Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Grief: Get up, get up, get out of bed

Got back from England last night and have lots to write but it's already almost two pm.   Someone asked me how I do it?   I make myself go places where things are happening and then things happen to me.  Here's a weird one.  At the Bandler workshop he did work with someone who is shy and feels uncomfortable talking to people she doesn't know in groups.  I paid attention (or didn't pay attention - trance work!) to that one because I always feel totally uncomfortable in groups. At the workshop I just came back from people kept coming up and talking to me.  I didn't have to initiate anything.  Of course, I had volunteered to be a subject to be worked on with this magical 80 year old man named Frank Farrelly who does something called Provocative Therapy.  The thing is no one can figure out what he does exactly - that's what makes him magical.  The end result when you experience it is that you are confused. Then the pieces settle in a whole new way and change can occur.  I will write more about it tomorrow or Thursday when I have more time.  Since I went second, folks knew quite a bit about me without me saying anything to them. They were curious and some said inspired and some (not all) wanted to know more. I put myself in a position to make talking to people I didn't know happen without thinking about it.  I volunteered because I wanted help - but it had a secondary effect I didn't think about.  

That's the get up, get up, get out of bed part.  Because of the long term construction work they are doing on the front of my apartment building I have moved into the guest room in the back.  It is painted black and is very cosy - which makes it difficult to get up - for me.  Artie is still dead of course and I am still sad about it and miss him and wish I could stay in bed all day.  And yet...when I do get going all these wonderful things start to happen.

For some people that is an easy process.  For me, it's not.  My next thing with the solo show I did (Pull Me Back) is that I thought if it was filmed making it into a DVD was simple.  Nope.  There's an editing process which will take time.  One thing I heard this weekend was that if Napoleon woke up with soldiers on the eastern front and the western front the first thing he said in the morning wasn't, "O Joy!".  That's it.  If my life feels like a battlefield sometimes - Artie was my armor - is my armor - why do I expect to wake up and say "O Joy!".   I can wake up and feel as good or as bad as I want to.  The thing is I'm in this waiting room until I can be with Artie again (hopefully) so how creative can I be in decorating it? How creative can I be in filling the time I have?  The bottom line seems to be that although I continue to cling to my tale of woe I have also gotten up (when I could) and put myself places or taken actions that make it difficult not to find moments of "O Joy!" to mix in with the moments of "I can't; it's too hard." 

I have a storytelling class tonight and I need to take a shower and and and.  Maybe that is the secret.  I need to be more of an action figure and less of a lying down watching DVDs figure.  Also - when those moments of joy come - I need to say hello to them and not walk right by them as if they are strangers.  Hello joy, I welcome you in to my life.  My husband is dead and I am sad and lonely but there is room for joy too. 

More to come.  Didn't want to go so long this time without posting.  Let's look around today and see when things happen to us that we can celebrate if we notice them and then welcome them in.  Or - let's notice if we walk right by things we might celebrate and tell them to go away because we are too busy being miserable - as we should be - to have time to celebrate.  Or - as still happens - if happy things annoy us because our loved one isn't here phsyically to share them with.  In the airport tennis was on television.  Artie loved tennis.  I had a few minutes of hating the world because he was dead and tennis was still going on - and then I stopped myself and wound my memories backwards to think how happy Artie would be to be stuck in an airport and be able to watch tennis.

I am going to sign off and celebrate the fact I live somewhere that I can walk into a room and turn some handles and lovely hot water comes out to make me clean.  Not everyone lives in a place like that.  No matter how grouchy I get I am always grateful for indoor plumbing!  xo

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