What’s your least favorite emotion?

In an unpopularity contest among emotions, Grief would probably win hands down. No one wants to feel it, and few want to be around anyone else who is going through it. When someone is dying, most friends and family stop calling or dropping by, not wanting to be where people dwell in the enormous grief of the end of a life.

In case you hate to even read about it, I’ll keep it short:

Grief comes to us all, in different forms, at different points in our lives, and sometimes we feel as though grief itself could kill us. But in life, everything changes. We adapt. We are altered by it, and can choose whether we emerge stronger or permanently damaged  –although that choice may not be apparent to us at first.

The important thing to know is that we eventually come out of it, albeit not unscathed. The scars we bear can ultimately become our greatest strength. I know this because it happened to me.

Confused Emotions

I saw a  mother rush to her young son, who had fallen from a small tree he had climbed. She hauled him up by the arm and spanked him, all the while yelling at him. She was conveying anger, but was actually discharging the fear she had just felt when she had seen him fall. Shouting and hitting felt normal to her, and was how she responded most readily whenever she was upset. The message her child received was probably distorted and humiliating.

When I was younger I feared anger and felt safer with tears, so I wept helplessly when anyone around me was angry. But when I was angry, I drew inward and appeared depressed. I’m sure my behavior baffled people. It’s no wonder I was misunderstood – I was sending contradictory messages!

We confuse each other by substituting more comfortable emotions for real ones which are painful to feel. When confronted by someone’s emotional reaction, including your own, consider that it might be a self-protective cover-up for what is really happening inside.

How is a "recipe" different from a "formula?"

As a chemist long ago, I worked with formulas, using calibrated containers to create compounds, and instruments to assay, desiccate, and weigh them precisely. Predictably, everyone using the formulas correctly achieved the same results.

 But when cooking, I start with a concept, a recipe - which may be merely an idea or a list of ingredients to start with - and then I make it my own. In rice pudding, for example, I substitute fruit for the sugar and add my favorite spices. It comes out different every time, but I always enjoy it.

 Recipes are adaptable, a creation of the cook. In any good recipe for healing, you are the "cook." Starting with an idea, you can omit or replace "ingredients," and add new ones, to make it yours.

There's no formula for healing, because everyone's pain and needs and dreams and hopes are unique. Life coaching needs to be about you, because it’s your life, to live and enjoy your way.

What does "support" mean for you?

How many definitions of “support” do you know?

One is “to provide for,” the way the main wage earner supports a family.

Another means “to subsidize,” as in making contributions of time or money to public broadcasting, community theater, local charities  etc.

Office staff, who answer the phones and sort the mail, support the work of the company.

There are many more synonyms and definitions, but the support ingredient in A Recipe for Healing is the kind that friends and family give just by showing up; the kind that comes from the community in the form of get well cards and casseroles; someone who listens to your troubles; a club, church, group or program you belong to that fills a hole in your life; or the neighbor and the nurse, who deliver your groceries and tend to your wounds.

We were never intended to struggle through life alone. 

Whom do you support, and who supports you?

A Recipe for Healing #2: Healing-vs-Curing

Do you know the difference between healing and curing?

To cure is to banish the symptoms of a disease or medical condition. Healing is something else. It means mending, or becoming whole. Applied to the spirit or the soul, it means overcoming suffering. 

Defined this way, healing is the rising above any kind of misery - whether fear, confusion, grief, poverty, boredom, indecisiveness, stress, abuse or mistreatment - whatever may be causing someone unhappiness or dissatisfaction, or holding them back from realizing their dreams.

Today's Recipe for Healing is: Take good care of your body but don't stop there! Tend to your happiness as well. Decide that you are going to stretch yourself, extending your reach, aiming for what will make your life richer in peace, purpose, and joy. This is called setting an intention, and it's easy. Just decide you're going to do it, and you will have taken the first step.

A Recipe for Healing #1 - Mental Illness? Not necessarily!

Did you know that much of what society calls mental illness is actually the normal reaction of healthy people to unfortunate or toxic situations?

Some behavioral disorders stem from true mental illness, but what most of us struggle with are just the demands of living. If we are overly criticized, we may develop low self-esteem; if we receive a diagnosis of a serious disease, we may become anxious; someone we love dies, and we grieve. Most of our emotional reactions are sane, normal, and typical of what anyone else might feel under the same circumstances.

Today's Recipe for Healing is this: avoid labeling emotional behavior - yours or anyone else's - as "craziness," or mental illness. Recognize and accept that most personal problems stem from normal needs for being loved, feeling safe, making sense out of disappointment or disaster, and having reasons to hope.

Your comments invited! If you'd like to receive my monthly "Recipes for Healing" and are not already on our mailing list, please e-mail me here.

The Surprise Gifts in Simplifying, Part II (Conclusion)

Tomorrow at dawn we will leave New England for our new home in Florida. Our car is packed;  boxes, bike, and drums have been shipped ahead. My husband, Lacey (our toy poodle) and I are ready to say good-bye to the home in which we came together as a little family rather late in all our lives, and embark on a new journey.

What started out as a project to declutter my home has become a total revamping of my life. I’ve traded my cramped and overly-furnished home for one that is smaller but simple and restful, devoid of a lifetime’s worth of books and assorted collectibles. We’ve given away all the things we don’t need or can’t use, and are headed for a little villa on the coast where the weather is sunny and mild, and the vistas pleasing. We’re ready to live less encumbered, giving to the world and being supported by it in the ways we enjoy most, embodying “The Power of Less.”

I will have with me only what I need, and be doing only what feels right, I’ll be kayaking the mangrove swamps instead of surfing the Internet, taking long walks instead of constantly checking my e-mail, sitting at my harp more and at my computer less.

I’ll still check my e-mail daily, because remaining connected to people is crucially important to me, and I will continue to follow the people who inspire me, online and in print. In two weeks I will begin an on-line training program in harp therapy (IHTP), combining my love for music and healing work, something I have wanted to do for twenty years but didn’t have space in my life for, until now.

 I have identified what is essential to my life: time with my husband, time with family and friends (whom I’ll continue to see), and some time alone, doing the things I have longed to do and of which I have done too little. My top-priority list is short: 

1. Health.
2. Husband.
3. Harp.

Clearing the clutter has allowed me to see that it all comes down to how I want to spend time, so precious and unpredictable, the currency of life itself. My husband and our health, and music – the stuff of our fulfillment, peace, and joy – are my priorities. 

As we are doing now, my book has taken flight, moving on into the wider universe. I hope it will continue to make its way to people who will find something in it they can use or enjoy. I hope readers will continue to recommend and share it – and when they look at its cover image of quiet beach and blue sky, they will see my life as it is now. Serene.

Today, life is good, and full of hope and promise. I deeply and truly wish that your life, too, be and continue to become what you want it to be. 

Always,

Samantha