“Nothing is so heavenly as the embrace of the angels’ love.”
Gramma, in Emily’s Dreamtime, by Heidi M. Bright
Have you ever wanted just one more hug from your loved one who has crossed over?
rainbow on ceiling
Nothing is so heavenly as the embrace of your own angel’s love, the angel of a loved one who has passed away and visits during dreamtime.
It’s been about ten months since my teenaged son passed away. I’d been complaining to him a bit lately. Why hadn’t he come to me during my dreamtime? He knew I tracked as many dreams as I could.
Yesterday he finally showed up. I felt so comfortable with him in the dreamtime that I didn’t realize for a while that he’d finally actually showed up. So I asked him for a hug. He felt so substantial, so real, as I held him for a few moments.
Then he evaporated and I woke up.
What a wonderful gift, to receive a hug from my son from the Other Side.
That afternoon, after I finished meditating, I looked up to see a gorgeous rainbow on my ceiling. A rainbow just as I’d pictured in my children’s book, Emily’s Dreamtime. Yes, Brennan had paid a visit, had hugged me. The circle is complete.
Thriver Soup Ingredient:
If you have lost a loved one, ask the person to come to you during your dreamtime, and to help you remember it when you wake up.
If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.
John 13:14, Revised Standard Version, Christian Bible
Jesus washes disciples’ feet
What practical things have you done to help another through grief?
When Jesus gathered his followers for their last supper together, he started the evening by washing dirt off their stinky feet—taking on the role of a slave. Jesus was calling his disciples to be servants of one another. Little did they know they would soon be grieving Jesus’ crucifixion, yet Jesus had demonstrated for them how to deal with their anguish: serve one another.
Following Jesus’ example doesn’t have to involve washing feet. It can be washing your own hands after digging them in the dirt of a friend’s garden.
My friend Rebecca, a minister and chaplain, not only preaches well—she performed the ministerial role at my son Brennan’s funeral—she surprised me last fall by offering to come over to plant crocus bulbs in his garden and help me with other chores I couldn’t do alone. Rebecca works long hours in an emotionally demanding job and uses weekends to rest up so she can go back out and continue assisting people with major life events. Yet she cleared a full day so she could come over and help me out.
We planted dozens of crocus bulbs and did a variety of other jobs that would have been much more difficult to do alone.
I am honored by her generosity of spirit and gracious assistance. It was healing balm for my heart, as if she was picking up some of the slack that Brennan left behind. She symbolically did what Christ encouraged all of us to do—to wash up after others. She is living what she preaches.
Thriver Soup Ingredient
Sometimes the best help for a grieving person is coming over and doing the chores the loved one usually did. This demonstrates that even though there is a terrible loss, others can pick up a little bit of the slack and make life a tiny bit more bearable.
Source
“Jesus Washing the Feet of the Disciples” oil on canvas. Louis Comfort Tiffany. http://www.wikigallery.org/ Accessed April 6, 2016
“Bright Iduna, Maid immortal! / Standing at Valhalla’s portal, / In her casket has rich store / Of rare apples, gilded o’er; / Those rare apples, not of Earth, / Ageing Æsir give fresh birth.”
Valhalla, by Julia Clinton Jones, 1878
The golden apples of the goddess Iduna gave youth and beauty to the other Norse gods and goddesses. Their magical properties entranced the storm giant Thiassi, who found a way to kidnap Iduna and her fruit. After Iduna was rescued, Thiassi, in the form of an eagle, was burned. His eyes were thrown into the heavens to become constellations, continuing his life like a phoenix rising from flames.
Madonna and Christ Child holding an apple
Many ancient cultures valued fruit, some enough to bury apples with the deceased. The petrified remains of sliced apples have been found in tombs as much as 7,000 years old.
Apples became a symbol of youth and rebirth, perhaps in part because they keep so well through the winter.
In Christian lore, the apple represents redemption and sometimes is depicted in paintings of the Madonna and Christ Child, such as in “Madonna of the Apple” by 17th century artist Francisco de Zurbarán.
What could be more fitting than planting apple trees on Resurrection Sunday in memory of my son Tristan? One of the two trees is a type called “Gold Rush,” reminding me of Iduna’s gilded fruit that imparts new life. The trees are perfect gifts from my brother Jim and his wife Janet.
Thriver Soup Ingredient:
A basket of golden apples and a note about their significance would make a lovely gift to someone who has lost a loved one.
She realized her chronic shoulder pain came from shouldering too many responsibilities.
There is no coming to consciousness without pain.
Carl Jung, father of analytical psychology
Valuable messages can be hidden in physical pain. If those messages can be discovered, accepted, and examined, rather than avoided, we can gain important insights that can alter our daily lives in positive ways.
This week a woman dealing with the aftermath of cancer chose to return to a practice of approaching her chronic pain with curiosity, living the wisdom expressed by Carl Jung, father of analytical psychology. While Jung probably was referring mainly to psychological pain, cancer patients have physical pain that can be used as a tool for greater personal understanding.
The participant had listened to my guided meditation called “A Conversation with Dis-ease.” During the guided meditation, participants travel inside their bodies to the location of dis-ease in their bodies so they can ask these cells questions for guidance.
She offered the following feedback: “I re-learned that I need to stop throughout my day and go inward. Instead of focusing on avoiding the pain, I attempted to face it and examine it.”
While awareness doesn’t necessarily lead to pain relief, there are times when it can.
For another cancer patient, the chance for relief from chronic shoulder pain revealed itself while she followed the specific guidance of the visualization only one time. She realized her chronic shoulder pain came from shouldering too many responsibilities.
The pain brought her to greater consciousness. She then knew how to change her life to relieve the pain.
Thriver Soup Ingredient:
A few opportunities are approaching for a chance to listen to this guided visualization for your own healing journey. Hope to see you soon!
Saturday, April 9, noon
“Subduing the Dis-ease Dragon: The ABCs of Creating Conditions for Healing”
Victory of Light, Sharonville Convention Center
11355 Chester Rd., Cincinnati, OH 45246
Saturday, April 16, 7 p.m.
“Subduing the Dis-ease Dragon: The ABCs of Creating Conditions for Healing”
Stillpoint Center for Healing Arts
11223 Cornell Park Drive, Ste 302 (behind the brown Jewish Family Services building)
Blue Ash, Ohio 45242
Saturday, July 30, 2 p.m.
“Subduing the Dis-ease Dragon: The ABCs of Creating Conditions for Healing”
Milford Public Library
19 Water St., Milford, Ohio 45150
Thursday, Sept. 13, 7 p.m.
“Subduing the Dis-ease Dragon: The ABCs of Creating Conditions for Healing”
Northside LIIFT
Revelation Spiritual Church (Look for the BIG white sign in front yard of what looks like a house)
From “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” by William Wordsworth
What do daffodils represent to you?
Dancing daffodils herald spring, arriving during the month of the spring equinox, Lent, and sometimes Easter. These bright yellow flowers are called Lent Lilies in England and Easter Bells, or Oesterglocken, in Germany. They are an obvious symbol for rebirth and new beginnings.
The symbolism relates to resurrection on two levels for me.
First, the American Cancer Society views the daffodil as a symbol of hope for a cancer cure. How fitting, when I just received a clear x-ray 4.5 years out from treatment.
Second, the daffodil is sometimes called the Narcissus. Narcissus is rooted in the Greek word narke, which means numbness or torpor, because the bulbs contain a paralyzing and toxic alkaloid. The bulbs were allegedly carried by Roman soldiers so if they became mortally wounded, they could eat the bulbs to ease the pain as they perished.
Narke also is the foundation for the word “narcotic.” My son passed from a narcotic overdose.
Because of these associations, my friend Karen wanted me to have daffodils in Tristan’s memorial garden. This week they danced into bloom, their sunny dispositions cheering up the yard and filling my heart with pleasure.
Thriver Soup Ingredient:
Here is a little ritual you can do with a daffodil to assist with healing from grief (modified from the book The Magic of Flowers by Tess Whitehurst). On a sunny day, fill a pretty glass with fresh water and carry it to a Narcissus. Hold the container while sitting with the flower, gazing into its golden depths. Take some slow, deep breaths. Imagine light from the sun filling the water with healing energy. Then drink a little of the water to absorb the energy of the sun. Pour the rest of the water around the base of the flower. As you offer life-giving moisture to the daffodil, ask the blossom to share its gift of presence with you by strengthening your ability to be more fully present during each day, letting go of some of your grief.
… These wounds won’t seem to heal. This pain is just too real. There’s just too much that time cannot erase. When you cried I’d wipe away all of your tears. When you’d scream I’d fight away all of your fears. And I held your hand through all of these years. But you still have all of me.
You used to captivate me by your resonating light. Now I’m bound by the life you left behind. Your face, it haunts my once pleasant dreams. Your voice it chased away all the sanity in me. These wounds won’t seem to heal. This pain is just too real. There’s just too much that time cannot erase. I’ve tried so hard to tell myself that you’re gone. …
“My Immortal” by Evanescence
Songs can touch the deepest recesses of our hearts. I listened to “My Immortal” for the first time during this past weekend, after seeing it suggested in an email from my friend Kathy Nace. I wept for hours, the music bringing up yet another facet of grief.
The lyrics speak so eloquently of what it feels like to lose a beloved child: A child who captivated your heart, who held your hand with love and trust, a child you soothed countless times, a child you held close when wild with fears.
And then to lose that child. The face, the voice, the hugs, all hauntingly familiar yet forever gone.
The pain is too real. Grief had swallowed me up time and again, repeatedly dragging me down into the dark underbelly of life.
Because of their powerful nature, the right songs can help with grieving and healing. It doesn’t need to be an entire song. It can simply involve a turn of phrase that cuts right through your heart.
I had started in June 2015 with months of sometimes breathless agony, sobbing to “How to Save a Life” by The Fray. On repeat. Over. And over. Deeply I held all the shards from that facet of my grief.
Gradually I added “Chasing Cars” by Snow Patrol. On repeat. Over. And over.
I peered closely into new shards that surfaced.
Other songs began entering the mix, some I had known about, some new. Always played on repeat, always accompanied by fresh, copious tears.
I found I could not move forward with new songs representing progress until I had spent enough time with the ones that spoke to where I was at the time.
Yet the music did help move my grief process forward. It felt like someone understood the ineffable nuances of my pain at each stage.
Now that there is some significant distance from the initial shock, I have the flexibility to move back and forth among the songs I have collected, depending on how I am feeling at the time. I am largely done with some of the songs.
Sometimes I will go weeks before feeling the desire to revisit a certain song. Sometimes a new piece will strike a chord within. The sound vibrates into my soul and the tears flow once more. Having seen people cry ten or more years after losing a loved one, I know this flooding can occur at any time. As the song says, “There’s just too much that time cannot erase.” Yet there can be healing.
Thriver Soup Ingredient:
Courtney Armstrong, in “Music: A powerful ally in your counseling sessions,” explains how she uses songs to assist her clients with healing. She includes a couple examples with playlists that were used in her Counseling Today article this month.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Portion of a Hail Mary prayer, Western version
For the past nine months, my prayer life had succumbed to grief after losing my son.
Recently I visited with Vince and Connie Lasorso, owners of Whatever Works Wellness Center. Vince had written a special healing rosary prayer for me to use while I was in cancer treatment. The rosary is a necklace of beads used for meditative prayers. One Hail Mary prayer is said for each bead, and the beads are strung on Catholic rosaries in groups of ten. Those who pray the rosary use the beads to track where they are at in their prayer process.
Vince had expanded his rosary into a book about Mother Mary and the rosary. He talked about how persistent use of the rosary can take us into new areas of consciousness and can open us up to healing energy.
I badly needed this conversation. During cancer treatment, I had no energy for prayer. Then for years I poured intense prayer energy into my son Brennan, yet still lost him to a heroin overdose. Deeply discouraged, my prayer life had withered. Vince could tell—so he reminded me that for years people had been pouring their prayers into me, and here I am healthy with my third published book, Thriver Soup, to share what I learned about healing during cancer.
Synchronistically, my friend Gay had given me my first rosary as a Christmas gift this past year. It is beautiful—the prayer beads are made with lavender-colored amethyst. Amethyst is believed to be sacred to the Buddha, so Tibetans make prayer beads from the purple quartz. The crystal has long been associated with healing.
Okay, time to return to prayer.
The next day, for the first time, I prayed the healing rosary Vince had developed for me years earlier, using the gift from Gay. Before I even finished, a call came in from a cancer patient wanting to know where I would next be presenting my talk about the ABCs of healing.
Mother Mary was already extending her healing blessings through me to a cancer patient. I only had to be available and faithful.
Thriver Soup Ingredient:
The word “bead” comes from the old English noun “bede,” which means “prayer.” Prayer beads are used in most religious traditions. Buddhists, Hindus, and Sikhs use 108 beads; Eastern Orthodox Christians use prayer ropes with 100 knots; Muslims use 99 or 33 beads; Baha’is use either 95 or 24; Catholics use 59. Each number has significance, yet the main point is to meditatively pray using the garland of beads. For example, if you want to say ten Hail Marys, use ten beads. By moving your fingers from one bead to the next with each prayer you repeat, you don’t have to keep track of how many you’ve said; you can simply focus on saying the prayer from your heart. If you don’t have prayer beads and want something quick, tie knots in a piece of string to use for meditatively praying.
The crocus flower marks the dying of winter and the promise of spring. This past week, nearly nine months after Tristan overdosed on heroin, the first blossom appeared in his memorial garden. Nine months—the period of human gestation in darkness before birth.
The crocus proved a perfect symbol. Early stories about the flower include a young man named Crocus who was a friend of the Greek god Hermes (Mercury), messenger of the gods. One day the two were playing catch with a disc. The disc accidently hit Crocus in the head and he fell to the ground. Hermes, distraught with grief about the fatal wound, turned Crocus into a flower to honor him.
The crocus continues to honor others. Tristan received a crocus bulb about ten years ago when his Cub Scout den leader, Mike, passed from cancer that consumed his brain.
And a few years ago, like Crocus, my son Tristan was wounded in the head with the disease of addiction, a brain disorder that robs people of the ability to make healthy choices. Now his hard, dark night of addiction is over. I believe he resides on the Other Side, resurrected, at peace.
Last fall, Rebecca Woods came over with a bag of crocus bulbs and helped me plant them, and Mike’s crocus bulb, in my son’s memorial garden. The first crocus to spring up is the color of amethyst, a stone noted for healing properties.
As for my son, and my own grief, there is new life beyond the cold of winter. The crocus heralds the dawning of our spring.
Thriver Soup Ingredient
Plant some crocus bulbs next fall and watch for them during the winter. They can be a wonderful surprise, even in the dead of winter.
Sources
Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922. Retrieved Feb. 25, 2016, from http://www.bartleby.com/78/197.html
Galenus, De constitutione artis medicae, 9. 4. (Corpus medicorum Graecorum, 13. p. 269) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocus_(mythology)
The remembrance of Thee is a healing medicine to the hearts of such as have drawn nigh unto Thy court.
Prayers and Meditations, by Baha’u’llah, trans. by Shoghi Effendi
While the Divine provides healing medicine to our hearts, cancer patients still often need the healing medicine of basic scientific research and clinical trials to heal the rest of their bodies. These cost huge amounts of money.
Now we can bring the healing medicine of our hearts to the heArt of healing. An organization for a rare type of uterine cancer is conducting an art auction to raise funds for medical research.
Research done in the past literally saved my life by discovering a few chemotherapies that can slow the growth of uterine sarcomas. Yet after three types of combined chemotherapies for two years, I was sent home to get my affairs in order… because there were no more medical options available to me. Had I not healed my life during those two years, and been so supported by others, I would be long gone by now.
Hundreds of uterine sarcoma patients live on the edge with this aggressive disease. They need new options to keep going.
To assist with funding research, I have donated a golden Bright Spirit Horse with hearts in sacred geometrical designs to the heart-themed art auction. The organization conducting the event is LMSdr, which stands for Leiomyosarcoma Direct Research. While I did not have a leiomyosarcoma, I received the treatments used for those who have leiomyosarcomas. Their healing medicine gave me time for my heart-healing medicine to take effect and save my life.
Place your bid by April 9. The art will be shipped to the winning bidders directly from Leiomyosarcoma Direct Research Foundation, (LMSdr). Please take a look and share with your friends. Simply click the email icon on the auction page and send a note to a friend about the art auction, or click on the Facebook icon or just like the Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/LMSDRARTAUCTION/
With your help we can all make a difference. Thank you!
Source:
Prayers and Meditations, by Baha’u’llah, trans. by Shoghi Effendi. Baha’i Publishing Trust, Wilmette, Ill, ninth printing, 1996, LV, p. 58.
… (Krishna) drove that best of chariots to a point between the two armies, in front of Bhishma, Drona, and all the rulers of the earth, and then said: “See, Partha (Arjuna), this gathering of all the Kurus!”
The Bhagavad Gita, 1:24-25
The Hindu god Krishna drove the best of chariots into battle. The chariot can be a metaphor for one’s body. If one’s chariot, or body, is not in the best condition, it can seriously hamper every aspect of one’s life.
I had let my chariot lose some of its fitness recently. My exercise life had succumbed to the excuses of grief after losing my son and the move into my new home. Later I listened to my guided visualization CD, “A Conversation with Dis-ease,” and received the message that it was time to let go of regularly walking for exercise due to a lifetime of issues with my toe joints.
Yes, they were excuses. My psychotherapist called me on it, then encouraged me, once again, to exercise regularly—preferably 150 minutes per week. I was only doing about 60. Time to ramp it up.
After I got home, I felt nudged to get my exercise for the day by walking to a nearby grocery store to pick up more onions. While in the store, I took a look at the clearance shelves in the back. I was shocked to find my all-time favorite chocolate-hazelnut truffles there at one third the usual price—expensive chocolates I had only ever seen in two other distant stores in town.
Was that nudge from my son to make sure I had these special Italian chocolates for celebrating Valentine’s Day? I’d like to think so.
I took home two bags of the sweet treats.
What a wonderful gift for following through and doing my part to get my chariot back in shape. Just in time to enjoy some luscious truffles for Valentine’s Day.
Thriver Soup Ingredient:
Exercise is important for numerous reasons. A common recommendation is 30 minutes of exercise five times each week. Some people use pedometers or download exercise apps on their phones. Some tips for getting started include parking at the far ends of parking lots, taking stairs if and when you can, or simply tensing and loosing muscles while lying in bed if that is what you can do.
