Grieving in the Season of Light

There is a great deal of talk this time of the year about the coming winter solstice and the inward turn—the growing dark becoming the season of light. It can be a challenging juxtaposition, the shortest day of the year and the long dark night smack dab amid the bustle and bright lights of the holiday season. It can feel like the last thing we have time to do is take a deep breath and spend some quiet moments with ourselves.

And then there is this: What if looking inward doesn’t feel like a positive personal exercise? What if the holidays bring sadness? What if we are in grief?

In my own life, I have a complicated relationship with the holiday season. It has been both a time of very happy events and great loss. Each year, I feel the swell of hope for the season at the same time I am deeply feeling the realities of life and loss. Over the years, no less than three people in my family have passed in the period between Thanksgiving and the New Year. I lost both of my parents during the holiday season within five years of each other.

Whether it is ten years or ten weeks, grief is still grief. There is no expiration date. Each loss is unique. The contours of it change. The immediacy and rawness of a death may, over time, grow to feel more like a hollowness only to have the deep ache well up again unexpectedly. Loss, therapists would remind us, is an event in time but grief is the internal aftermath, and it is different for every person.

In the holiday season, as during the rest of the year, our Western culture would have us hurry up and get over it, largely because others feel helpless in the face of our sadness. For those coping with the loss of a loved one, whether your loss is recent or many years ago, this holiday season and always, be gentle with yourself. Allow space for what you’re feeling. As grief expert David Kessler advises, “let the day be the day.” Do what you can, not what you feel you must. We are conditioned to push through and put on a brave face. Yet sometimes the best way to be in the day is to set aside a time to remember, be that alone or with others.

When I am leading meditation, I often offer the mantra, “right now, it’s like this.” I find that even teens respond to this this short phrase which allows space for things to feel awful while acknowledging that they will change. Something I had learned from another meditation teacher, I found myself living with this mantra in the days, weeks, and months following my mother’s death. It was a great resource for me. It might be for you as well.

It can be hard to ask for what we need. Grief can feel quite literally like it steals our voice. I’ve experienced it myself and I see it often in my Reiki clients. If you know someone who is grieving and you feel you are well resourced emotionally, reach out. Rather than trying to fix how your friend or loved one feels, offer a hug or just listen. “I know that you’re missing your dad today. How can I support you?” is one way to open the conversation.

May you walk supported in the gentleness of the season.

Kathleen

Earth, Wind and Fire

Today marks the Autumnal Equinox, the astronomical beginning of autumn here in the Northern Hemisphere and one of two days per year when day and night are of equal length. As I was pondering what I would write, I read a news item in the New York Times about the doctors in the U.S. being called to screen all their patients under age 60 for anxiety. So prevalent is anxiety in this fast-paced, post-pandemic, high-conflict, peak-inflation moment that anxiety is now considered an epidemic among women, men, children, and teens.

I had to take a breath and let that land in my own heart and in my body. A longtime meditator, my own experiences with anxiety have been part of my path. I chose to become a certified meditation teacher (including an additional certification in Trauma Sensitive Mindfulness) and Reiki therapist because of my desire to help people release the grip of anxiety, stress, and trauma and come to balance and healing.

Today, many of you reading this might be feeling hopelessly out of balance or anxious. Know you are not less or strange or broken for what you are feeling. Take heart that you can make space, even a small space, to experience a moment of okayness.

This summer, the first “normal” summer in several years, there was a lot of pent-up energy. People were gathering and traveling again, and the social invitations were coming fast and furious. Several people spoke with me about being propelled by the fear of missing out while for others, each invitation felt like a crushing pressure. After so much isolation, they felt awkward and unready to be in groups.

There is a great lesson in this turning of the seasons. The energy of summer cannot sustain itself indefinitely. On a recent afternoon walk, I was reminded that even the trees are beginning to drop their leaves to conserve energy. I felt inspired to give myself more permission to say no to invitations during these months. That’s what feels best for me.

It is equally possible that you may feel a discomfort with this slowing down. Perhaps you’re someone who thrives on activity to avoid being with your anxiety. You might find it helpful to create a ritual for yourself that marks the seasonal shift. It doesn’t have to be overly involved. It can be as simple as taking a warm bath or putting away your summer clothes and rediscovering your favorite cozy sweater. I encourage you to be present with your ritual instead of racing ahead to the next item on your list. Listen to the sound of the water as it fills the bathtub. Notice the colors of your clothing. Does one color or texture seem to call to you more in autumn?

Whatever you choose, try to let the balance of the equinox be your guide.

May you find a moment of harmony and equilibirum.

Kathleen

Reflection: What element (earth, fire, water, air) would help bring me into balance? How will I invite that into my day?

Creating Harmony

Crisp mornings, a different slant of light, and the leaves on the trees beginning to change. If you are anything like me, you are feeling like your bed is especially cozy these darker mornings. I am also finding myself craving different foods as the lighter fare of summer give way to autumn’s harvest.

This idea of harvest includes more than the plants in our gardens. This is also a time of gathering energetically. It can be beneficial at this time of year to finish projects we’ve started earlier in the year, tidying up our internal garden for the coming winter and the quiet turning inward.

Sometimes that can be hard to navigate. The outside world often seems to be working against us, always presenting more tasks and more opportunities. With the shorter hours of daylight, we can feel like we have less time to do more.

Amid the demands and pressures, including the ones we place on ourselves, it’s especially important to create nourishing spaces in our day, physically, emotionally, and energetically. One of the best ways to do that is to get in sync with the natural rhythm of this time of the year instead of trying to fight it. Autumn is all about the shift from heat and energy to rest and replenish. If you’re feeling frazzled, this might be a good time to look at your daily schedule and see if you can identify places to downshift.

It has become part of my personal practice this year to embrace the growing darkness by making my morning yoga practice a slower, even more mindful candlelit one. It becomes a lovely ritual, deliberately preparing the space, spending time in meditation beforehand, and then bringing that intention into movement. As the sun rises, I feel relaxed and ready for the day ahead. You could just as easily make this candlelight yoga practice part of your routine before bed.

Some other ways to sync with the season…

Get out for walk, especially if you are accustomed to high-intensity exercise. Take time to notice the brilliant color of a fallen leaf. Listen for the calls of migrating birds. Inhale slowly and notice the cooler temperature of the air and the way its scent has changed and deepened.

Journaling can be a wonderful way to build in a few moments of quiet and allow space to reflect on what is going well and what seeds you might want to plant in the year to come. It can also be very helpful for working through sadness and grief that might arise this time of year.

Finally, this is the perfect time of year to cultivate a practice of gratitude. If we begin or end the day allowing a moment to reflect, we can usually find there is at least one thing we are grateful for, however small it may seem. It doesn’t mean we don’t acknowledge the difficult things in our lives or project a false positivity. We open a small space for letting in the good. What’s more nourishing than that?

How are you called to shift with the season?

With love,

Kathleen

The Great Wide Open

Finally, after more than a year of being home non-stop in lockdown and after my first Covid jab, my husband and I took a much-needed getaway. No flights or exotic locales. We spent three weeks at a lovely lake cottage less than an hour from home. By necessity, it was a working trip, but with a change of scenery. My laptop was one of the first things I packed. My travel yoga mat was the second. What happened on the mat turned out to be an important reminder about finding balance off the mat.

The first several days were cold and rainy, which didn’t afford much time down at the lake. Gradually, the weather improved and the first morning that was warm enough, I slipped out with my yoga mat and headed to the lake. I had noticed the long, rock and concrete pier that jutted out from the shore into the lake. Now as the sun came up over the trees, I unrolled my mat and stepped out of my sandals. As I lifted my arms over my head to begin my Sun Salutations, I inhaled the fresh morning air and the smell of the lake. A lake girl from my youth, I felt something old awaken in me. My movements were slow and easy, like a dance.

Normally, I’m quite good at balacing postures, but as I moved into Half Moon and even postures like Extended Side Angle in which you look up, I was having trouble maintaining my balance. I wobbled or fell out of poses that are normally fairly easy for me. I tried to blame an unevenness in the surface. It was at some point during my yoga practice the following morning that I realized the unevenness was in my own mind.

In yoga, it is important to establish a “drishti” point or gaze point/point of focus. It finally occurred to me that I had become used to practicing in the same small area of my study or in the extra bedroom. Now here at the lake with all the water in front of me and the vast sky above me, I was feeling disoriented. Where to look?

Gradually, I learned to focus across the lake at the distant tree line or at my own fingers where they seemed to brush the sky. I opened myself fully to the connection between my body and all the elements—Fire, Water, Earth, and Air— all present in the sun above me (Fire), the lake stretched out in front of me (Water), the rock below me (Earth), and the winds which enveloped me (Air).

In meditation, the breath is often used as our point of focus, but there might be times it’s just not working for us and we feel either constrained or disoriented. It’s okay. First, give yourself permission to experiment with different anchors of attention. It might be the special seashell on your desk or the tree outside your window. It might be as close as the feeling of your feet resting on the floor. Often times when we feel we are not doing something right or the experience is not the way we think it “should” be, we double down and contract in the body and the mind. The more I felt myself wobble out on that pier, the tighter I became and the more I fell out of the pose.

The beautiful disorientation I experienced was also an important reminder that after being literally closed in for a year, the body and the mind need time to reorient to larger spaces and openness as parts of the world begin to move into a wary truce with the virus. Explore what helps you feel grounded and if during lockdown you discovered that spending time in a garden or working by an open window helped you, don’t throw it away because of the pressure to “get back to normal.” Listen to what feels supportive to you as you move through your day and your meditation practice. Perhaps most importantly, as they say in yoga, embrace the wobbles.

Happy Summer Solstice!

Peace & Love,

Kathleen

The Pause

Welcome to The Pause,

Just as the winter is a time to turn in and conserve our energy, the arrival of spring signals new growth. This is true not just in the natural world, but in our inner world.

That’s why the time around the Spring Equinox felt like the right time to begin my new blog,The Pause. Then as so often happens, life interrupts our plans. That interruption is often a gift, a grace—a call to see with new eyes. So now as summer approaches, I am here beginning again.

The Pause is intended as a space of reflection, not necessarily in the psychological sense of ruminating about our problems, but in the true meditative sense of being present to our felt sense of life as it is right now. Letting it arise and allowing space to let it be. 

The meditative pause contains within it the deepest sort of listening, both to our own inner experience and to that of others. The silence is whole, in and of itself. A perfect reflection, really, of our own inherent wholeness. Perhaps that is why it is so often depicted as a single drop of water at rest, representing something that is internally whole, distinct —the world around it mirrored perfectly in it’s surface tension— and yet containing the knowing that in next moment or the next after that, that drop of water will rejoin the greater wholeness. How incredibly healing to mind, body, and spirit.

My intention for this blog is to provide gentle encouragement and guidance to help you rest, reflect, and restore. I’ll be offering insights from my own ongoing journey and suggested practices for meditation, mindfulness and healing. I hope you’ll travel along with me.

Until next time, be kind to yourself.

Peace & Love,

Kathleen