In all the ways I am changed, I honor him

Grief is hard work. I haven't blogged for the lat couple of weeks because I fell off the wagon. I stopped doing grief work. I didn't journal, or blog, or read. I neglected the tools I usually use for mental balance, oh and I was eating like shit. I am doing that seven week course on infant loss and grief, and well I am exhausted from grieving. It is hard work. But ignoring my grief work only made me feel worse. I once read a book about a girl who had Turrets, she described the overwhelming need to shout out and how exhausting it was to feel that way all day. Sometimes she would hold it in, trying to ignore it, but it would just build and build until the point where she literally felt she was going to implode and boom! She would shout at the top of her lungs, wondering why she ever even considered holding it in. Release. Oh yea, she was holding it in because she's exhausted. I have Turrets of the soul. Grief Turrets. And when I hold it in, it just builds and builds. I'm exhausted. Still, this week I decided to return to my practice, that while time consuming and energy consuming also give as much as they take. Consciousness and being present with my pain is not easy. It is so much easier to pretend I'm okay. But inside I am building and building up. Begging for release.

A friend once told me of a study she read where they explained why people slow down to look at car accidents. They mapped the brains of people and found that we don't slow down to stare at accidents on the side of the road because we are nosy or morbid, we have this built in impulse to look because our brains are trying to learn from it. We have this built mechanism to witness tragedy and to protect ourselves from it in the future. I think the need to talk about losing a child works similarly. At support group meetings we witness each other's wreckage, our heartbreaks and life changing accidents. We do this to learn from each other. Not to learn to not lose children in the future, but rather to learn everything we can about it right now so no matter what the future holds, we have learned something. I listen to some stories and think "I could never go through that" the same way I am sure someone thinks it about me. It forces you to unload some of your own pain and witness someone else's. It allows you to find some things to be grateful for in your own story, it teaches to cry with others through theirs. So I am not done retelling my story. I am not done learning from it or teaching from it. I "shouldn't" be over it by now. People who judge the status of my well being by pictures on Facebook, pictures of me smiling, and being a human being who feels a range of emotions, well I wish they would ask me how I am doing. But maybe it's easier to look at the pictures and say, oh good, she's fine, no need to check in with her. There will always be a need to check in with me. My baby died.

This weekend is the March of Dimes Walk. In our grief group we talked about honoring our children. We explored the reality that every time you do something in your life through the lens of your love for your child, your loss, being a parent, being someone who is changed, in those moments you honor your child. There are big public ways of honoring, like this walk. But there are also personal, daily ways. In every way you are changed and the decisions that come from that, you honor child. Wether it's made you a little kinder to your other children, a little more grateful to the people in your life, a little more humble about your place in the universe, a little more faith in your religious beliefs. All of it, any of it. You honor your child. Whenever I reach out and touch someone through the lens of my experience, I honor Mateo. And well in his honor I'd do anything, including keeping up and continuing to share with my grief work.

Happiness Is

These last couple of weeks I have had a few experiences that have been transformative and so I wanted to take this moment to share just in case you too were looking for a little insight and a little guidance.

I recently attended a film screening of the documentary Project Happiness. It was a showing at the community college I attended a few years ago and I went with two of my closest friends these days- Alex who is in her 20's and Penny who is no longer in her 20's. The movie was fun and inspiring. I laughed, I cried, I left there with a new sense of what my personal relationship with what happiness can be. The movie didn't present foreign concepts on how to achieve happiness. The beauty of the message lies in its simplicity and familiarity. Sometimes what you know and what you "knoooow" are not the same. I know what happiness is as a concept. I do not always know what happiness is as a practice. I really recommend watching this documentary- the word gospel literally translates to "good news"- I am sharing the gospel of Project Happiness. Like any good news and truths worth sharing I am proselytizing this movie- watch it, love it, share it, and then watch it again. Amen.

I also recently had the chance to attend this cool workshop- a theater workshop for immigrant activists. I went into it thinking we were going to create a skit about farmers having a hard day on the field. I should really stop going into things thinking. We spent 10 hours moving our bodies, exploring with messages, doing trust exercises and practicing concentration and being present. It was a wonderful experience. The workshop was facilitated by Roberto- an Argentinian man currently living in San Francisco where he runs community theater groups. I walked out of that workshop appreciating the process. It was all so parallel to my feelings on grief- truly learning to honor the process before trying to do anything, create anything, be anything more than present with just that- the process. At one point Roberto pointed out that "A process is like a pilgrimage" the goal isn't the end result- to produce something to share but rather producing something to be. This was just as true with the process at this theater workshop as it is with my process in grieving Mateo. Towards the end of the workshop this young boy raised his hand and commented " Now I am ready to write that skit!" He was obviously bursting with creative energy after having spent the day tapping into it. Roberto, who was also obviously bursting with creative energy looked at him and exclaimed " That's the beauty of finishing something- that's when we get started! " I look forward to coming through this and out of this and being someone obviously bursting with energy ready to get started.

I have been tapping into different resources for advice and support and one of them is this Podcast series by Reverend Kusala. I do not practice Buddhism but there are truths to the Buddhist way of life that I admire and aim to adapt in my life. Today I listened to this talk on Life and Death- it was really great and so I posted the link below in case you get a chance to check it out. He points to a handful of things that really stuck out to me, I was listening to it and kept reaching for my notepad to take notes and write down ideas, but his commentary on reincarnation struck me the most. He shared his thoughts on reincarnation not as being reborn from this physical life into another one. It wasn't about dying and coming back as a butterfly- but rather the idea that we are reborn all of the time- now- in this life. His mother recently passed away and he was looking through her pictures. He was looking of a timeline of her life through pictures- from her baby pictures to her pictures right before dying- and he found himself in disbelief that anyone would not believe in reincarnation. The person you were at 8 years old is not the person you are 16, or at 35 or 58 or at 82. Those are all different people in their own right. I appreciated the message of rebirth as an experience throughout this life and not something post this life. I really recommend checking out the whole podcast and if you do feel free to let me know what parts of it, if any might have jumped out at you.

http://www.urbandharma.org/ATS/LifeDeath.mp3

Lastly I wanted to say thank you to the people in the support group meeting I attended today. It was a relaxed event where I got to share my experience and help affirm others in their grief. One of the greatest things I have found people can give me is a space to share, an avenue for sharing my feelings and the opportunity to be heard. I absolutely had that today- and in turn I made a conscious effort to listen to others and honor their need for that space. My therapist once shared this scripture with me from the Bible that pretty much states- how you are in comforted, that is how you will comfort others. I kept that in mind today and thought of all the kind ways I have been comforted these last couple of months, the things that people said that actually helped and better yet the things that people did that actually brought comfort. For me that has been being listened to, finding my voice through grief and being heard has been a real sign of love towards me and so I made it a point to try and comfort in that way- I made it a point to listen. Thank you to those who listened to me today.

I will be in Washington D.C. for the next couple of days for a work conference and will get to see a fellow Peace Corps volunteer. She was absolutely wonderful to me throughout my first trimester in Peru and has been a good friend through this despite our distance. I am so excited to get to see her and catch up. I am so grateful for good friends in this life.