Tag: joy

Awakening, courage, gratitude, Joy

How gratitude rises out of the ashes of grief — every time.

ravenhearthealing

Gratitude continues to show up in my life in unexpected and sustaining ways.  This is how it carried me through a difficult chapter of my life, and how it continues to hold me in all the dark moments that have followed.

My father passed away almost 5 years ago at the great age of 84. I think he would agree that he lived a beautiful life, to which he brought his immense energy, enthusiasm and heart.

At the hospital, where he slowly died over the course of nine days, I lived in a dream, like I was walking through water and drowning in tears.   It took time to accept what was actually happening.  And as it slowly dawned on us all that this was it, I would walk the grounds outside the hospital.

It was during those walks that I found something unexpected — a feeling of deep and compelling gratitude.

As my father lay dying, gratitude wrapped its arms around me and carried me through those dark days of his dying, as it still carries me now.

And I knew even then exactly what I was grateful for.

For all the love he gave me, for all the ways he encouraged and supported me, for all the time he spent with me, for all the things he taught me.

For the way he lived his life, for the way he was dying with love pouring out of his tired eyes, still my dad.

I was also grateful because we were blessed to have a room in that hospital with a view of the foothills and mountains, which he loved.  We were blessed to have access to competent and compassionate nurses and doctors, we were blessed to have family and friends around us.

His final days were filled with love and abundance – we were so blessed and so grateful.

Gratitude carries me now through moments when one of his favorite songs will play on the radio and I am blinded by tears – and I recognize that what pours through me is grief AND gratitude…and even joy.

And the gratitude always points the way to peace.

It calms me.

I am grateful for the song, and for the tears, as it reminds me of all that was — all that was so beautiful, and wonderful, and all that still remains, that is also wonderful – the memories, the qualities of his that I know I carry in me, that I see in my own children, his grandchildren. It reminds me that love goes on – in so many ways.

And this somehow gives me hope.

That maybe grief and loss and suffering have a larger meaning.

That in this liminal moment where the two meet and live side by side – grief and gratitude – is the passage through, is the doorway into a greater world, a bigger heart, a more compassionate journey.

Where you learn that your heart won’t break but finds the capacity to heal. 

Where you learn that your heart is wider and deeper than you ever thought, and can contain the grief and gratitude at once…to allow you to be overflowing with sadness and love and thankfulness at the same time…to know your heart truly is full in a way that only loss can show you.

My grief, when aligned with gratitude, brings me to joy.  One cannot exist without the other, and while I may have once understood this as a platitude for the bereaved, I have now truly felt the joy born of loss come alive in my heart.

That if I may say, as painful as it was to watch my strong father slowly diminish in a hospital bed in Calgary, I felt then and still do feel this great joy in having had him in my life.  This deep joy for all the moments when I knew I was a beloved daughter, that this terrible grief flowing through me can only exist because the joy and the love also exists.

Grief and loss are the price of that love and joy – and so with gratitude I pay the price over and over again.

And this is the truth and the gift of gratitude born of grief: it is all things, it is the twisting, rolling, wrapping up of every strong emotion, it wants to move through you like a wave, like a howl, like a dove – it is a song of love and loss as old as the earth.  It is the wound and the healing of the wound…it is the singer and the song…it is the meaning of why we are alive.

It is why our grief and suffering has a meaning.

It is the meaning.

It is strength broken by strength and still strong.

Shona

Authenticity, Awakening, courage, freedom, Joy, Mystery and Magic

This is how I know I’m on the right path

ravenhearthealing

I have recently had an emotional revelation about a certain area of my life, about a longing I have carried with me since childhood, and part of that revelation has been recognizing how the act of simply moving towards that longing has been transformative.

As a child growing up in Calgary, Alberta, I was fascinated by Indigenous peoples. I would even insist to my parents, frequently, that our family had Indigenous ancestry.  My mother assured me repeatedly, that to her knowledge, we definitely did not.  Despite this information, which at the time I found very perplexing, my fascination and longing for connection with Indigenous people and their culture, never really left me.

It may not surprise you to learn, however, that despite this palpable desire, as I got older instead of pursuing it, I learned to ignore it.

And I know I’m not the only one who has disdained all the gentle urgings of my childhood heart, and allowed it to be swallowed up by the beliefs and values of my family, my community, and my culture. I can’t tell you all the reasons I have hesitated to make any true connection with Indigenous teachings, they are many and are related to self-doubt, fear, and active discouragement from those around me which I allowed to stop me, to name but a few.

I can see that at this moment those reasons don’t matter.

Because I have crossed over a self-made wall, to embrace something that seems to have been quietly waiting for me…forever.

So finally, after all these years, this past weekend I reached out to local Indigenous medicine woman who teaches the healing medicine of her people.

As I typed out a request to connect with her, tears started streaming down my face. They were the hot, messy tears that pour out like a waterfall, accompanied by snot and sobs.

I knew then that this longing in me had gone unanswered for far too long.

At last I was taking a first step out onto the path, trusting that “As you start to walk on the way, the way appears” (Rumi).   I do not know if or how I will work with and learn from this Shaman, and as I have just taken a first step I cannot see where the road leads, but regardless I have started the journey and the joy of it is singing through my veins.

And this is how I know that I am on the right path.  In taking action, in giving in to my heart and moving towards something every step felt like light, like healing, like love, like remembering, like coming home and like freedom at the same time.

If you feel moved, if something in you leaps to meet or to create an opportunity — then hold out your hands to it.  If a move towards a longing in your heart brings you to tears, trust this. There is your answer.

For when you move towards it and you are engulfed by an emotion so strong it seems to carry you like a tidal wave to your destination, there is no turning back.

You have found the way.  And you know it with calm certainty.

And as I walk towards what has always been waiting for me, I am filled with joy. I can literally feel a sense of peaceful aliveness humming around me, a vibration like an excited whisper from the trees, the sky the birds, the earth, my soul…she’s coming…she’s coming home to us.

Xo Shona

Note: I can’t write this without acknowledging that part of my more recent struggle to start to explore Indigenous healing traditions lies within the tangled history and prevalence of white privilege and cultural appropriation. Although I feel so connected and drawn to Indigenous culture, I wasn’t sure that I was “allowed” or would even be welcomed as a student of Shamanic practices.  My childhood instincts were lying beneath heavy layers of doubt, hesitation and even shame, which is part of the socio-political energies of these times.  And yet…this longing just won’t go away. It must be answered. And so I begin this journey with deep respect and love in my heart for both the sacred medicine and the Indigenous healers who are willing to share their wisdom with me.

 

Animals and Nature, Authenticity, Awakening, courage, Joy, Women's Work

Life in the driver’s seat on the road to happiness

ravenhearthealing

Last week as I was rifling through an old handbag, I came across a tiny yellow plastic giraffe.  I smiled, as this giraffe immediately transported me back to a conversation I had with my friend, Roland, several years ago, when I was still commuting to my corporate job in downtown Toronto.

Roland and I had agreed to meet after work and when we ordered drinks, they both came with a small, plastic giraffe on the edge of the glass.  My giraffe was pink and it was cracked, almost broken in half, barely hanging on, much like myself at that time.  His was yellow and whole, and seeing that mine was broken he gave me his, stating “I think this one is meant for you.”

When I look back on this period in my life, I can see that I was deeply unhappy.

For whatever reason, I felt trapped in a job that was not satisfying, and I was commuting three hours everyday to get to and from that unsatisfying job.  The work and the commute were taking their toll on me and on my family.  I had so little time to spend with my young daughters. I had no time or energy left for my husband, who was facing his own challenges that I wasn’t even aware of.  Our marriage was in trouble.  I was in despair.

This wasn’t the life I had wanted.

I kept asking myself “how did I get here?” and “how do I get out of here?” I didn’t know how or where to begin to move towards something better, or even what “better” might look like. It was as if I had closed my eyes, or put blinders on, and had no vision for my life other than getting through the next commute, work week or month until my next vacation.

Although Roland knew only a fraction of what was going on in my life, he must have seen my misery, for he shared with me, with a kind of divine clarity, two very important things.

The Importance of Accepting What Is

First, in what initially seemed like a random conversation, he told me what his daily morning ritual was.  That when he wakes up every morning, he sits still and looks around and acknowledges everything he can see in his room or apartment.

He told me “I acknowledge everything I have and everything I get to do in my work and personal life.  And I acknowledge everything I am feeling, from gratitude to frustration, all of it.  Because I am responsible for all of it – good and bad.  These things are in my life because of decisions I have made.  I am grateful for all that I have and I accept responsibility for my life, everyday.  And if there is something happening in my life that I don’t like, then I begin by accepting that it’s there, that it’s in my life just as it is.  And only then, when I have accepted it completely, can I begin to change it.”

I was immediately captivated by what he was telling me.  I am sure I sat open mouthed as he went on, feeling like a stone had been thrown into the deep well of my psyche, an inner knowing inside me rippling out to greet the truth of his words. Roland had just handed me a gift, not just a plastic giraffe but a truth I had not thought to seek in a rooftop Milestones in Toronto.

Knowing You’re in the Driver’s Seat

And there was more.  Next, he looked into my eyes and said: You are in the driver’s seat of your life, Shona. Or if you prefer a different analogy, you are writing your own story.  If you can accept that the situation you are in is of your own making (based on conscious and unconscious decisions with both intended and clearly unintended outcomes) then you can accept that only YOU can find a way out of it…by making different choices.   Only you can determine what road you’re going to travel down from here. You are driving this bus.  You can write a new story.  One where you are happy.

And so, clutching my untouched drink with it’s broken pink giraffe, I had an epiphany.  And nothing was the same for me after that moment.
I opened my eyes.
I  began to wake up and see that only by accepting the predicament I was in, and my role in creating it, could I claw my way out of it.

As it turned out, there was a lot of work ahead of me, clarifying what mattered, and what I was willing to give up in order to have what mattered.  And even though some decisions were very, very hard, I reveled in the fact that they were my decisions to make.

I put my hands on the wheel, threw the bus into drive, and took an exit for a road I hadn’t traveled down before.

“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”
―Mae West

I slowly made choices that were better for me and my family.  Although I took a massive pay cut, I found a job closer to home. In fact, I was able to walk my girls down our street and put them on the school bus and then continue walking to work!  For the first few months, I felt like I was on vacation, so much time had opened up in my life.

I won’t lie and tell you that adjusting to a reduced income was easy because often it was very challenging, partly because I didn’t really know how to prepare for it. What always brought me back from the brink of taking my hands off the wheel was remembering that now I had what mattered: time and energy for my children, time to talk with my husband, time to clean my own home and really appreciate it (now that the cleaning lady was gone) and time to think and dream and find myself again.  Time to have a vision for my life that was more than just surviving it.

I showed up for my drink with Roland all those years ago feeling buffeted by life’s circumstances, that life was happening to me and that I was at the mercy of forces beyond my control. But the reverse is true.  We are only trapped if we say we are.

Every day we can choose to create a different life.

We have the power, we really do.  I am not naïve, I know that dark times come to us all, and that hard, unwanted circumstances arrive on our door, sometimes without warning.  What you do in those moments though, what you choose to do in all the moments, is what matters. And while the reality of knowing you are in the driver’s seat is sometimes terrifying it is ultimately liberating.

I have carefully placed the yellow plastic giraffe on a shelf above the desk in my home office.  Giraffes, with their long necks, are creatures of remarkable vision who can see far, who can see all the paths across the savannahs. That giraffe marked the beginning of my awakening, when a wise friend planted in my heart a hope and in my mind a seed of possibility. He knew that the whole, yellow giraffe was for me, as a symbol of what my life could be if I had the courage to put myself in the driver’s seat and follow my vision of a better life.

xo Shona

“You are one decision away from a totally different life.”
— Mark Batterson

 

Animals and Nature, Authenticity, Awakening, Joy

How to work with joy by giving up this one odious habit

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“Comparisons are odious.”  -Popular fourteenth-century saying

Lately, I have been comparing.  Comparing myself to others, in a range of areas including but not limited to: how I look, what I am wearing, how far my leg stretches compared to the woman beside me in yoga class (because THAT’S what yoga’s all about, right there), who has more “likes” on Facebook, who is doing more seminars, who has an “in” with Oprah.

It is a distraction, it is a form of self-sabotage, it is odious.

I am certain of this not just because of how comparisons make me feel (small, miserable, defeated) but because of an experience I had last year with a hawk. Since moving to a small town in Ontario twelve years ago, I have delighted in almost weekly sightings of red-tailed hawks.  Their power and grace in flight enthrall me, and I am filled with joy whenever I see one.

So naturally I was drawn to reading “H is for Hawk” by falconer Helen Macdonald, about her experience of coming to terms with her father’s death through the acquisition of a fierce goshawk named Mabel and her struggles to tame and train her to hunt. The book jacket has it right: “it is a beautiful story about the hard-won trust between hawk and human.”

As I finished reading this book, I actually sighed with sadness and thought to myself: “This book is so beautiful, I will probably never write anything this good, or have that kind of relationship with a hawk.” In short, I was jealous of Helen.

Instead of celebrating the profound relationship that developed between her and Mabel, and being grateful that she shared this story with the world, and that it came into my hands, I was sad because I was comparing.

Comparison is the thief of joy. -Theodore Roosevelt

I felt like less. As if her words could diminish mine. As if her experience could diminish my own experience with and love for the hawk and all of nature.

Very shortly after finishing the book and the work of making myself feel like crap, I went downstairs and was standing at my kitchen sink looking out the window when a red-tailed hawk flew right past the window and landed on a fence post about 20 feet directly in front of me!

YES.

The hawk’s back was to me and as she perched she spread her wings out wide and flared her red tail feathers, before speeding off after her prey.

In that moment I was profoundly humbled.

And so I am not too proud to tell you that I burst into tears and although I was weeping, I certainly wasn’t miserable.

I felt redeemed.

I felt the weight of all those comparisons lifted from me and knew that the hawk, in the face of my self-doubt, had shown up to remind me of my worth and my work. To bring me back to joy.

As often as I can, I return to that moment of communion with the hawk to help me rise up from the shadow land of comparison, to help me focus on my own inner journey and not on what others may or may not be doing or working on or achieving.

It keeps me from letting comparisons bleed the joy out of my life.

It keeps me moving forward even when it’s hard, when my darkest thoughts tell me I will never be as good as or as committed as or as brave as…when comparison makes me want to quit.

Instead of giving up on our work and our dreams, we must learn to give up the habit of comparing ourselves to others.

I can look back now and see that there were times in my life when I gave up a project and even a dream because I felt that there was someone else doing it better, that I shouldn’t even try because my best efforts would fall short, or that my idea wasn’t as good as theirs.

For me the hawk is a light in that storm of defeating mind-chatter and I can trust her to bring me home to myself and to joy in my own work every time, and for that I am filled with love and gratitude.

If you feel trapped in the joyless, odious cycle of living by comparisons, I can help.

I know the terrain well and I can attest that once we learn to abandon our habit of comparing, instead of abandoning our dreams, we can more fully awaken to what calls us with a sense of joy, confidence, and renewed purpose.

Shona