The Mourning Mother

Gana holding her dead baby in Muenster

In a small zoo in Muenster, Western Germany, Gana, a gorilla is "refusing to let go of her dead baby's body" even after several days postmortem (Associated Press, 2008). Gana's baby died from unknown causes.  Despite the newly born male's death, his mother, nearly ritualistically, carries his body everywhere she goes. Zoo officials note that this behavior is not uncommon to gorillas.

According to them, Gana "is mourning and must say goodbye."   The baby was named Claudio. Indeed, sometimes even animals understand love better than humans.

Qui tacet consentit

Language is a very powerful tool with which to sway public opinion.

Politicians use euphemistic language and outright propaganda to influence perception- cleverly crafted labels such as "the PATRIOT Act" or the "Protect America Act" are intended to shape opinions and to shift the starting points for debate about politically or socially charged issues. With deliberate enthymematic strategy, sociopolitical issues are cloaked with pleasantries in order to manipulate meaning. These narrative structures are then used to advance often-clandestine social or political agendas. In an environment where torture is merely an enhanced interrogation technique, where collateral damage replaces the deaths of innocent civilians and children, and earmarks and pork barrel spending are magically transmogrified into legislatively directed appropriations, it can become well nigh impossible to disentangle reality from deliberately distorted and carefully constructed perceptions. We assemble assent and tolerance for the unthinkable.

It should therefore come as no surprise that we often use language to perpetuate the attitudinal avoidance of death. Flowery phrases dress Death up so we can sit next to Him politely at funerary processions where loved ones pass on, go to a better place, and are no longer with us. Euphemisms make others more comfortable around the discomforting. But in particular, it's how externally codified language is used to manipulate and control and to perpetuate the institutionally approved messages that I find particularly disconcerting; and how, for the most part, this messaging targets an unconscious place, whereby people are wholly unaware that their thoughts are being influenced, even at times controlled.

Another example:  The death of a baby to stillbirth is social, personal, and political. I am personally profoundly offended by use of the vernacular pregnancy loss to describe the reality of stillbirth. I worked with a mother last week whose ten pound baby boy died during birth: He was stillborn. The mom was in her 42nd week of pregnancy. If this isn't the death of a baby, I don't know what is. In dissecting that term - pregnancy loss - there is an inference that a baby or child, in fact, did not die: there is an implication that no life was lost; that only a transient condition was changed. By failing to recognize the death of the baby, we implicitly deny the baby's individualism, while simultaneously inferring that merely a pregnancy was lost.  

For many women, categorizing their baby's death as a pregnancy loss decries and derogates their reality. Historically, euphemisms are used to sanctify and cleanse the unpalatable. Yet, if we do not call it what it is, frankly, the birth of a dead baby, mothers will continue to be condemned to the closet of shame about their very real and traumatic losses when a baby dies as a result of stillbirth. These losses will continue to be marginalized, disenfranchised, and misunderstood as something other than what they really are.

In working with bereaved parents, I allow them to socially construct their own language with which they can speak of the unspeakable, and I adopt those words and phrases they have accepted, congruent with their experiences. It is, after all, their reality, not mine. If a father wants to say his child passed on, then those are the words which I will use in working with him. If a mother calls her 42-year-old dead son her baby, then he is her baby. 

Ask the tortured if they have been so, not the interrogators or policymakers.

In more than 13 years of working with bereaved families, I have never had a parent of a stillborn baby say, "I am so sad that I lost my pregnancy" or "I'm grieving over my pregnancy loss."  That is not, most often, their reality. They say simply, "My baby died, I lost my beloved child." 

And so it is...time for a linguistic coupe d'etat where torture is called torture, the "d" word is not a linguistic outcast, and stillbirth is recognized as the death of a baby. It is time to embrace language that is congruent with reality, and not dictated by the narrow agendas of the dominant political Goliaths.

Time Machines

if i believe

in death be sure

of this

it is

because you have loved me,

moon and sunset

stars and flowers

gold creshendo and silver muting

of seatides

i trusted not,

one night

when in my fingers

drooped your shining body

when my heart

sang between your perfect

breasts

darkness and beauty of stars

was on my mouth petals danced

against my eyes

and down

the singing reaches of

my soul

spoke

the green--

greeting pale

departing irrevocable

sea

i knew thee death.

and when

i have offered up each fragrant

night,when all my days

shall have before a certain

face become

white

perfume

only,

from the ashes

then

thou wilt rise and thou

wilt come to her and brush

the mischief from her eyes and fold

her

mouth the new

flower with

thy unimaginable

wings,where dwells the breath

of all persisting stars

e.e. cummings

The Industrial Revolution and Information Ages have aided in extending and enhancing our lives in many ways. In fact, the mortality rate in London for children younger than age five decreased from 75% in 1730 - 1749 to 32% in 1810 - 1829.

Yet, during the time when early deaths were more prevalent, death-related rituals were often less austere and forbidding. Western institutionalization has gradually swallowed death into it's economy with ritualization evolving into part of the orchestrated establishment of the funerary (and other) industry and where mourning practices are often strictly proscribed. In addition, today's funeral, on average, costs around $7000.00.

In many places, including the Cook Islands and Samoa, the dead are cared for in the homes by family members and then they are buried in the front yards of the family homeland. The homeland is never sold; rather, it is passed down from one generation to the next. Many of the tombs are above ground and family death is integrated into life in a way very different from Western culture.

Interestingly, the home funeral movement is emerging in the United States; a sort of grassroots time machine to the distant past.  Death doulas are being trained to assist those seeking home funerals for their loved ones- including babies and children who die.  Beth Knox knew intuitively that it was what she wanted when her seven-year-old, beautiful daughter, Alison Sanders, died in 1995.

Knox speaks of her experience and says,

"We're required by law to care for our children," she said. "But at the last hour, we're told that their body doesn't belong to us anymore. That makes no sense."

Knox found a funeral director willing to bring Alison's body home, where family members, friends and neighbors joined in a three-day vigil. By the time the funeral director returned to take Alison's body to her funeral and then to the crematory, Knox was, she said, ready to let her go.

Having imagined, as most parents do, that she could never endure the catastrophe of a child's death, Knox found that "when it actually happened, my senses were so highly attuned to the sense of love, I had a very precise presence of mind, very clear sense of direction." There is, she said, "a lot of comfort in being able to perform acts of love in these unbearable situations."

In most states, 45 to be precise, it is legal to care for one's own dead in the home. Oddly, many do not think to ask if they are permitted by the State to take their beloved one home; rather, it is assumed that the funeral home will whisk away the dead. So the men in gray suits are summoned and the 'body' is cleanly lifted off, out of sight, to a sterile room of foreign mortar and unfamiliar melodies harkening back three decades. And then the 'body', now recently unfamiliar to us, is taken to a cemetery two or twenty miles from home. It just feels so detached from the reality of death- and natural loving instinct. So many still do not understand their own rights with regard to their dead - the very dead to whom they still belong.

I wish I would have thought to ask 'permission' for a home funeral when Chey died. I wish I had my own piece of family land where I could bury her sacred remains. I believe I'd have chosen this if I had supportive others - like death midwives- guiding me.  It is certainly not something that all would choose; but still the choice should be offered for this uniquely antediluvian ritualization of the dead.  

If only time machines really did exist...

Beware of Strangers

To love means to open ourselves to the negative as well as the positive-- to grief, sorrow, and disappointment as well as to joy, fulfillment, and thus an intensity of consciousness that before we did not know was possible.

Rollo May

Throughout human history, there has been a tendency to fear the unknown. On a macro level, this fear has fueled oppression such as religious intolerance where, for example, during the Dark Ages, countless women were drowned or burned at the state as "witches." Fear of the unknown has incited wars between tribes, hatred between countries, and violence between groups. 

But fear is not merely a societal sarcoma that may manifest in subjugation and massacre; rather, evolutionarily speaking, it is a the most primal and visceral- and necessary- of human emotions. Fear keeps us safe from predators and protects us from endangering our lives. 

If there is a knock on the door, I ask, "Who is it?" in an attempt to familiarize myself so that I feel secure, to ameliorate my fears and keep myself safe from potential harm. The focus of some neophobias is on people, while others fear new experiences, places, or even driving a different path to work. But fear can also hinder social creatures like humans. Fearing people can incite stereotyping and prejudice. The fear of traveling to new places can stunt ethnological appreciation and wisdom. Even driving the same path to the workplace everyday can be inhibitive: What more interesting landmarks might you notice by taking a different path? So, what do we miss by our fears and subsequent evasions of the unfamililar?  

Grief was, at one time, an unfamiliar stranger. My primal response to him was terror and crippling fear. He controlled my thoughts, and I saw the world through his eyes, not my own. Panicked, I could not look this intruder in the eyes. I was paralyzed. I was certain that if my gaze met his, the abyss would, as Nietzsche said, stare back at me and overtake me. Like an ominous stranger at my door, I did not want to invite grief inside my home. I wanted to leave him out in the cold darkness of night where he belonged. 

What I didn't realize then was that this stranger was a part of me now, inexplicably linked by experience. By leaving him outside in the darkness, he became the monster in my dark closet that would haunt me when my mind was still. And unwittingly, I made a decision in 1995 to surrender to that which I most feared. Part of that psychological relinquishment required that I accept grief out of the darkness and into my home.  We sat down together and sipped tea. We walked together. We sat on the back swing and watched the sunset.  I came to know and understand this part of me that felt so foreign, and I began to slowly see the value in the unfamiliar that he brought into my life.  He became more predictable and I feared him less. His roar softened and he did not need to yell for my attention any longer. We gazed into one another's eyes and I survived the facing. 

I can honestly say that now grief, mostly, is my friend and an accepted, not feared, part of me. Now, I trust him to lead me into those places where, as May said, I can truly experience the pain, believing that beauty will soon follow, and knowing that I will experience the intensity of consciousness that far transcends the merely ordinary.

From Helplessness to Hope

MISS Foundation Families Speak Out About Their Very Personal Losses

The Unjust Politicking of Stillbirth by Feminist Groups: 

A Response to Unreasonability

Remembering the Dead: Thoughts from Kierkegaard

"In relationship to one dead you have criterion whereby you can test yourself... it is one's duty to love [those] we do not see...we cannot be set aside because death separates them from us, for duty is eternal."

Søren Kierkegaard

I spent today reading Kierkegaard's "Works of Love". Specifically, a piece called 'the work of love in remembering one dead' whereby he asserts that actively remembering our dead is an act of duty that epitomizes the most unselfish, freest, and most faithful love. Perhaps, it brought me so easily to tears because it is that time of year when my heart, like brittle blown glass, is more fragile than robust. Or, perhaps, it resonated because his words offered marrow to my own philosophy and dutiful practice.

Kierkegaard asserts that the work of love in remembering one who is dead is a work of the most unselfish love. It is unrequited, for the dead can never reciprocate:

"O, if one were accustomed to truly love unselfishly, one would certainly remember the dead differently from the way one usually does after the first period, frequently rather than brief, in which one loves the dead inordinately enough with cries and clamour."

And the work of love in remembering the dead is a work of the freest love. There is no coercion nor compulsion to continue loving the dead. It is an act of authenticity and freewill, not an act of demand or obligation. To remember one dead is intentional and quite different than simply not forgetting soon after the death. It withstands the test of time:

"With respect to one dead... nothing is coercive at all. On the other hand, the loving memory of one dead has to protect itself against...new impressions to expel the memory, and it has to protect itself against time...Time has a dangerous power; in time is is so easy to make a beginning again and thereby to forget...In the meantime, the multiplicity of life's demands beckons to one, the living beckon to one and say: come to us, we will take care of you. One who is dead, however, cannot beckon."

Finally, the work of love in remembering the dead is a work of the most faithful love. It requires unwavering and enduring devotion, for neither affection, nor love, nor strength, nor kindness can be returned from one who is dead. Our dead do nothing to hold on to us; still, in remembering our dead, we love disinterestedly, freely, and faithfully. We hold a place in our lives for their psychological presence. This work of love in remembering the dead is faithful because our dead cannot compel steadfastness of our covenant to remember- the one we made at the moment of death when we vow emphatically, "I will never forget.". Rather, our dead remain passive and unchanged, unable to hold us accountable for fulfilling our promise to remember:

"Little by little, as the dead crumbles away, the memory crumbles away between the fingers and one does not know what becomes of it...if love still abides, it is most faithful."

As I finished reading this piece, tears filled my eyes. I felt vindicated in some small way, as if the world who had so long misunderstood my seemingly strange, unceasing allegiance to my dead child was woefully misguided in its assumptions. The love I hold for her in my heart and the space I allow for her in my life is an act of unselfishness, freewill, and faithfulness. This sounds much more palatable than psychopathologizing the bereaved who choose to remember their dead. And in so doing, I have been better able to learn, grow, endure, and mostly to love all those around me:

"If you love one dead, then remember him lovingly, and learn from him, precisely as one who is dead; learn the kindness of thought, the definiteness in expression, the strength in unchangeableness, the pride in life which you would not be able to learn as well from any human being, even the most highly gifted...Remember one dead and learn in just this way to love the living disinterestedly, freely, faithfully... Remember one who is dead, and in addition to the blessing which is inseparable from this work of love, you will also have the best guidance to understanding life; that it is one's duty to love the men we do not see, but also those we do see."

July 27

Today, I took a seven-mile journey by foot to the Amitabha Stupa in Sedona, Arizona with my daughter's ashes in my pack. I've never had the opportunity to travel the red clay of Sedona with her, and this was a beautiful, albeit painful, trek.  Thank you Angie (Dallas), Bianca (Emma), Sari (Jacob), Kirsten (Emma), Zulma, Todd (Courtney & Nicholas), Yvette (Gabriella), Jimmy, Kim (Tyler), Debbie (Sarah), Rob, Kara (Dakota), Katie (Blake), Anna (Jared), Kelli (Jennifer, also 7/27), my other MISS Foundation friends, and mostly my beloved children for pausing, just a moment, with me today. I am both sad and very grateful.

A Wave of Surrender...

14 years ago, on July 27, 1994, my beloved child died.

I was catapulted into dark, deep waters where waves of pain and loss crashed down upon me relentlessly. Grief, like a powerful rip tide, ensnared me and then carried me far from the familiar shore. I could no longer see my home between the waves that hammered me, and I fought for even a glimpse of the recognizably blue sky. The waves persisted ... and tumbled me, over and over and over, disorienting and confusing me. All was darkness and panic. I fought it. Occasionally, I would reach the coveted surface for a desperate, gasp of saline-laced air only to be wrenched back under moments later. Pockets full of time, direction, and reason were emptied into the hungry ocean. Grief filled my lungs. I would not survive unless I surrendered.

And so I surrendered.

Like any good surfer knows, there is no other way to survive this type of Herculean force. Thus they teach the mantra: Surrender to the waves. So, too, it is with the tide of grief; and the battle, which I could never win, ended. I allowed the victor to take me adrift to unfamiliar shorelines and places of discomfort. I became one with both the quiescence and wild motion of the waves. I was mindful of grief‘s proclivities to ebb and flow, tolerant of its unpredictability, patient with the bitter taste it left in my mouth; and in exchange, it became kinder to me. We became cautious comrades. Eventually, as does the rip tide, the sea of grief released me to the shore. It spit me, grateful, from its jowl like Jonah from the whale’s rancid belly, and I found my way back home. But the places I had seen while on my unintended and uninvited abduction would change me forever.

This was how I survived in those early months and years. I allowed myself to just be. I stopped questioning myself – my impulses, my tears, my thoughts, my rituals, my wishes, my suffering, my sanity- and I let it be. There was a certain peace that followed my decision to surrender. I no longer had to pretend to be “fine, thank you”, and I would no longer be the metamorphosed elephant at baby showers where only miracles are welcomed. I no longer punished my failure to complete grieving within the allotted three-month time period by subjecting myself to the insufferable insensitivity of others. I could relinquish the rehearsed smile and perfunctory hugs and, instead, acknowledge my ongoing sadness, isolation, and despair. I could be- me.

Here I am, 14 years later, and filled with gratitude for having surrendered to grief. My daughter’s life was worthy of every tear I shed into my ocean of pain. Her death was worthy of my armistice with the waves of grief. Our love was worthy of a moratorium on normalcy and mediocrity. Simply, she was worthy of whatever time and space I needed to mourn her physical absence in my life. I am still, on occasion, overtaken by the tidal waves of grief. I don’t fear their arrival, and I am more prepared, now, to be transported to distant shores. I carry her flag with me as I travel, bury it deep in distant sands, and I hope to help others know her through knowing me. I am stronger and have faith that I will survive and learn from what comes next. And I trust that the waves will release me, as they do, and I will come home once again.

Originally written for a feature piece in "A Glow in the Woods", a beautiful  blog  for "mommas of lost babies"  --

Thank you Janis and Ferdinand for this opportunity...

Sagan: Chaos and Order

You must have chaos within you 

in order to give birth 

to a dancing star.

Frederich Nietzsche

The universe, filled with nebulae, black holes, and the mysteries of time and space, was begotten from atomic chaos. Billions of years ago, all space, matter, and energy in our known universe was contained in a "volume less than one-trillionth the size of a needle point" or about the size of a single atom (deGrasse Tyson, 2004). This preplanetary pandemonium would impregnate our mother in this massive cosmos - Earth's solar system. Out of this frenetic and violent chaos, would come life, order, and beauty. These are key principles of physics and astrophysics: supernovas that outshine entire galaxies are born from massive stellar explosions, their remnants capable of forming ominous black holes or neutron stars and pulsars that are up to eight times larger than our sun; and the untempered chaos of a seemingly libertine universe gives rise to the magnificence of the cosmos.

On July 27, 1994, my own universe imploded when my baby died. I've found myself present with sadness and absent words this July, as I have been during the past 14 voyages of the Earth about its star between June and August. My grief feels like the fledgling cosmos. Chaotic, disordered, confused, violently out of control. Still, I take comfort in reflecting on the genesis of our macrocosm. 

Grief, like our universe, is often indescribable; it is elusive, creviced, and wordless. There exist within it many great mysteries, places unexplored and unknowable given the ephemerality of time. One pithy moment of grief gives rise to a new precipice, like a pulsar in my own universe of loss. I'm sitting quietly with this idea, and I'm reminded of Nietzsche's notion that order will come of the chaos, meaning of the confusion, and that I can, indeed, have my dancing star amidst it all.  Caret initio et fine.

RIP Carl...

November 9, 1934   to   December 20, 1996

A Cry Unheard

Seeking to forget makes exile all the longer; the secret of redemption lies in remembrance.

Richard von Weizsaecker

I picked up a new book last week on the recommendation of a colleague: A Cry Unheard: The Medical Consequences of Loneliness by James J. Lynch. I only wish I'd had this book in hand when I conducted my own research on the effects of social support on women after the death of a baby.  This seminal book is filled with clinical research on the dangers of social isolation, including the effects on the body and health.  Lynch captured data demonstrating the devastating health consequences of shame, anxiety, anger, and fear that was unrecognized, undetected, and most importantly, unheard.  I think this fact, for me, was the most important. It wasn't that the emotions themselves were "bad" or "negative" as contemporary theorists might imply. It was that the person experiencing them, and others too, did not acknowledge the emotions that created the problematic outcomes.  They were abandoned- both by others, and also by themselves.

In sum, he found that such social disenfranchisement can lead to fluctuations in blood pressure and respiration, depressed immune functioning, heart disease, hypertension, and a host of other physiological maladies. He notes that: "Those lacking social support, those who live alone, those who struggle with chronic loneliness, those who lose a loved one, all exhibit sharply increased risks of dying prematurely."

I've posted a great deal about narcissism, grief, and finding gratitude- and how, when the time is right, there is an imperative to move beyond our own suffering and see the suffering of the other.  There are some bereaved who may never move to that space where they are willing, thus able, to do that. Lynch calls this the "black hole". He says:  "Like black holes in space, such individuals absorb all light and all objects around them while emitting nothing back. Nothing escapes their...emptiness."

Conversely, he recommends looking "out into the world beyond the confines of your own skin...listening to a bird sing can lower blood pressure...gazing at the stars" too. "Listening to one's fellow (hu)man in dialogue can lower blood pressure."  Basically, moving beyond the necessary narcissism of early grief.

Lynch believes that "dialogue is the elixir of life and chronic loneliness its lethal poison". But what about the dialogue often aimed at bereaved parents? You know- those promptings to "move on", "God has a plan for you", "at least it wasn't one of the older ones", "you can have more", "everything happen for a reason", "time heals all wounds", and "aren't you done grieving yet"s?  Lynch said that dialogue can also be used to create distance, that it can be used to manipulate. He asserts that "empty language suppresses hope...and is spoken from outside our own hearts...(where) human dialogue is ruptured, destroyed, or reduced to a living hell" when abused in this way.  He termed it toxic talk, and far too many bereaved parents have experienced a litany of such dialogue.

I deeply appreciated Lynch's honest explorations as a medical doctor, professor, and human being.  It confirmed that the bereaved should be sensitive to their own needs; and then, when ready, actively engage in moving beyond the self.  The (temporarily) non-bereaved should engage in dialogue that is comforting and from the heart. They should not seek to cure or heal or absolve. Rather, they should seek only to be with the suffering. They should use words with great care and intention, for it is easy to destroy a fragile other with a few, seemingly benign, syllables. 

Allow them to remember, and invite them warmly back from exile.

The First Smile

The world breaks us all, 

and afterward some are stronger in those broken places.

Ernest Hemingway

I remember the day with piquant detail. The first smile after she died, cracking my cheeks, splitting my skull in two. I felt as if I'd committed an act of desecration, voyeurs witnessing my fait accompli. My dead child in her pink satin casket lay there lifeless. And I smiled. 

I do not recall who caused this act of irreverence- or what they said or did to prompt it. I only remember standing outside of myself in shame. Smiling is an act of the living. I was not alive; I certainly felt dead.  But the dead do not smile.  

I knew in that moment I was not one of the dead. No matter how much I beckoned, I knew Death would come on its own will.  I also knew that I was not amongst the real living. I existed in some liminal place between breath and stillness, extinction and existence, nether and numinous, and life and death.  I was broken, irreparably shattered.

For months, I wandered through the valley of the shadows as I vacillated between the world of the living and the world of the dead. I struggled to accept life's mediocrity, longed for my now fugitive naïveté, and wished for ailments of trivia instead of trauma.  

What glue could hold those broken places? What stitch would ensure proper healing? What concoction would purge me of the pain? Which God could heal my suffering and despair?

It would be many months before smiles would come again. But they came. Slowly and painfully. I did not want others to assure me that it was okay to smile and that I should move on and be happy in my life. This, I knew, would one day be my truth. But I was not ready yet. I needed pause. Her life and death were worthy of this interruption in my previously assumed entitlement to an untainted, joyous sojourn. Instead, I wanted others to accept my shame without judgment, to hold a place for my broken, sometimes irrational, state of mind. Often, they could not. Like a leper, raw grief frightened them. 

Nevertheless, I would not accept their platitudes or poisons. I rejected their attempts to tug me toward the future faster than I was ready. I refused to abandon my brokenness in exchange for cheap glue or careless stitching. I indulged in time and tears and tribulation. I became a seeker of healing that would endure, not healing that was shoddily constructed with plastic words, or pills, or even a magic wand, susceptible to rebreaking under the slightest pressure.

What I've realized over the past 14 years is that it was the very grief that frightened them- that raw grief which seeped from my broken places like blood spilling from a wound- that truly healed me. I have become stronger in my broken places.  And I am smiling again.

From the Gallows of Grief to Gratitude

There is nothing so whole as a broken heart.

Mendel of Kotzk

This quote reminds me of what I've learned during my grief journey. 

I've learned that in brokenness, there can be wholeness. In the darkness, there can be light. In egoism, there can be selflessness. In despair, there can be hope. In ungratefulness, there must, eventually, be gratitude. 

This isn't just psychobabble; for many, it is their survivalist reality. It is the only way that so many bereaved have moved beyond mere suspension.  Those who allow themselves to experience gratitude are often able to transcend their former place in the world. They not only become whole again, but they have reached a threshold of completeness they would never have known would it have not been for their confinement to the gallows.

These are individuals who, despite incapacitating trauma and turmoil, manage to find gratitude for the goodness in their lives. This is not a magical moment of epiphany for many of them. Rather, it evolves over time and with intense cognitive effort.  I believe that finding gratitude- even crumbs or morsels at first- requires emotional maturation, practice, and mindfulness. 

It requires us  to first focus on the self- to take personal responsibility for our own suffering. To acknowledge it. To tell and retell our story. To know ourselves well. It requires us to acknowledge that there is healing in our suffering. It requires that we silence our minds, respect our body's response to the grief, and be gentle with ourselves. It commands patience, intentionality, and commitment to the insufferable pain that radiates from the tips of our hair to the tips of our toes...the agony that causes every cell in our bodies to ache. It requires that we reach out for help from others, sometimes strangers, and that we accept the outreached hand with grace.

Then, when we are ready, we must move beyond the self. We must see the suffering of others. We must acknowledge the other's pain sans the fear of losing or diminishing our own suffering. We must be able to sit compassionately with another, abandoning for a moment our own grief's narcissistic exigence. We must  widen our circle of compassion for all beings suffering. We must see the world through others' eyes.  

We must recognize the acts of kindness, courage, and sacrifice that others have offered along our journey, and extend that droplet of hope to another. It requires that we honor even ill-fated attempts to comfort, and that we reconsider exchanging alienation, anger, and resentment for tolerance, empathy, and acceptance. We must seek gratitude daily, even for the 'small' things in life, like a dandelion dancing on the warm breeze, shadows playing in the park, or a fiery sun setting against a mountainous silhouette- or perhaps, a simple kind word of support from a friend...

Like threads in a garment, grief runs in and out of our daily lives from the instant of Death, one moment often indistinguishable from the next for many days and months. There is a time for this. There is a time to wallow in the mud, a time to pause for the entangling. The garment is unravelling and grief has patterned your life, against your will, in an unfamiliar mosaic.  Yet, gratitude can truly help us to heal from our suffering when the time is right to reconvene our lives. 

And when that time comes, consider your complaints and revisit your expectations. Take the time to fill your heart with gratitude. You can be grateful for what you have without taking away from that which you have lost. 

So, tell someone who has helped you how grateful you are for their presence in your life. Hug someone you love and tell them three things you admire about them. Write a letter or send a card to someone who is making a difference in your community. Leave an anonymous gift for a teacher, doctor, or other "carer". Reach out to another person in mourning.  Let gratitude hang in the shadows, parallel to your grief. It is not magic, but it is transformative. 

When we allow the experience of gratitude, the heart may still be broken but the heart is also most full, most whole, and most complete. Mendel of Kotzk also said, "Where is God to be found? In the place where He is given entry".  Where is gratitude to be found? It can be found in the very place where you have also given it entry. Grief and gratitude can coexist.

I dedicate this posting to our wonderful MISS Foundation moderators, volunteers, and facilitators.  For your commitment to helping others, I am so incredibly grateful.

Nobody and Everyone

Nobody knows everything
and everyone knows something.

In ancient mythology, the final apotheosis of a Taoist who had transformed his body into pure Yang occurred after 1000 years in this world. He attained hsien (immortality) through mysticism, restoring the purest energies possessed only by newborn infants at birth. Once satiated with mortal life, he "ascended to heaven in broad daylight."

According to the Tao, life and death are but one of the pairs of cyclical phases, such as day and night, summer and winter. Life and death are not opposing forces; they are merely two variables of the same reality, "arrested moments out of the flux" of the chaotic universe.


From the Tao Te Ching

All creatures under heaven are born from being;
Being is born from nonbeing.

The Way gave birth to unity,
Unity gave birth to duality,
Duality gave birth to trinity,
Trinity gave birth to the myriad creatures.

Treat well those who are good,
Also treat well those who are not good;
thus good is attained.
Be sincere to those who are sincere
Also be sincere to those who are not sincere;
thus sincerity is attained.

Everything has a beginning
which may be thought of as the mother...
Having realized the mother,
you thereby know her children,
Knowing her children
go back to abide with the mother.
To the end of your life, you will not be imperiled.

Observe others through your own person.
Observe others through your own family.
Observe others through your own village.
Observe other states through your own state
Observe all under heaven through all under heaven...

Undertake great tasks by approaching the simplicity in them.
Do great deeds by focusing on the small details.

Seek the unusual and creative, for there is greatness.

Guard the three treasures: compassion, frugality, and humility.

Realize that you do not know all; this is a virtue.
Not to realize that you do not understand is a defect...

The Way of heaven is impartial,
yet is always with the good person.

The Way is empty yet it never refills with use;
Bottomless, it is, like the forefather of the myriad creatures.
It files away sharp points, unravels tangles, diffuses light, mingles with the dust. Submerged it lies, seeming barely to subsist...

Attain utmost emptiness. Maintain utter stillness.

Synchronicity

“So when you are listening to somebody, completely, attentively, then you are listening not only to the words, but also to the feeling of what is being conveyed, 

to the whole of it,  not part of it.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti

I met a fascinating man today who approached me, interested in my work with the bereaved. It's amazing how, when you meet a kindred soul, you can listen and exchange for hours upon hours and never tire of the conversation because it is intentional, meaningful, and consequential. 

We spoke about life and loss, trauma and tribulation, reality and relationships, loving and listening.

Listen. Listen. Listen.  

Repeat the word, twenty times. Softer. Listen, listen, listen.

Listening to the other can have powerfully therapeutic effects. Holding a space for the other through silence.  Being fully present, all senses focused on the other, their moment of disclosure- be it filled with suffering, sorrow, despair, or joy- being that which Pine (1985) calls a prepared explorer into another person's life.  Gadamer says that the important thing is to "be aware of one's own bias so that the text may present itself in all its newness and assert its own truth."

Reik (1954) discussed listening with the "third ear."  This is psychoanalytic listening intent on intuition. It requires that full experience of presence with the other.  He says, "...in order to comprehend the unconscious of another, we must, at least for a moment, change ourselves into and become that person.  We only comprehend the spirit whom we resemble."  I might call this true, empathic connectedness.  Freud calls it "listening with evenly suspended attention."  The results can be astonishing- acknowledgement and validation of a person and their place in the world. Thank you, David.

What greater gift can you offer to another than intentionality, consequentiality, and meaning?

And I submit this: Offer this gift, also, to yourself. Listen to the thoughts and the emotions and the memories and the pain and the struggles and the fears and the sounds and the beauty of you.  

Do what you must do to become who you must become.

Traumatic Awakenings

To be alone is one of the greatest evils for a person.

William James

I've always appreciated James' idea of loneliness as a threat to the human being.  We don't give it much thought through the societal bedlam and over-scheduled lives.  Many of us are constantly surrounded by both people and stimuli- auditory, visual, olfactory.  Yet, is it possible to be lonely even when you are with others?  Is it possible to be woefully alone while surrounded by friends? I say, indeed, it is. In fact, I believe this state of existential loneliness happens often in societies where disingenuous, superficial relationships flourish in commonplace. We rarely pause long enough to build the types of authentic and circumspect relationships necessary to avert loneliness- Martin Buber's idea of the "I-Thou" relationship. More importantly, many rarely journey inward to build the most important relationship of all- the relationship with the self.  Loneliness is a way of life in 21st Century Western culture, and the cost may be far too high.

James Lynch, PhD, professor of psychiatry and author of the book, The Broken Heart, asserts that loneliness is one of the leading causes of premature death in society.  The idea that chemical perturbations- the evolution of cellular regulation- incites emotional responses such as love, anger, fear, and loneliness set the stage for modern medicine.  Lynch disagrees with the Cartesian model that the language of emotion is separate from the body. Instead, he posits, the somatic reaction to stress, or loneliness, or grief is the body's way of communicating its suffering.   He asserts that some physical illnesses- cellular dysphoria- occur as a direct result of our bodies' failure to connect with others - and frankly, our true selves: "Because we do tell people to hide their suffering, their vulnerability and loneliness, and so they also hide their beauty...when you wall off your capacity to feel pain, you also diminish your capacity to feel pleasure."

Lynch extrapolates the result: narcissism.  Narcissism, he counters, means no self, no authentic self. These are people who are most likely to suffer heart disease, high blood pressure, and other chronic illnesses according to Lynch.  They cannot feel, really feel, their feelings at all. They do not know themselves, and they have no boundaries between themselves and the world. Narcissists get stuck in their suffering because they are wholly incapable of seeking out meaning; the eventual result being deriving joy even amidst pain. These types of individuals- very lonely individuals- are the least likely to awaken after a trauma- the least likely to recognize that fulfillment and pathos coexist throughout the human experience. Lynch says he has the scientific evidence to back his postulations.  

And I would further ask: How can we be in a real relationship with another if we are not in real relationship, first, with ourselves?  The longest journey is the journey inward. It may begin in loneliness, but it will most certainly end in knowing the self better than ever.  And the reward for this may be the gain of genuine, sustaining relationships and connectedness that enable us to truly be with others- and ourselves- during our short time on this earth.

"Too many things are occurring for even a big heart to hold."

W.B. Yeats

(Art entitled "Loneliness" by Santosh Gupta)

Death Talk: Docs dodge honest conversations

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross began this fight in the 1960's; before her death, she told me how it frustrated her that some physicians- even psychiatrists- had not yet "gotten it"-that the dreaded "D" word was still relatively unspoken in the medical community.

Indeed, it is difficult for me to imagine that this battle still continues, that it is even a controversy at all. It illuminates three things for me- 1) the ever present paternalism still alive and well in medicine, 2) the reluctance to build the types of relationships wherein honest discussions about death can take place, and 3) our ongoing circumvention of death at all- as if not speaking of it will help extend life... An important article posted today from the AP:

CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- One look at Eileen Mulligan lying soberly on the exam table and Dr. John Marshall knew the time for the Big Talk had arrived. Eileen Mulligan's doctor told her upfront that there are no good treatment options left to try for her cancer. He began gently. The chemotherapy is not helping. The cancer is advanced. There are no good options left to try. It would be good to look into hospice care.

"At first I was really shocked. But after, I thought it was a really good way of handling a situation like that," said Mulligan, who now is making a "bucket list" -- things to do before she dies. Top priority: getting her busy sons to come for a weekend at her Washington, D.C., home. Many people do not get such straight talk from doctors, who often think they are doing patients a favor by keeping hope alive.

New research shows they are wrong.

Only one-third of terminally ill cancer patients in a new, federally funded study said their doctors had discussed end-of-life care.

Surprisingly, patients who had these talks were no more likely to become depressed than those who did not, the study found. They were less likely to spend their final days in hospitals, tethered to machines. They avoided costly, futile care. And their loved ones were more at peace after they died.

Convinced of such benefits and that patients have a right to know, the California Assembly just passed a bill to require that health care providers give complete answers to dying patients who ask about their options. The bill now goes to the state Senate. Some doctors' groups are fighting the bill, saying it interferes with medical practice. But at an American Society of Clinical Oncology conference in Chicago earlier this month, where the federally funded study was presented, the society's president said she was upset at its finding that most doctors were not having honest talks. "That is distressing if it's true. It says we have a lot of homework to do," said Dr. Nancy Davidson, a cancer specialist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Doctors mistakenly fear that frank conversations will harm patients, said Barbara Coombs Lee, president of the advocacy group Compassionate Choices. "Boiled down, it's 'Talking about dying will kill you,' " she said. In reality, "people crave these conversations, because without a full and candid discussion of what they're up against and what their options are, they feel abandoned and forlorn, as though they have to face this alone. No one is willing to talk about it."

The new study is the first to look at what happens to patients if they are or are not asked what kind of care they'd like to receive if they were dying, said lead researcher Dr. Alexi Wright of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. It involved 603 people in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut and Texas. All had failed chemotherapy for advanced cancer and had life expectancies of less than a year. They were interviewed at the start of the study and are being followed until their deaths. Records were used to document their care.

Of the 323 who have died so far, those who had end-of-life talks were three times less likely to spend their final week in intensive care, four times less likely to be on breathing machines, and six times less likely to be resuscitated. About 7 percent of all patients in the study developed depression. Feeling nervous or worried was no more common among those who had end-of-life talks than those who did not.

That rings true, said Marshall, who is Mulligan's doctor at Georgetown University's Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center. Patients often are relieved, and can plan for a "good death" and make decisions, such as do-not-resuscitate orders. "It's sad, and it's not good news, but you can see the tension begin to fall" as soon as the patient and the family come to grips with a situation they may have suspected but were afraid to bring up, he said.

From an ethics point of view, "it's easy -- patients ought to know," said Dr. Anthony Lee Back of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle. "Talking about prognosis is where the rubber meets the road. It's a make-or-break moment -- you earn that trust or you blow it," he told doctors at a training session at the cancer conference on how to break bad news. People react differently, though, said Dr. James Vredenburgh, a brain tumor specialist at Duke University.

"There are patients who want to talk about death and dying when I first meet them, before I ever treat them. There's other people who never will talk about it," he said. "Most patients know in their heart" that the situation is grim, "but people have an amazing capacity to deny or just keep fighting. For a majority of patients it's a relief to know and to just be able to talk about it," he said.

Sometimes it's doctors who have trouble accepting that the end is near, or think they've failed the patient unless they keep trying to beat the disease, said Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer at the American Cancer Society. "I had seven patients die in one week once," Brawley said. "I actually had some personal regrets in some patients where I did not stop treatment and in retrospect, I think I should have." James Rogers, 67 of Durham, North Carolina, wants no such regrets. Diagnosed with advanced lung cancer last October, he had only one question for the doctor who recommended treatment. "I said 'Can you get rid of it?' She said 'no,' " and he decided to simply enjoy his final days with the help of the hospice staff at Duke. "I like being told what my health condition is. I don't like beating around the bush," he said. "We all have to die. I've had a very good life. Death is not something that was fearful to me."

Iterations of Freud

No one who, like me, conjures up the most evil of those half-tamed demons that inhabit the human breast, and seeks to wrestle with them, can expect to come through the struggle unscathed.  -- Sigmund Freud, Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria

Words have a magical power. They can bring either the greatest happiness or deepest despair; they can transfer knowledge from teacher to student; words enable the orator to sway his audience and dictate its decisions. Words are capable of arousing the strongest emotions and prompting all men's actions.   --Sigmund Freud, The Educator's Book 

Freud was an esoteric man, publicly vilified and maligned, and woefully misunderstood by his historic peers and subsequently in many circles of psychilluminati.   Born in Czechoslovakia in 1856,  he moved to Vienna when he was three years old.  His lived his entire life there and would have died there; but the beginning of WWII prompted his escape. He took refuge from the Nazis in 1938 in England and died the following year there.  Several years later, his sister died in a German concentration camp.

Freud was one of the intellectual elite who, by the time he finished middle school, spoke fluent Greek, Latin, German, Hebrew, French, English- and a little Italian and Spanish too. At age eight, Freud's favorite authors were Shakespeare and Goethe.  (Sidenote: It's nearly incomprehensible for me as a mother of three boys living in Westernized American culture...). In other words, from his earliest days, he was somewhat of a sociocognitive anachronism.  He was obsessive, meticulous, controlled, parsimonious, obstinate, rigid, and compulsive (SE, IX. 169). He existed in a vicissitudinous state of both credulity and skepticism. He was, indeed and in every way, extraordinary.

I have always been fascinated with Freud and other radical eccentrics and misanthropists. Like his early defectors, Jung, Adler, and Stekel, I also recognize Freud's cardinal flaw- overgeneralization and absolute determination to be unquestioningly right. I could not disagree more with his theory of mourning; that is, his idea of cathexis and decathexis- the necessity for mourners to sever bonds with their deceased in order to reinvest in living.  And, I won't recapitulate Freudian theory that has been scoured and devoured by 20th Century psychologists.  The Oedipus and Electra complexes and his idea of the death drive, and the ensuing mass hysteria around those postulations, are well-known- and still ridiculed- throughout the general public.   

Still, I believe him to be one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th Century. Freud contributed so much to what we know about the human psyche.  He taught us about neuroses and childhood development. He taught us the importance of maternal attachment and praise; and in fact, John Bowlby built much of his theoretical postulations on Freud's work.   He opened dialogue on dreams and symbology, and the unleashable power of the unconscious mind. He taught us about narcissism, melancholia, and identified what we now know today as posttraumatic stress disorder in combat soldiers during WWI (back then termed 'shell shock').  He gave us the Freudian slip and glimpses beneath the iceberg of consciousness: Freud left the world a powerful framework with which to understand ourselves- our true selves- psychoanalysis.  

One of my favorite, dark Freud books is Civilization and its Discontents. This manuscript is not for the faint-hearted. It is Freud at his most misanthropic, pessimistic-self.  The historical context of societal and personal events during the writing of the book is essential to consider: His daughter, Sophie, died in 1920. He was diagnosed, not surprisingly, with cancer in 1923, and later that year, his beloved grandson died. Then, the second world war began soon after and Jews were being slaughtered, and he began working on the epic book Civilization and its Discontents. Within two decades, he'd lived through two world wars, one in which his religious group was facing extermination; now faced his own mortality; and he lost his daughter and then his grandson to Death. Given the historical context, is it any wonder, then, this book is a literary augur of calamity?  

I believe every person should read at least two of Freud's books, if not for clinical purposes then for gain of political philosophy.  He is, after all, one of the great makers of our previous century.  And even in the darkest, dampest corners of his mind, Freud left room for the human spirit to succeed.  It's not an exaggerated or naive optimism. Rather, it requires maturation and responsibility: he calls upon people to become acquainted with themselves, to understand themselves. 

He says that knowing yourself will help both individuals and society remain open to the vast possibilities of human expression, those beyond the impulsive drives- the negatives- those beyond the failures. We need not be limited by our past; rather, we can live authentic lives when we know ourselves- when we are honest- and transform pain and aggression into beauty and peace.  

Id's a wonderful world, after all.

 

The Risk of Love

The most secure prisons are those we construct for ourselves.

Gordon Livingston, M.D.

How does one live in a world where children die? 

Living in 21st Century, relatively affluent American society we are unaccustomed to the idea that children die. Yet, there was a time, not long ago- and still true in many parts of the world, when many, many children died. Two dead children in a family of four was not the exception just 100 years ago, or more commonly five dead children in a family of ten.  But our worldview- our very expectations upon which we construct our futures- patently rejects the idea that our families can be swiftly shredded at Death's whim. Due to medical advances, sanitation improvements, and other accoutrements of modern life, most have become wholly unfamiliar with early death, both during infancy and childhood as well as early adulthood, in Western society.

In fact, many believe they can beat Death at His game. Many nonprofit organizations exist to eradicate Death. They are single-cause focused. They want to cure, prevent, heal, and prolong. All worthy causes, indeed. But Death is a formidable enemy who will not secede. We may cure cancer one day, or heal brain injuries, or prevent suicide or car crashes or stillbirth or SIDS...but Death will, for us all, come one day. We can only hope that He comes for the parents first, and then that He comes for parents at the end of their lives, and not prematurely.  We can only hope that for the rest of the world's children, too. Sadly, in a world of inequity and suffering, this is unlikely.  

That is why the MISS Foundation exists. Because since the beginning of man's time on this planet, children have died. And until man takes his final step on this earth, children will continue to die.   We can be imprisoned and paralyzed by fear, anxiety, grief, despair, and sadness. Our children's lives are certainly worthy of such psychological woes.  I think of the purgatorial state of the mother in the film "What Dreams May Come."  Her prison- one of her choosing- was painful for me to watch... it represented a familiar place to which I'd once condemned myself.  In a sense, perhaps, punishment to an austere life is the only justice a mother can give her dead child.

Perhaps not. 

Perhaps, instead, our penalty for outliving our children is the task of seeking connection in the midst of an imperfect world, reinventing ourselves in the midst of our child's ghost, rebirthing in the midst of suffering, or finding a way to love despite the pain. Love, Livingstone says, is the ultimate risk. When we cannot change the parts we wish were different, the unfairness and cruelty of life, we've only one  choice.  To live or die.  Yet, to surrender our existence would be to abandon all that is beautiful about our children who died. Indeed, he says, living after a traumatic death is both an act of will and an act of surrender. He speaks from very personal experience.

Livingstone is a bereaved parent twice. His eldest son completed at suicide, and his youngest, only 13, died of leukemia. How does one exist in a world where children die? I think, perhaps, through that for which we are willing to risk everything- love.

Trauma proliferation: God help us

For this is what we do. Put one foot forward and then the other... Add our little consequence to the tides of good and evil that flood and drain the world. Drag our shadowed crosses into the hope of another night. Push our brave hearts into the promise of a new day... for a truth other than our own. With longing: the pure, ineffable yearning to be saved. For so long as fate keeps waiting, we live on. God help us. God forgive us. We live on.

G. David Roberts, Shantaram

I'm presenting a paper this weekend (published by Omega Journal of Death & Dying) at a social stress conference, and I am listening to paper after paper of research on stressful life situations. And you know, there isn't anything that approaches the trauma of child death. Well, actually there is one... Depressed Affect and Historical Loss among Northern American Indigenous Adolescents.  This paper moved me, and I was intrigued by the idea of collective trauma in the context of child death across cultures and time.

Loss, of course, comes with his often-companion- trauma. Like Jung's collective unconscious, historical trauma is intergenerational, unconscious, and unrecognized.  According to Professor Maria Braveheart, historical trauma is the "cumulative emotional and psychological wounding over the life span and across generations, emanating from massive group trauma".  

This concept is a similar sociological construct as that suffered collectively by African Americans who were enslaved and their offspring, Jewish people as a result of the Holocaust, and Japanese Americans who were sequestered in California camps at the beginning of World War II.  It's the criminal result of colonized and coerced oppression versus voluntary immigration (ie, Italians and Irish).

American Indian families suffered immense losses at their core. Braveheart cited government-mandated boarding schools, wherein children were forcibly removed from their family homes, as a major factor in the historical trauma. Here she says, "gender roles and family relationships were impaired at the boarding schools, where the focus was on the European tradition of male-female relationships and not the Indian tradition of holding women and children sacred".  (I do so prefer this model...)

These boarding schools exacerbated the traumatic effects of familial separation by stripping the dignity and identities of the children, forbidding their language, sanctioning their ritual and religion. Grandchildren of the boarding schools suffer for the pains of the past through complex pathways; they suffer as a consequence of their own parents' suffering and subjugation.

Health ailments such as type II diabetes were common among American Indians, perhaps because of the dramatic changes in their natural diet; but perhaps also, at least in part, due to the extreme physiological stress.  Psychopathology of chronic stress and even incidental trauma is well documented in empiric studies and include shame, guilt, depression, anxiety, loss of control, low self-esteem, emotional numbing, anger, suicidal ideation, and somatic illnesse-mirrors grief in many ways.

That's on a massive, macro scale. How about individual families?  It makes me wonder about child death in families, and the intergenerational effects of trauma that we pass on to our children. It also incites curiosity about those children who were wounded by the distant past. For example, my mother's mother, was a Sicilian immigrant born just after the turn of the 20th Century. It was a time when many children died before their first birthday. In fact, some families withheld naming their children until post-1st-birthday to ensure they would live.  My grandmother had her first baby around 1931.  Her name was Josephine (1). Josephine died of pneumonia at two years of age.  Her next baby was born in 1933.  Her name was also Josephine (2). She died at around three months of age. My grandmother, fraught with the superstitions of a demon-filled world, believed that evil spirits took the baby because she forgot to pray. Her third baby was born in 1934. She named that baby Mary, believing that the name Josephine might be cursed.  Her fourth baby, born in 1936, she renamed, again, Josephine (3), the namesake of her dead sisters. This would be my mother.  My grandmother was a cold, detached woman. I never heard her express love- she rarely smiled- she was not warm or nurturing. In fact, by today's standards, she was physically and mentally abusive. I cannot help but wonder if her behaviors were manifestations and effects of those losses. And what about the effects on my own mother? How have those effects translated, mutated, and contributed to the nature of my own relationship with Josephine (3)?

Len Pearlin says that stress proliferation- or higher on the continuum, I'd posit, trauma proliferation- can occur three ways. One, through secondary means, or multiple issues that arise concomitant to a traumatic event. Two, it can occur through succession of stressors, such as serial events, interrelated domino effects of a traumatic incident.  And finally, there is well-documented empiric evidence to support the idea of the diffusion of traumatic stressors within a system, such as the family, a type of vicarious trauma contagion.  What is missing from this theory is intergenerationality of traumatic events, the series of historic events wherein an event triggers a response which triggers an event which triggers a response, and so on. What is missing is an examination of how trauma affects both the psychological and the neurocognitive state of a mother, let's say, and how those sometimes neurocidal changes impinge on the prefrontal cortices, limbic systems, and reptilian or paleomammalian regions (MacLean's triune brain theory) of her children's developing brains. It is something that, certainly, warrants further study.

Barefoot walkabout

Today was glorious.  I woke up to perfect Sedona weather, the sun raying, birds singing, and Brewer Trail beckoning. Ingrid and I started up the trail with another friend.

Brewer Trail leads to a special place I call big rock, one of the best panoramics in town, and is about two miles straight toward the big sky.  We met a Native American man at the top of big rock, and a few brave meditative types. I wondered how many relationships healed there, and how many ideas were born there, how much reverie and introspect were discovered on this big, red rock. I wondered how many feet of different lands once stood there, and how many ancient, indigenous voices had spoken there. It's a holy place, that big rock.  The journey to big rock was filled with friendly discussions with Ingrid about life, and men, and work, and aspirations, and grief, and hope, and disappointments.

The journey back down big rock would be very different than the journey toward big rock. While I was on standing big rock, overlooking the herculean geological majesty of Sedona, I experienced a moment of perspicuity.  I decided I would walk all the way down the mountain barefoot on the rocky trail, my feet touching the ground.  

I climbed down big rock barefooted, and I felt different immediately. The direct contact from my skin to the sharp edges of the rocks and earth sent stinging sensations to my brain. Tiny rocks that had just gone unnoticed under my feet now pierced my soles, and I found myself navigating the trail with greater mindfulness of every step. I found myself in the moment, truly in each moment, not deviating from planning the next step. I had to avoid stepping on yet more cactus needles or, worse, into a hungry ant hill. "Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, OUCHHHH!"

For nearly two miles, I walked, and walked, and walked, feet to the burning earth, feeling every sensation. It was a ritualistic exercise in mindfulness and focus, my barefoot walkabout from Sedona's big rock.

It could have been just an impulsive oddity in which I'd chosen to engage. I could have missed the lesson of this walkabout. But I learned something from my trek down the mountain. I learned that I am stronger and more tenacious than I thought, and I that I can tolerate discomfort in exchange for the promise of learning. It affirmed that mindfulness is an important part of walking through life- awareness of surroundings and respect for the moment. I learned that I can navigate pain but not avoid it. I can adjust for rocks in the trail, and I can adjust for the barriers in life but that they are there, unavoidably, and I will face them. 

This impulsive ritual felt good- even through the pain- and I was glad to have taken something profound away from my hike. So I plan to continue the barefoot walkabout when I want to practice mindfulness. The soles of my feet will surely callus over time, but not before being sore and blistered during the process. I cannot reach the lesson without first having accepted the pain. Ah, such is life.