and added things that filled my heart with gratitude.

    An intention might be something as simple as watching an inspirational video or smiling at a stranger. The key is to choose something that will make your day brighter.

    I learned many things during the first year following my brother’s murder. I learned about forgiveness, grief, and true friendship, but the most powerful thing I learned was that I was in control of how I felt every day

    Practicing gratitude, trusting things will work out, and setting intentions has led me to create my own definition of happiness, a definition that is just right for me.

    Take the time to experiment with practices that work for you. Everyone goes through dark times, but you can find happiness in the midst of darkness by committing to the practices that work for you.

    Happiness image via Shutterstock

  • Life is a Gift: How to Enjoy It and Find Happiness After a Tragic Loss

    Life is a Gift: How to Enjoy It and Find Happiness After a Tragic Loss

    Man Enjoying the Moment

    “If we could see that everything, even tragedy, is a gift in disguise, we would then find the best way to nourish the soul.” ~Elizabeth Kubler Ross

    Sometimes a tragedy can give new energy to life and bring awareness we have been living on autopilot.

    I still remember the night like it was yesterday. It was late and my husband and I had just turned off the light when my phone rang. It was my aunt saying my dad pushed his life alert and was transported to the hospital.

    I fumbled to find my clothes and hurried to the car. The drive to the hospital was a blur. I found my dad in the emergency room smiling. He proudly told me the “people” wouldn’t leave his house, so he pushed the button on his necklace for help.

    My dad suffered from Lewy Bodies Dementia. It is a fast acting dementia that includes hallucinations, sleeping disorders, and mental decline.

    When my dad pushed his life alert button on my advice, it was the precursor to his tragic death. I felt like it was my fault.

    I told him to push his button whenever he needed help and we weren’t around. On this night, the hallucinations were bad enough for him to push the button just like I asked him to do.

    Once transported to the hospital, he was admitted for observation and regulation of his medicine. The wrong medication was prescribed and my father never recovered. He eventually slipped into a coma and passed away.

    When tragic events happen, they are not our fault. It is human nature to blame ourselves when in reality there is nothing we could have done differently to change the outcome.

    Still, at the time my mind was tormented. If I had only been there, if I had taken him to the doctor sooner, if I had known they were going to change his medicine. The what if’s were the hardest part.

    Stages of grief will come and go. Allow yourself to embrace the stages as you move through them. They are part of the healing process that eventually brings a sense of happiness.

    After my Dad’s death I went through the many stages of grief. Not in any order. I bounced from stage to stage and back again.

    The death of a loved one is a personal journey. No two people go through it the same way.

    Some people internalize emotions and try to work through them alone. Others go through the stages of grief for all to see. Some ignore the emotions and never find closure. Ignoring pain deprives your soul of the nourishment a loss can bring.

    Regardless of how you navigate the stages of grief, it is the right way.

    For me, it was a combination. I worked through most of it privately, but sometimes I needed to talk. I reflected a lot. I remembered happy times and times I wished I could take back.

    I went through his belongings reflectively and learned much about him. He kept beanies, pictures of classmates, and perfect attendance pins from grade school. I found them, along with every card I had ever given him. Birthday cards, Christmas cards, just because cards. All placed together in a drawer like they were great treasures.

    I felt overwhelmingly loved. It was at that time I was hit with an epiphany.

    It would make him sad to know that I blamed myself. He wanted me to be happy.

    When a tragic event happens, it is not our fault. The best thing we can do is honor the person we lost by living our lives to the fullest. After all, wouldn’t that be our wish for them?

    A peace came over me. It was clear. I understood that I was supposed to honor him by living my life to the fullest, appreciating every waking moment and all of the people around me that make my life special.

    Life is a gift. We never know when or how it will end. To honor ourselves, and those that love us, it is important to be true to ourselves and do the things that bring us happiness.

    I started doing the things that I had always wanted to do. I finished college, began writing, signed up for Jon Morrow’s course on guest blogging to help polish my skills, traveled more, and tried new things.

    I also learned that stopping to appreciate the small things around me. I saw them before but on autopilot. I never really stopped to appreciate their beauty.

    Through this tragedy I have found the keys to happiness: love yourself, appreciate the little things, forgive yourself for things that have already happened, and show love all those around as if it were your last day.

    Although this was a time of great sadness, it was also an unexpected time of personal growth, which resulted in a more meaningful life.

    As a result of this tragedy, I learned how to appreciate life and the people who love me, but most of all, I learned how to love myself and grant myself forgiveness.

    I think my Dad would be proud of me. I see him every time I look in the mirror. When I smile, it is him smiling back at me.

    Man enjoying the moment image via Shutterstock

  • Letting Go of the Past So You Can Be Reborn

    Letting Go of the Past So You Can Be Reborn

    Reborn

    “In the end what matters most is: How well did you live? How well did you love? How well did you learn to let go?” ~Unknown

    In a matter of days, it was all gone: the role in a company I adored, the future I had imagined, and our friend Max, so loved by all who knew him.

    The loss washed over me in a sudden gust. I was being called to begin again, to re-examine what I thought was important. And, in facing the feelings that arose with being stripped abruptly of these attachments, the inessential was forced to fall away, bowing to the essential.

    Re-birth can sound so majestic, so beautiful. It can signify a time of starting fresh, of being conjured anew, of creating a blank page for the future. Flowers are born anew each spring, butterflies born from their cocoons.

    The scent of re-birth can imply blue skies and endless vast horizons. Everything is suddenly awoken, stirring with possibility.

    But re-birth does not always occur as the delicate unfolding of blossoming petals. Sometimes, it entails the unnerving shriek of the phoenix consumed by the flames. Sometimes, it’s the pressure from the heat that turns coal into diamonds.

    Often, we must taste the darkness of death before we can rise from the ashes with a strength and courage we did not even know we had, until it was tested.

    In this experience of loss, I was initially distraught for days—brought to my knees as the figurative tower of everything I was building with all my heart and soul crumbled around me. Pieces of rubble showered me with a deep reality check, a wake up call.

    Part of me was angry, and tempted to launch into more “doing” to “prove myself” and to begin rebuilding immediately and swiftly so as to “undo” the loss.

    But that denial could not last long. Instead, I had to accept and be with the grief of what was gone, and surrender to the new task of letting my life speak to me and through me, rather than trying so hard to dictate all my days.

    When we cling to things, we struggle. When we grasp at what we desire, we suffocate it. When we identify with a laundry list of accomplishments, we always fall short in the end.

    You may have heard the saying “We are human beings, not human doings.” Living is a balance of both: centering yourself in who you are, and then expressing that core self through what you do in the world, as you grow within it.

    Our focus can so often be on the externals that we get caught up in the scramble to achieve and forget what is really important, what truly defines us.

    When our friend Max passed, people did not honor the castles he’d built, or the deeds he’d done. They honored the spirit of immense life and joy that he embodied, lived, and spread through being fully himself in every moment.

    They remembered how deliciously Max dreamed, how immensely he believed, and how sweetly he treated everyone around him.

    In death, we have the chance to appreciate and glorify the best in others; but why wait until then? Why not uplift each other and magnify our gifts while we are here, together, in this crazy beautiful flesh?

    In every moment, we have the chance to taste the fragility of life in death, and choose to re-invent ourselves through becoming re-born again and again and again.

    But first you must transform anything that does not serve, you must release what you hold on to so tightly, you must agree to melt.

    In truth, when the caterpillar goes into its cocoon, it actually proceeds to dissolve into a pool of atoms. It lets go of its old form and completely comes undone. That is how it reconfigures itself and transforms into its next glorious form as a butterfly.

    In my own life, I have taken a pause from re-creating. I know re-birth will come, and that soon it will be time to fly again. But before that, I immerse myself in the process of bowing with humility and utmost surrender, listening to the wisdom in the silence.

    It is time to re-evaluate all prior priorities, coming into closer contact with the values, people, and experiences I cherish, and looking for the beauty in the stillness, in the amorphous puddle of “not-knowing.”

    If you’re also dealing with loss and undergoing transition, can you release your attachments? Can you let go of what “things” and “titles” you identify with, those things you think define you, that really won’t matter in the end?

    Can you melt into ultimate love, into the powerful grace of knowing that you are both nothing and everything at once, a single drop in the powerful ocean of life, still shining as bright as the pinprick of a star?

    Can you let go, let go, let go, knowing that soon, when you are ready, it will be time to rise and soar?

    Man in stars image via Shutterstock

  • Try Not to Become Bitter: There Is More Good Than Bad

    Try Not to Become Bitter: There Is More Good Than Bad

    Man Silhouette

    “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” ~Martin Luther King Jr.

    A few years ago, when my younger son was about ten, the reality of the losses that go with living in this beautiful but flawed world suddenly hit him.

    I’ll never forget the conversation. This was a child born two months before 9/11, and since we live in a New York suburb and my husband worked across the street from the Twin Towers, what was a loss for so many has been my son’s reality his whole life. Both of my sons are in the generation of children who live in a forever-changed United States.

    My sons have also grown up with me as a mother, a person forever changed by two monumental personal losses when I was twenty and twenty-one.

    I am the youngest of five. Above me were two brothers, then my two sisters. Both of my brothers died in the same year when they were just twenty-three and twenty-seven years old. One brother died by his own hand after several years of battling mental illness. My other brother died in a plane crash in Pakistan with fifty-three other people just ten months later.

    What my son really wanted to know that day was “Why?” Why do we live in a world like this, where people we love die? What is the reasoning behind human life including such extraordinary pain? Why?

    The why of loss is the ultimate question, isn’t it? I can tell you that after twenty-five years of living with the loss of my brothers, the two people I was closest to in the world, I have no answers. Yet, that is the answer.

    We don’t know why these things happen. We can’t possibly fathom why terrible things have happened in human history, over and over, both in big ways and in small.

    How could our limited human brains possibly come up with a justification for the most horrific losses, the greatest pains? They can’t. It is beyond mere human understanding. It is a waste of precious time while we who are still here try to go on with our lives.

    So what do we do? How do we go on when we are faced with excruciating loss?

    I was a senior in college when my first brother died, and a professor (who was also a minister) gave me a crucial bit of advice that I took to heart. He simply said, “Try not to become bitter.”

    It is so easy to go the route of anger, resentment, self-pity, and the should-have mentality. It is worth fighting against, because it will eat you alive. Nothing is gained. The loss happened.

    I was so sad for years, and I still cry sometimes about them, but there is no undoing my brothers’ deaths. Trust me, I often thought time-travel would be the perfect answer to bring my brothers back because it would allow me to do something different to save them. It’s ridiculous and yet the brain will go there.

    The biggest load off my shoulders, and it took years, was complete acceptance that they were gone.

    Then, my college professor’s sage advice kicked in. Don’t become bitter. It happened, so now what? I’m still here. My brothers loved me so much; the last thing they would want is for me to not live my life to the fullest. I can hear them now: Live. Love. Be here now. Marvel at life. See the good in everything. It is there.

    So that is what I said to my son. They weren’t just words; it is how I live my life now. Life is good. There is beauty all around us. There is devastation and pain and people who hurt others, but who knows why?

    We can help others deal with pain, we can comfort others; we should do this: we are all in this crazy, beautiful world together.

    Just always remember: ‘bad’ things will happen, but there is more good than bad. There is more happiness than sorrow. There’s more life than death. It is all around us, as long as we are open to it.

    The why of loss does not have an answer. The why of life has an infinity of answers. I am not bitter. I am a believer that life is a mystery, but it’s amazing. I am here, so I will enjoy every precious moment. It’s what my brothers would want. I accept life, and I am in awe of it.

    Man silhouette via Shutterstock

  • Wanting More Time: Have You Lived Enough?

    Wanting More Time: Have You Lived Enough?

    Woman with hourglass

    “When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive—to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.” ~Marcus Aurelius

    I remember attending a lecture by the Tibetan monk Sogyam Rimpoche, author of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, in which, smiling all the while, he confessed, “So many people, they say, ‘I’m not afraid of death.’I tell you, they’re lying! Death? Very scary. Me? I’m very scared of death.”

    And I thought to myself, “Phew, if he’s scared, then it’s certainly okay that I’m scared too.”

    For many years after that, I carried a question around with me. “Have I lived enough yet?” Without hesitation my answer was always, “No way! Not by a long shot!”

    And then I’d follow this up with all the reasons why I wasn’t yet satisfied—I hadn’t left a mark on the world, wasn’t married yet, didn’t have children, didn’t know who was going to win this season of whatever reality TV show I was following.

    Even after I had built a decent career for myself, published a book that I know helps others, got married, had two adorable sons, and found out who won that season (and many others) of various TV shows and sports, the question and its familiar response still remained. Had I lived enough yet? No!

    It suddenly dawned on me that, if I continued to think this way, I would never experience fulfillment. I’d never arrive at that mythical destination I’d set out for myself where I’d finally cease yearning for more. Especially now that I had kids, this became abundantly clear.

    I’d always want to see what came next in their lives, to witness each step upon their journey into and throughout adulthood.

    Then if they had kids, I’d want to share as much of their lives as possible too. Feeling so much love in my heart, I knew I’d never reach a place where I’d had enough. I’d always want more.

    Realizing that I was chasing what could never be caught, I stopped to pose myself a new question.

    I asked, “What do I want my last thought in this world to be?” And my answer came back as something like, “I’d want to be thinking, Ahhhhh, that was good… that was nice… that was enough…”

    This new question might not have helped me much, if I didn’t remember something else, namely, that how we live this moment is the best predictor of how we will live in the future.

    So, it then occurred to me that, if I wanted to be thinking I have lived enough in the future, then the best way to get there would be to live with that exact same thought right now.

    Immediately, I started asserting this new notion that, already, I had actually lived enough. After all, there are many humans that are not blessed with the experience of even a second day of life on earth. How greedy was I willing to be? How selfish and ungrateful?

    The deeper this pronouncement that I had lived enough sunk into me, the greater the shroud of fear surrounding death lifted.

    Whether I initially had believed this or not, I slowly grew to the place where I knew, beyond any doubt, that I had lived enough. Yes! I had already lived enough! And, just like that, all my fears vanished and I finally felt free, overflowing with a sense of appreciation and contentment.

    Ever since, I’ve been discussing this concept of “enough” with others in the throes of grief and loss.

    What I explain is that “enough” is always a value judgment, rather than something that can be quantified or measured. It’s about perspective, a determination on our part to choose gratitude for what we’ve been granted over regret for what we have lost or fears about what we might lose.

    This can be tremendously powerful, though admittedly very hard at times. Is it possible to view the death of a young child and understand that he or she lived enough?

    Can a parent suffering through such a loss perceive their abbreviated time with their son or daughter as enough?

    When a friend or parent or anyone else we care about passes away, can we experience the time we had with them as enough?

    The answer is yes. It is possible, if and when we choose to exercise our right to invoke this perspective.

    We can view whatever time we’ve been given through the continually available lens of gratitude, appreciation, celebration, and love. We can understand each moment as a gift, as “enough.”

    To be a human is little short of a miracle. In the limitlessly vast universe of atoms and particles and stars and planets, gases and quarks and molecules, stones and trees and bugs and platypuses, of all the possible manifestations of life that are possible, we have been given the rarest of privileges of experiencing what it is like to be human. That’s cool!

    Just by being here, we’ve already beaten the odds, no matter how many more minutes of this miracle we get to experience.

    We know when we lived enough by knowing this right now, during this and all future moments, even while we crave to drink in as much as life continues to offer us. We appreciate that no more is needed.

    We’re thankful and, from the wisdom of this thankfulness, we smile, at ourselves and all around us. We’ve already lived enough—and that’s a beautiful thing.

    Woman with hourglass image via Shutterstock

  • The Best Way to Help Someone Who’s Grieving (Including Yourself)

    The Best Way to Help Someone Who’s Grieving (Including Yourself)

    “Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have—life itself.” ~Walter Anderson

    Yesterday marked the second anniversary of my stepmother passing away. I still remember that day vividly; I remember going to work like it was any other day, mulling over life, and then making my journey back home from work. As I walked into my apartment building I received the call from my dad to tell me the news.

    I went inside, got changed, laid on my bed, and sobbed for hours until my flatmate came home and consoled me.

    He then so thoughtfully drove me over to my sister’s place, as he knew I needed to be with my family, and still to this day I am in gratitude to him, as I was in shock and didn’t know what I needed at that point in time.

    The topic of grief is very close to my heart for a few reasons, partly because my family and I experienced grief in so many different forms over the past two years, because I am still in the process of grieving the loss of a relationship, and also because I don’t think it is talked about openly often enough.

    Grief is looked at as this icky, foreign, forbidden feeling when it is a perfectly normal part of life, and something that almost every person has or will experience in this lifetime.

    While different people experience grief in different ways, there are universal themes that we can all relate to, such as the feeling of loss, hurt, and anger; and I am passionate about people feeling and being supported through the grieving process.

    Yesterday I watched a beautiful video on dealing with grief, and the parts that resonated with me the most were around the concept of dealing with and accepting grief, and also how to be there for someone who is grieving.

    When someone experiences grief, whether through the death of someone, or the loss of a relationship, job, or pet, there is no such thing as dealing with it or coming to terms with it.

    The reality is, we actually don’t ever fully accept it or come to terms with it because we feel that if we accept it, that makes it okay.        

    Sometimes we portray to the outside world that we are okay, happy, and dealing with it just fine when, in fact, we might not be. The world wants to see that we are doing okay and getting our “mojo” back because if we’re okay, that makes everybody else feel okay because they don’t have to see us in pain. And ah, the sigh of relief they can breathe.

    Flowing on from this is the topic of how we can help someone who is grieving.

    When someone we know is grieving, our natural human instinct is to try to cheer them up because we don’t want to see our nearest and dearest in pain.

    However, in essence, what we are actually doing is invalidating how that person feels (unintentionally) because we want them to feel better.

    I know from recent personal experience there have been times when I have wanted, needed to talk about my grief to friends and family but have felt forced to suppress it because of the discomfort it may extend onto other people.

    It’s as though there’s a big elephant in the room, which everybody knows is there, but doesn’t feel comfortable enough to look in the eye.

    The most supportive and kindest thing we can do when we know someone who is grieving is to be with their grieving.

    So often we try to change how they are feeling, distract them from the pain, or cheer them up, but the best thing we can do, as a supporter, is to just be with them, however they show up on the day.

    Sometimes this might mean they want to see you, sometimes they might not, and other times they might want to be surrounded by as many people as possible.

    Allow it, don’t fight it, and be okay with seeing that person in pain; you are giving them the gift of healing by doing this.

    Focus on compassion, humility, and presence.

    In times of grief, I encourage you to show up as your authentic self, which in turn gives others the permission to do the same, whether we are the griever or the supporter.

    Whatever the catalyst for your grief, it absolutely must be expressed rather than supressed, whether the loss occurred yesterday, last month, or last year.

    The painful and harsh reality is that we will never get back what we had, but eventually we will form a new normal, and we form that new normal as an expanded version of ourselves.

    Allowing ourselves to go through the grieving process and express whatever emotions arise is a truly beautiful thing, because what’s on the other side of that grief is the ability to see the blessing and lesson; we begin to see the gift of this life we have been left to live and the sheer importance of making every day count.

    So, if I may, I’d like to leave you with this.

    How are you going to make today count, this moment, and this very minute?

  • The Stage of Grief You’ve Never Heard of But May Be Stuck In

    The Stage of Grief You’ve Never Heard of But May Be Stuck In

    “Life is a process of becoming. A combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.” ~Anais Nin

    Since I was a little girl I have believed in the power of wishes. I’ve never missed a first star, a dandelion plume, or load of hay (load of hay, load of hay, make a wish and turn away) to express to the universe my deepest desires.

    When I was fifteen and my dad was at the end stages of cancer, I would wish on the first star, not to save him, but to plead a peaceful end. Since my oldest son passed away very unexpectedly in October of 2010, I have made hundreds of wishes to remember every detail I can about the boy who was the other half of my heart.

    In the three years since Brandon’s death, I believe my wish to keep his memory alive have been answered by learning to turn my “whys” into “hows.”

    Asking “why” isn’t one of the official stages of grief, but maybe it should be. Anger and denial get all the attention, while getting stuck in the “why” freezes you in your tracks and prevents any opportunity for growth or movement toward healing.

    Not being able to let go of needing to know “why” forces you to focus on the rear view mirror. It keeps you in the past and prevents you from living in a way that honors the person or thing you have lost.

    It’s in my nature to ask why. “Why” can be a powerful question that leads to clarity and progress. It can also be a roadblock in the one-way traffic of life.

    Life doesn’t come with reverse, only neutral and various speeds of forward progress. “Why” firmly plants us in neutral, and that’s where I was in the months after Brandon’s death.

    I obsessed over the “why.” My brain whirled at sonic speed looking for it. I assumed if I found the “why,” I would find comfort and would be able to pick up the pieces and move on. I came up with elaborate theories of why Brandon died.

    Brandon was home on leave from the Army when he passed away, but was scheduled to be deployed within the next few months. I spun that into my favorite “why theory,” that dying at home saved him some horrible combat death in Afghanistan.

    It made me feel better, briefly, but I was still left with the bigger question that would never be answered—why did it have to happen at all?

    “What’s your why?” has become a motivational catch phrase. I remember seeing an inspirational quote on Pinterest after Brandon died, with a picture of a scantily clad, fit chick with “What’s your why?” typed beneath her sculpted abs. I shouted at her in the quiet of my room to eff-off—my “why” died!

    “What’s your why?” sounds absurd to the grieving person, and it’s not comforting!

    Not only had my “why” died, I also found myself pleading with the universe for the explanation to “why this happened. “Why” is a question with no answer when it comes to loss. “Why” offers more questions than comfort.

    Another word that isn’t included in the official grief process, but again, I think it should be, is “how.” “How” explores possibilities. “How” shines a light into the future. Exploring “how” to live a life that honors the memory of my son made my wishes come true.

    After realizing being stuck in “why” would never ease the pain of losing him, I began to realize that how I live the rest of my life is the outward manifestation of my son’s spirit.

    It is the only way anyone will ever get to know my son, and the only way I can keep his memory alive. If I continued to live in the “why,” I would diminish his memory, but by living in the “how” I magnify his memory by my actions.

    It doesn’t make the grief go away; rather, it ignites my grief as a powerful vessel for change.

    My “how” is manifested in cultivating a life of adventure and using radical self-care to ensure that I have the energy to embrace a life that reflects Brandon’s best qualities.

    It is a labor of love for my son that I embrace life, take risks, be courageous, pay it forward, and act in a way that makes people ask what I’ve been smoking. My actions are how I keep the memory of my son alive; it is how my wish has been granted.

    If you or a loved one is stuck in the “why,” let it go—it simply doesn’t exist. It’s time to live in the “how.”

  • Life Lessons on What Really Matters from a Dying Man

    Life Lessons on What Really Matters from a Dying Man

    All We Need Is Love

    “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” ~Mahatma Gandhi

    You know how you can remember exactly when you found out that Michael Jackson died? I think it’s called flashbulb memory. It’s when something traumatic happens and because of that, you remember everything else that was occurring at the time. I was on a bus in Santorini after watching an amazing sunset in Oia.

    The day I found out my boyfriend was dying was just like that, but worse. I remember everything.

    Let me digress.

    We spent the week leading up to the surgery that was his last chance at life at Vancouver General Hospital, where we passed the days planning our casual beach wedding in Tulum.

    We pictured it down to the last very last detail. I would walk down the aisle (barefoot of course) to Bob Marley’s “Turn Your Lights Down Low” and a mariachi band would serenade us at dinner. It gave him hope and something positive to think about when the pangs of hunger threatened his usually calm demeanor.

    They made him fast for days as we waited for a surgery room to finally open.

    According to the doctors, the likelihood of him surviving the surgery was only 50%. We savored each moment as best we could, enjoying each other’s company and focusing on love.

    When the nurse came to tell us it was time, I was taking a very rare moment in the hospital cafeteria, as I didn’t want to eat in front of him. I rushed up the elevator and made just in time to accompany him downstairs.

    It was one of the only times I cried in front of him. I didn’t know if I should say goodbye, just in case.

    I looked into his brave eyes. I told him I loved him. I held his hand until I was no longer allowed. The doctor told me not to cry.

    I made my way to the family room where my best friend and our families waited. I felt loved. And scared to death. I remember thinking that this is what it means when they say “blood curdling fear.” I got it and I thought it was fascinating.

    The surgery was supposed to take about five hours, so my best friend took me to my dad’s hotel so I could take shower and a break. I lasted about fifteen minutes before I needed to go back.

    That’s the way it was in those days. Every cell in my entire being simply needed to be there. When I returned, I noticed a bridal magazine in waiting room. I flipped through and found my most beautiful dream dress. I hoped it was a good omen.

    Two hours later, the doctor came in. He looked defeated. I could barely stand up.

    He sat down and with a tremendous amount of compassion (and tears in his eyes), he told me that they had found Benito’s liver completely covered in tumors and therefore a resection or transplant was not possible.

    I remember the moment when courage and fear collided. I asked, “Is he gonna die?”

    And, I remember the doctor’s answer, “We’ve done a bit to make him more comfortable, but there is nothing else we can do.”

    I curled up into a tiny ball on the hospital chair with my head between my legs and sobbed.

    The doctor assigned me the task of telling Benito. He said it would be better coming from me.

    I remember sitting in the corridor holding his mom’s hand. Waiting. Doctors rushed passed with patients on stretchers. I thought of my mom. At the time, she was MIA in Costa Rica. She didn’t even know he was sick. I didn’t even know she was alive. I wanted her to hold me.

    When I saw him, lying there like a helpless child covered in tubes, my breath escaped me for a moment. But I told myself to stay calm. This next part was about him. It was all about him.

    He was groggy from the anesthesia, but he looked at me. With jolt of last minute courage, I put my hand on his boney shoulder and I told him everything. He was too high to really get it.

    He went in and out of consciousness. Each time he woke up, he asked in almost a joking way, “Am I dying? Am I really dying?” I retold the story, barely holding it together. He told jokes. One time, much to the nurse’s amusement, he even belted out an AC/DC tune while attempting a feeble air guitar. He was awesome.

    But two things he said that day, while moving in and out of drug-induced sleep, have shaped my life forever. The first was, “If I only I had ten more years, just think of all the good I could do.” And the second was, “I feel sorry for you.”

    I was shocked, so I asked him why. He said, “Because your boyfriend is dying. We were supposed to get married and adopt babies from Peru” followed by a joke of course, just to cheer me up.

    He said, “Now don’t go dating any of my friends while I’m gone. You’re hot and I know them. They’re gonna try.” Like I said, awesome.

    I think of these two things often in my life—that compassion for others and that strong drive to make a difference in the world.

    Turns out, when a thirty-one-year old party-boy finds out he’s dying, compassion for others and making a difference is the driving force. And, making the entire recovery room laugh of course.

    This is a lesson I’ll never forget. I got my ten more years. And perhaps you will too.

    What can you do today that will make a difference?

    How can you have more compassion for others?

    How can you bring in laughter?

    Perhaps this is what it’s all about.

    Photo by Bethauthau

  • Dealing and Healing After Loss: 9 Tips to Help You Get Through the Day

    Dealing and Healing After Loss: 9 Tips to Help You Get Through the Day

    Woman Silhouette

    “Our strength grows out of our weaknesses.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

    If you don’t know where to start, start anywhere. I keep telling myself that every time I am stuck.

    Well, I’ve been a widow for year and a half, and I am twenty-four years old. Maybe that’s the way to start here.

    My husband had cancer. We tried to enjoy the time before his passing as best we could, so he would die with memories, not dreams. And I guess that the fact that he died content is quite an accomplishment in our relationship.

    But it doesn’t change anything in my sorrow. People keep telling me that I am young, I have my life ahead of me, I should forget, move on, stop mourning, take anti-depressants, and usually they add that I will find somebody else and be happy again.

    This advice makes me sad because I am struggling to live “here and now,” not in the future. I want to live every minute of my life in fulfilling way. And to be honest, I’m kind of scared of the future and I don’t have the possibility to live in the past.

    My whole life changed. There is no way to prepare for loss of the loved one. But I had to be functioning in this world, even when my soul was screaming for help.

    I didn’t let myself break down. I was wearing a mask of a strong, independent woman that deals with everything. I work, study for my master’s degree, have hobbies, and take care of my family. I seem “normal.”

    But deep down, I was broken to pieces. I still am. But that’s okay. I just build myself again like a puzzle. I see those puzzle pieces more clearly now—who my real friends are, what really matters, and what I care about in my life. I have my priorities straight and now I have to build myself up.

    I was searching in books and on the Internet, talking with my friends, other widows, and in therapy, trying to discover what I should do to get through the day more happily. I was looking for help creating peace—just for me, not for the mask I put on for others.

    Here are some tips that help me keep going and be peaceful with myself, beyond the mask.

    1. Write about your feelings.

    I keep writing in my journal about my life. I am introverted and I don’t like sharing my sadness with everyone around me. Occasionally, I let my brother-in-law read it. I write about my husband, how I miss him, and what makes me smile or cry in my day. It’s a way to organize the stuff in my head.

    When you make time to explore your feelings in writing, it’s easier to process them.

    2. Make acceptance your goal.

    Keeping a journal helped me move toward acceptance. I stopped asking, “Why him, why me, why us?” I wrote it down so many times that I lost interest in searching for an answer that I couldn’t figure out. I just accepted it. And the same thing happened with many things I repeatedly wrote down or said out loud; I just sorted them in myself and could focus on other things I had to process.

    You may not feel you can accept what happened right now, but keep it as a goal in your mind and you will slowly move toward acceptance and inner peace.

    3. Find your “flow” activity.

    Music describes how I feel and it makes me comfortable just to listen to the emotions of other people. I keep singing, too. I’m not so good, but for three or five minutes, I am myself.

    I sing the emotions with my mind, heart, and body and it makes me feel alive and whole again. It’s possible to find this state of mind in other activities—sewing, painting, cooking, composing music, or creating anything else.

    Fully immerse yourself in an activity or task that makes you feel whole.

    4. Stay physically active.

    I started jogging/running every day. I prefer night runs, where I clear my head. I never liked running, but my challenge is to put on my running shoes and go outside every day. I don’t mind the weather or if I run 600 m or 15 kilometers—it’s about me, my thoughts, and my body.

    Aside from this, I do martial arts, but yoga has also helped me to stay focused and relaxed within my body and mind.

    Exercise in the way that feels good to you. It helps in your fight against sadness and depression.

    5. Keep your balance and take care of yourself.

    Usually my life deals with extremes. To work it out, it’s about learning time-management and putting everything in balance—time for myself (relaxation, reading), for school/work, time for nourishment (keep eating properly), for exercise and hobbies, time to socialize so I don’t isolate myself (meeting friends and family, volunteer work), and time devoted to my health (doctor’s appointments, for body and mind).

    Balancing your assorted needs can have a huge impact on your life. Balance isn’t always easy, so don’t stress about it. Just keep trying.

    6. Seek uplifting information.

    I don’t watch/read bad news, or at least I try to avoid them. I look for entertainment in my low moments (videos with cats help). I also used to read books about widowhood just to know that I am “normal” in my behavior, in my feelings.

    I needed confirmation because I thought I was going crazy. Now I prefer to look for the positive instead of focusing on the depressing things in my life. I search for humanity and beauty in life and focus on my appreciation for those things.

    Nurturing a sense of gratitude can help you survive some of the sadder days.

    7. Give yourself permission not to be okay.

    I had to figure it out by myself. Nobody else could tell me. I now know that I don’t have to put on a mask, to pretend and be strong. I just have to let myself experience my feelings and accept that I am not okay. I have to let myself cry for days. I know I will always climb up again after I am done. I always find a reason to keep going.

    Sometimes we are our own worst enemy. Don’t be hard on yourself for feeling down. Give yourself a break.

    8. Keep your mind, senses, heart, and soul open.

    Every day, every minute of my “here and now” world, I try to keep open to experiences and people. I have learned how to sew on a sewing machine and do sign language. I’ve started conversations with sad strangers just because I want to cheer them up for a while.

    Little everyday tasks like these get me out of my comfort zone. And I try to be grateful for things I haven’t seen before.

    Appreciate the beauty of the ordinary, because you already know that nothing lasts forever.

    9. Let other people be there for you.

    Widowhood and grieving are not contagious, but some people act that way and distance themselves. Mostly, they just don’t know how to respond, to help, to exist nearby.

    Of all the things that have helped me, I am most thankful for people that have supported me with their presence (face-to-face, through e-mail, or on the phone). I am grateful for the ones that took me to dinner/coffee and let me talk about what I miss the most about my husband. Or just gave me a hug.

    I wish for everyone who is going through something like this somebody who understands. Who is there for you, even when you say “I am okay” but tears are falling down. You are doing okay. In your own unique way.

    Photo by mrhayata

  • How to Really Live Instead of Merely Existing

    How to Really Live Instead of Merely Existing

    On Top of the World

    “Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.” ~Norman Cousins

    “Come here and take Dora out to get some milk.”

    With those simple words, I knew my father’s time was short. Not a man to ask for help, I knew that milk was just an excuse to get me to come to his side.

    My father was a gruff, angry, bitter man who had sealed himself off from nearly everyone. I spoke with him at 7:00 am every Saturday morning for fifteen years. In those conversations he complained about nearly every human interaction he had experienced in the space between my calls.

    I rarely missed a call and usually alerted him if I knew I would not be able to call him at the designated hour. Nonetheless, he was blunt about his annoyance if 7:00 am passed without a call, and I heard about it loud and clear.

    But, even though I lived only thirty minutes away and my calls were obviously important to him in some way, I actually saw him only about once each year. That was the way he wanted it. 

    That February morning when I arrived at his apartment, I was shocked by what I saw. Dad gasped for air and he was thin, so thin that I could easily make out the knobs of his knees under the jeans that gaped at his waist.

    A walker I didn’t know he needed was parked beside his chair. A wheelchair borrowed from a loan closet was folded beside the front door. I had no idea that my father was so ill, and obviously had been very ill for a long time.

    He didn’t protest when I told him I was calling 911.

    At the hospital, he yielded to the efficient care of the attending ER physician. He didn’t like it but he yielded, eyeing the doctor with suspicion.

    Dora, my father’s companion of more than twenty years, fretted that people die in hospitals, and she wanted him to come home to their apartment before something awful happened to him.

    Hadn’t something awful already happened? Didn’t it happen a long, long time ago?

    By all accounts, Dad was a sweet child, a devoted son and brother, an irreverent jokester. But, his marriage to my mother was loud, tense, and turbulent because of her mental illness and his dependence on alcohol.

    Nonetheless, when she died three decades ago, he took her death very hard and really never recovered.

    Long before he entered the hospital that day, from childhood through adulthood and into his later years, my father died bit by bit. He lost his sweetness. He grew hard and mean and he drew high walls around Dora and himself.

    For a time, Dad and Dora had a dog. When the little Cairn terrier died, they closed in even tighter, virtually never leaving their apartment except to venture to the grocery story less than one mile away.

    During the week between his arrival at the hospital and his return home to his apartment under hospice care, I learned a lifetime of lessons from my father.

    At the time, I was grieving the end of my own thirty-five year marriage and I was suffering. I had resolved some time before never to become bitter or angry at my husband or at life, but watching my father approach death as someone already dead truly taught me that lacking bitterness and anger was not enough. It was time for me to live.

    What were those lessons that taught me to live?

    Lesson 1: Become aware without judgment.

    Don’t let your opinions get in the way of being aware. I had not been able to see my father clearly because I judged him for how he lived and how he treated others. Judging him for that did not change him. But, in letting go of my judgment of him, I did change myself.

    Lesson 2: Release expectations.

    Unfulfilled expectations lead to disappointment. When you release your expectations, you become open to options. In a sense, your world broadens and you invite possibilities that otherwise might not exist.

    I watched my father’s world grow smaller as he experienced disappoint throughout his life. In having specific expectations, he missed many of life’s opportunities. Likewise, when I released my expectations about him, I found myself much more comfortable in his presence and far more patient with his actions.

    Lesson 3: Let the light in. 

    As hard as it may be to throw open the curtains and let the sun shine in, just do it. Look for the good.  Surround yourself with positive people. Pursue activities that you enjoy.

    My father rejected the very things that could have let the light in for him. He ended relationships. He stopped going out into the world. He kept the walls up and people out.

    In my own way, I had done some of the same things. As my marriage frayed, I had hunkered down declining to participate in my own life. When I realized that, I began to reach out to my friends and family. I picked up my camera and took myself to my favorite photography spots. It was hard when I started; it got easier.

    Lesson 4: Fall in love with who you are. Right now.

    Don’t wait until you lose ten pounds, finish your degree, learn a second language, climb Mt. Everest, or even finish your morning coffee. Commit to loving yourself as you are right now. My father had complicated views about himself and others. I suspect he didn’t like himself much. I doubt that he ever gave much thought to whether he loved himself.

    As his life was winding down and my marriage was ending, an interesting thing happened. At that improbable time, I chose to love myself.

    I committed to treating myself kindly and gently. I allowed myself to become aware without judgment. I released myself from unreasonable expectations I had about how I should be. I gave myself the freedom to be positive and enjoy.

    In that week, I came to see my father for exactly who he was and to love him fiercely despite the angry face he showed the world. I also came to lovingly acknowledge that in a short time I would be letting go of him as well as my marriage.

    On the other side of that acknowledgment I knew I would find my new life and I would thrive.

    Photo by rettenberg

  • Dealing with Loss: 3 Uplifting Truths About Death and Grief

    Dealing with Loss: 3 Uplifting Truths About Death and Grief

    Enlightenment

    “Don’t be afraid of death; be afraid of an unlived life. You don’t have to live forever; you just have to live.” ~Natalie Babbitt

    I stared at my reflection in the mirror as my face contorted into a painful grimace, tears streaming down my cheeks. My throat constricted to keep the sobbing at bay. My grandmother was dying, and this is how I coped with death: by falling apart.

    I was lucky; this is the way death is “supposed” to go. Grammy was 96 and had lived out her old age in comfort.

    While I knew I would miss her kisses and the way she generously dished out advice, it would be selfish to insist on keeping her here, as if that were an option. Grammy said that she was ready and that this plane held little thrill for her anymore. The inevitable end was here, and yet I was still a giant mess.

    I’d recently been through a wonderful and dizzying period of self-discovery and growth. I’d dug my self-confidence up from the basement and lifted her to the heavens. I had gotten a handle on all my self-sabotaging behaviors, like drinking wine to escape. I even wrote a popular course to help others break bad habits, gain a sense of purpose, and start living big.

    I finally felt like my real life had begun, like I knew who I was, and my need for validation from others had finally dropped away.

    Yet my present breakdown was glaring evidence that we’re never done growing. We’re always evolving to higher and higher ground. We will never “arrive” and there is no final destination in this life, except for death.

    In the coming days as I wrestled with my grief, I was presented with the following three uplifting truths about death.

    1. Death is the ultimate deadline.

    I’m a True Blood fan, but from watching the show and seeing how vampires handle the understanding that they’ve been granted everlasting mortality, it occurs to me that none of them really accomplish all that much.

    Take the case of Eric Northman, who was a Viking when he was turned into a vampire. He’s been roaming the planet for 1,000 years, give or take a few hundred. You’d think that with all that time to dream, plan, and accomplish he could be a motivational speaker, prolific author or artist, or a talk show host with success that rivals Oprah’s. So what is he? He’s a bar owner.

    Death provides humans with the ultimate deadline. Behaviors that hasten this deadline, health-destroying habits like sloth and overeating, are a means of living suicide, of acting dead, and distracting us from fully living.

    When we’re presented with evidence of our own mortality, so many of us wake up and decide that we’re going to cast aside these old habits, figure out what would make us feel happy and fulfilled, and then go do that.

    2. We can’t enjoy life in the absence of darkness.

    Imagine the most glorious spring day of your life. You’re walking around outside, enjoying the perfect temperature that supports your physical comfort. The sunshine makes you feel perky and happy, the trees are blooming, and you feel hopeful and alive.

    Now what if the only weather you’d ever known was like this spring day? Most of us would immediately say, “Yes, that would be great! That’s the only weather I’d ever need to know.”

    There are people who live in climates like this year round and they appreciate it, but the reason they can appreciate it is because they know there are places like London where it rains a lot, or places that are cold and windy and dark for much of the year.

    If all we were ever shown was perfection and we never witnessed a contrast to that perfection, we wouldn’t have a frame of reference for knowing how perfect it is.

    We can’t enjoy life in the absence of darkness. We need a contrast—of sickness to truly enjoy and appreciate our health, and to endure rainy days to fully appreciate the sunshine. We need to know that death exists in order to truly appreciate life and to fully live it.

    3. Grief is fleeting.

    As I stood in front of that mirror, my throat feeling closed off as I tried to keep back the sobs, it occurred to me to physically open up into my grief, to relax into it and to receive it into my body rather than continuing to resist it.

    I knew that physically resisting my grief was painful in my chest and throat. I became curious to know what it would feel like if I allowed the grief to come to me.

    I leaned into it. When I stopped resisting it and I breathed my grief into my lungs and tried to let it fill me, a most curious thing happened: my grief escaped me.

    When you let it in, grief comes and goes. When you resist grief, and when you close your body physically to the experience, then grief hovers around you in an attempt to gain entry. When you invite grief in, it will come and set a spell, and then it wanders off while other emotions visit with you.

    When you lose a loved one, grief will come back to visit with you, again and again. But if each time grief comes knocking you allow it come in, over time, grief will come back less and less frequently and for shorter and shorter periods of time.

    Eventually, when you think of your loved one, rather than thinking of loss, you’ll honor their memory with a smile.

    Photo by Hartwig HKD

  • What Makes Life Worth Living: Create Tiny Epic Moments

    What Makes Life Worth Living: Create Tiny Epic Moments

    Happy Together

    “One day your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure it’s worth watching.” ~Unknown

    What do you think you’ll see as you lie dying?

    Upon first reading this quote, I thought “Unknown” was talking about living life large. Filling days with great achievements and big moments. Going for it. Having no regrets.

    I lived much of my life to create those major moments.

    And maybe that is what “Unknown” was talking about.

    But it’s no longer what I’m talking about when I think about the worth of my life.

    High school English teacher Monique Cassidy wrote about a short story she had her students read called “Bullet in the Brain” by Tobias Wolff. In it, a man was shot in the head and dying.

    I don’t want to ruin the story for you, but this man’s last thoughts were not the biggies.

    His last thoughts were the small, visceral moments. In particular, playing baseball in a field when he was a child.

    Cassidy asked her students to write about the significant moments in their lives. One student, who has traveled to Paris, did not write about climbing the Eiffel Tour. She wrote about trading bread with a friend at breakfast that morning in the hotel, swapping her croissant for a baguette.

    Last week, my coach asked me what I’d done so far that morning. Actually she wanted me to write a poem about it to spur creativity.

    “I don’t want to write about it,” I said. “I haven’t done anything worth writing about.”

    My list of activities so far included folding laundry, making breakfast, and returning books to the library.

    “Good,” she said. :”Write about that. That is life.”

    We all have a few unforgettable moments in life. The big ones. When your mate dropped to one knee. Scoring the winning goal. You can probably short-list yours.

    But today, I want to celebrate the unheralded yumminess of the teeny-tiny moments that make up your life. Because my coach was right. Those are the moments that cumulatively create a life well-lived.

    While I can’t begin to guess what will run through my mind when I die, I hope it is a moment like this:

    When my daughter was maybe two or three, we were visiting my in-laws on Lake Michigan, staying in a lakefront A-Frame cabin they call the chalet.

    We came in from the beach one hot afternoon and my daughter and I went upstairs, turned on the window air conditioner, and fell asleep on the cool white sheets to the hum of the A/C.

    While we napped, we must have turned to face one another and a couple of hours later we opened our eyes simultaneously.

    In that moment, in the cool room on a hot day, I looked into her gigantic chocolate eyes and felt I could see into her soul, so trusting, so loving. I really saw her. And I felt seen and loved.

    We’ve had many big moments in our family. Traveling to China to pick up my daughter. Paris for my 40th birthday. Buying our dream house on my daughter’s first day of first grade.

    But I hope it will be the teeny tiny moments like napping with my daughter that will flash before my eyes. For in that moment, there was nothing but love.

    When it comes to the end, isn’t that all there is?

    I invite you to reflect back about those teeny tiny significant moments that have made up your life.

    To try to jog your memory, think about when you have felt trusting or content or seen, really seen. What was happening in that moment? Who was present? Try to engage all your senses. What did you see? Hear? Feel?

    How could you create more of those moments? Start by being present. Really see people. Look into their eyes and see them. Recognize love is all around.

    Celebrate those moments.

    Because while climbing to the top of the Eiffel Tour is epic, trading bread with a friend is loving.

    While vacationing on the lake is fun, looking into my daughter’s deep brown eyes and seeing her soul makes life worthwhile.

    Thank you for the reminder, “Unknown.”

    Photo by Edward Lim

  • How Feeling My Pain Made Me Feel More Alive

    How Feeling My Pain Made Me Feel More Alive

    “We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.” ~Kenji Miyazawa

    I used to run from pain.

    My father died suddenly when I was six. For years I stuffed it down, never letting anyone know my emotions or how I was feeling, and I ran from situations that could cause me to lose, to feel pain.

    My heart would jump and feel fear every time I received bad news or a “bad” email from a boss. I only wanted to feel good things. I stayed out of relationships for fear of the eventual loss and bad feelings, not realizing that I was missing out on all the beauty in between.

    A year ago, my journey to feeling pain began. I had decided a few months before that I would open myself up to a relationship. I was ready to see what was out there. I was ready to feel, whatever it was. I met an amazing guy, and I thought he was the weirdest but most fascinating and beautiful person I’d met in a while.

    There was lots of love and tenderness between us. I think we were very similar, and we both subconsciously wanted ours to be a beautiful, painless relationship. We were precious with the time we spent together and never fought.

    The first pain between us came after a few months. I wanted to know where this relationship was “going.” I wanted him to be my boyfriend, officially.

    He told me he felt almost everything for me—intellectual stimulation, passion—but not an emotional connection. He wanted our relationship to continue on as it was: seeing each other three or four times a week, no expectations of what this was or would be.

    Our relationship was already beautiful. Why did that need to change? We committed to only seeing each other without calling each other boyfriend and girlfriend.

    As time went on, I stuffed down all of my doubts about our relationship. I pushed away the full days when, for some unknowable reason, I wanted to end it. (I had no solid explanation, but a feeling.)

    I ignored the red flags of someone who was just not ready to commit. I ignored my heart telling me that this wasn’t the kind of relationship I really wanted. But I continued on as before, making the moments we had together as happy and as beautiful and as magical as I could, and he did too.

    Until right before I was leaving for a weeklong work trip. He asked me out of the blue what I thought about seeing other people. Valentine’s Day had been a week before, and I had seen no signs of him feeling this way. He had gifted me with a small figurine of an elephant carved inside a latticed egg because he knew I loved elephants.

    I felt sharp pain and shock. We were walking my dog, and I walked away from him and was silent until we made it back up to my apartment. “Lauren,” he said. “I just want to talk to you.” Please just let me do that, his eyes said.

    So we did; we talked: He told me how in the past he’d had relationship doubts and hadn’t expressed them and how he felt that relationship had gone on without him. The next morning gave no conclusion, but we were tender with each other, and he whispered, “I’ll miss you,” before he walked down the subway stairs to work.

    When I returned a week later, he picked me up at the airport, and when we got back to my apartment, he coldly told me he couldn’t sleep over: He wanted to be emotionally open to other people.

    My heart broke. I cried and made him stay the night. And I was a wreck the whole next day. But something in me felt freed; something in me felt that this was the best thing that had ever happened to me.

    I had been so afraid to tell him how I felt, to tell him my own doubts and insecurities about how he made me feel, that I just didn’t tell him. Crying and feeling the emotional hurt of the split was incredibly painful, but it was the truest and most raw emotion I’d felt in months.

    When I looked at the elephant figurine he had given me, I realized that it wasn’t beautiful; it was trapped inside a structure of its own making.

    The fear that was holding me back had come true: that we could break up. But it happened, I felt it, and I was still there, still very much myself.

    Two weeks later, I found out my beloved dog Bella had cancer, and a week later, I had to do one of the hardest things I’ve had to do—take her to the vet and put her to sleep.

    Even as her body broke down, her spirit stayed strong: At the vet, I left her on a friend’s lap and briefly left the room, and when I returned, she tried to jump into my arms.

    Two of my closest friends were with me in the room, and after it happened we just hugged each other and cried. It felt strangely good and freeing to be able to cry together with someone, to feel pain together.

    A part of me thought that the loss of my relationship was just preparing me for this loss.

    Through all of this, my older brother had been fighting cancer.

    He was diagnosed almost three and a half years ago and had fought it with his life ever since. In between chemo and radiation, he surfed, traveled, coached his kids’ soccer teams, and was an inspiration to all who knew him.

    A month ago, he needed an emergency visit to the hospital: He had fluid in his lungs and spent five days with a nurse visiting his home to drain them. I went home to see him and he was thin, carrying an oxygen tank around with him, but his spirits were high.

    He was happy to see me. I told him about a recent trip to Turkey, about Bella, about my relationship. He listened to my pain and gave me advice.

    A couple months back, he succumbed to his disease, surrounded by his wife and two children. At his funeral the priest, who knew him well, recounted how my brother told him that the past three years had been some of the happiest of his life.

    I know my brother felt great pain, physically and emotionally, and he hid it from most of us. But he pushed through it to give his wife and daughters as much of himself as he could.

    And now I’m in so much pain that it all runs together. The relationship, my dog, my brother—I don’t know what to feel first. But the strangest thing is that it is the most alive I’ve felt in years, allowing myself to just feel all that I am feeling, and not judge it or push it away.

    Allow yourself to feel pain, to sit with it. To build relationships that you may one day lose, for whatever reason.

    Holding pain will be the hardest thing you do. Feeling pain is the bravest fight you will fight. Running, avoidance, fear in whatever form—it all brings you further away from being a full, feeling person.

    Pain is clarifying, cleansing. True.

    You feel this pain because you loved so hard, because you felt so hard.

    Walk bravely through pain’s cleansing fire, although it scares you, although it burns so bright that you walk in knowing it will hurt. You will come out on the other side stronger and more complete.

    I don’t know what your pain is. We all hold some pain inside of us; we carry it with us. And that’s fine. It really is.

    There is a beauty in pain that that even happiness cannot touch, because you risked, you loved, you let yourself feel. Pain will be the thing that brings you to yourself, before and after pain—before, there is happiness; after, there is transcendence.

    Pain is a part of your experience, not something to run from or escape. Pain will find you somehow, and going through its cleansing fire will be one of the truest things that can happen to you in your life if you let it.

  • Be the Hero of Your Story: Make Your Life Count

    Be the Hero of Your Story: Make Your Life Count

    Seize the Moment

    “Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have—life itself.” ~Walter Anderson

    Flying. I love flying.

    No, I’m not some sick person who likes getting strip-searched by TSA, or waiting several hours to board a flight that should have arrived at my destination already. I hate that part, but I love the part when the plane takes off, and I especially love the part right before the plane touches down.

    Maybe its because I’ve inhaled so much recirculated air, or maybe its because I’m jet lagged and in some overly tired, trance-like state, but I love the initial descent.

    During the initial descent the destination becomes clear when you look outside the window. Oh, I love the window seat. Every time without fail, I gaze outside and look at the lights of the houses and buildings as the plane flies by.

    Every time a very similar thought comes to my mind: Inside each house there is a person or a family, people experiencing highs and lows, people laughing and crying, people living and people dying.

    For some reason this obvious thought is comforting to me. Maybe it’s because it’s proof that although we are all infinitesimal in the grand scheme of things, we are all sharing in a collective human experience.

    I think there is meaning in life, which made this plane ride ultimately more difficult than any other, because I was returning home to bury my twenty-seven-year-old brother.

    A day after the burial, my father and I met up with some of his close friends to collect my brother’s personal belongings and view the site “where it happened.”

    I remember that day so clearly. It was bright and warm for the chilled wintertime in northern California. It wasn’t the type of day you’d expect for death; it was as if the weather didn’t care.

    People asked me why it was so important that I know how it happened. 

    I tried to explain that I just wanted some answers, but a common response was that “knowing” wouldn’t bring him back. Obvious, true, and painful, but I’ve always had a need to know, and I was determined to try and make sense of it and uncover what had happened.

    At the site, I went over all of the possibilities in my head as if I were the investigator. Maybe he’d tried to answer his cell phone? Maybe he’d fallen asleep? Maybe the truck had malfunctioned? Maybe? Maybe? Maybe?

    I needed to know what had caused the one-ton truck to blow over a power pole and crash forty feet across a water-filled ditch into a dirt embankment, causing the truck to fold like an accordion.

    Maybe I needed to know because I have an image in my head of my brother lying helpless in the mangled cabin of that truck, waiting, hoping for someone to come out there and help him.

    According to the traffic and police reports, it was almost two hours until someone arrived on scene because he was commuting in the country. In fact, if he hadn’t hit a power pole, and someone hadn’t been unable to watch their midnight TV programming, it may have even been longer till someone got out to the site.

    The police report said that my brother was pronounced dead at the time of arrival, but still, my thoughts turn to those unaccounted-for two hours.

    Fate. Is there a single force that determines our lives? Maybe there is a higher power that has a plan for all of us? Maybe we have the ability to determine our own destiny? Maybe? Maybe? Maybe?

    I don’t find comfort in answers that rely upon faith. I come from the school of doubt. I am not out to discredit anyone’s religion or philosophies on life; on the contrary, I think all can be good if they help each person live a meaningful and responsible life, but there are simply more questions than answers, and I don’t want to base my life on theory.

    I am not a pessimistic person—you can ask anyone who knows me—but I instantly discredit everything, even my own ideas. It seems there is some sort of circular logic paradox, where for every idea, there is another idea that counters it. Life is one big paradox.

    “Life sucks, and then you….”

    I’m sorry for the cliché, but this is important. We’ve all heard this phrase before, and we know how it ends: “…and then you die.”

    But if you are reading this, you are not dead yet. And if you have felt the way I’ve felt, life does suck.

    No sense trying to sugar coat it: sometimes, it just plain sucks. I’m here to tell you that that’s okay. In fact, it’s good that life sometimes sucks—and you’re not dead yet.

    I recall the last time I saw my brother alive. Fortunately, I made the decision to take additional time off of work for Thanksgiving instead of Christmas, and got a few additional days with him.

    On my Thanksgiving trip back home, we did a lot of our regular activities: We BSed about good times in the past, drank and sang karaoke at our favorite Irish Pub, singing till our throats got sore and then singing some more, and we spent time with our family and friends.

    However, this trip home, and this time spent with my brother, was different from any other time.

    My brother spent most of his adult life with a large chip on his shoulder. I suppose a lot of people have such chips weighing them down because “life sucks.” This was his attitude.

    Not all the time, of course. He had some great times, some amazing moments; I know this because we had them together. But the chip was always there, sometimes just below the surface.

    On this last trip home, something was different. We still went out drinking at karaoke, but this time he put me in the cab. This time he picked up the bill. This time his chip had some real passion behind it.

    He told me definite plans he had for the future. He had started to seriously date. He had even picked a vocation that he was happy about; he was going to be an electrician, saying to me, “I like working with my hands.”

    Make no mistakes about it: my brother had started taking responsibility for his life.

    “Life sucks, and then you die” is an incomplete sentence. It’s the wrong side of the paradox to take because meaning in life comes from what we each do. Life just is, and we are all unique artists with the ability to create our own masterpiece. If positive and negative are two sides of a coin, we don’t have to flip it and leave it to chance.

    I have often asked myself, if I died right now, how would I feel about my life? The retrospective questions seem to supply the fullest answers.

    Maybe you have done this before, or maybe this is the first time you have dared to ask such a question. Everyone’s answer may be different, and the way they feel about it may be different.

    Regardless, it can be empowering. Life is all we know for certain we have. Say what you will about religious belief and potential other planes of existence. The now is here; living it fully is about believing and having faith in ourselves.

    What I saw in my brother that day, for the first time, was a slight shift in attitude that had moved him into action. He’d started to be the hero of his own life story.

    Tragic as the brevity of his life is, the real tragedy would have been never making the change. My brother Justin is my inspiration, a source of newfound strength, and a reminder that it is never too late to start a new journey.

    During the initial descent, the destination becomes clear when you look out the window. Flying overhead I see the shimmering lights of human experience and I have perspective; when I land, it is up to me to decide what to do.

    Photo here