Seung Chan – also known as Slim – is a Computer Scientist and Manager by training, Designer by trade and, he says, “Performer by birth.” Just to give you an idea of his varied and creative background and current interests… prior to embarking on the Realizing Empathy project, Slim served as the Assistant Director of Engineering and Senior Software Design Engineer at MAYA Design, and was also an independent DJ, Music Producer and Performance Director by night. Slim says that when he’s not fighting for the right to empathize and to be empathized, he is acting, directing, dancing, composing, programming, or woodworking.

Even though Slim comes from a design background, his ideas and his book, Realizing Empathy, were developed within the context of conversations with a variety of people from different disciplines, and when Kara and I watched the video about his book, many of the ideas that he talked about in the video are ideas that we talk about in our Creative Grief Coaching program,so we were really glad when Slim agreed to hop on the line and have a chat and explore this a little. We’re coming from different industries and yet we both value empathy and creativity highly, and it was fascinating chatting with Slim about his work and the truths he’s gleaned from a wide variety of different disciplines and industries, and discovering all of the ways that we can borrow from each other to enhance our work.

Click here to download the interview

(“Right-click” and select “save as” to download the mp3 or just click on it to listen online right now.)

The Realizing Empathy video that got us curious about the connection between creativity and empathy…

Video credit: Seung Chan Lim

Find out more about Seung’s Realizing Empathy Project

• The Realizing Empathy website
• The Realizing Empathy Facebook Page
• @Realizempathy on Twitter
• Support his Kickstarter project to get your personal copy of the Realizing Empathy book.

Next Creative Grief Coaching Certification Class Starts Sept 2012. (Early-bird Course Fee Deadline is 30 April 2012.) If this interview has you curious to learn more about how you can use creativity and empathy to help people who are grieving to live wholeheartedly after loss, then come on over and find out more about our Creative Grief Coaching Certification Course and see if it would be a good fit for you.

Grief theories and approaches vary widely and some are almost directly in opposition to others, In much the same vein as our discussion about the core values and beliefs that inform our course, we’re sharing details of the books that we’ve made prescribed reading for this course, so that you can get a sense of the models/ theories/ approaches that have informed this course. We hope that this will help people to decide whether our course is likely to be a good fit with the approach that feels right to them.

So without further ado, here are the books we’re asking our participants to read, along with the reasons why we chose these books.

The Other Side of Sadness by Dr George Bonanno

Having researched trauma and resilience for the past 15 years, and as head of the Loss, Trauma and Emotion Lab for Columbia University, Dr Bonanno provides a pretty thorough review and critique of the popular theories of grieving, and shares the latest research on trauma and resilience. It’s wonderful to see how much more liberating the latest research in regard to it’s judgements about how we respond to loss and trauma, and what we need!

Dr Bonanno’s research shows that there isn’t really a staged or predictable sequential process that we go through when we’re grieving – people’s experiences of grief vary very widely. He dispells the myths of “grief-work”, “closure” and “delayed grief,” and explores the value of various methods for facilitating an experience of ongoing connection even after biological death. He also provides an excellent chapter about how our emotions work.

We’ve chosen this book because it does a great job of dispelling many common myths about how we grieve and what we need when we’re grieving, and supports the liberating and affirming core beliefs and approaches that we hope our Creative Grief Coaches will bring to their clients.

Buy The Other Side of Sadness

I Thought It Was Just Me by Dr Brene Brown

Most grief coaching/ counseling theories talk about the idea of “grief-work” – the notion that we have to work at or on our grief in order to heal. The common approach is to work at trying to “remove” or “overcome” grief. Our approach is quite different. We don’t think we need to remove or overcome grief, because it’s a very natural and healthy response that (as Bonanno says) we usually adapt to or out of fairly quickly without intervention. We encourage the approach of embracing or owning all of your grief experience, rather than trying to get rid of it or purge it, because we believe that’s where the most authentic and creative power lies. Rather than trying to “work out” grief, our model helps coaches and their clients to understand the impact of shame, and to work on dissolving shame.

Dr Brown’s work is all about the impact of shame, and what we can do to become what she calls “shame resilient,” where we’re able to quickly identify and dissolve shame triggers. There are so many shame triggers in loss events and our experiences of grief and the way that other people respond to our loss events and experiences of grief. Shame adds stress and suffering to grief and separates us from each other, which disconnects us from the valuable transformational and supportive power of connection and community. When we know our shame triggers and can dissolve shame experiences, then we’re always able to know what we need in our grieving journey and we can clearly communicate what we need, which enriches our relationships, giving us access to the transformational power of community.

Buy I Thought It Was Just Me

The Dance Of Anger By Dr Harriet Lerner

The Dance of Anger is ultimately about how we can manage and nurture deeper connections and better relationships with the people who are most important to us – the relationships that are often most difficult. This book helps us to understand the dysfunctional relationship patterns we get into, and how to break those patterns and nurture intimacy instead. It’s also a wonderful resource that addresses the usefulness and transformational power of anger (which is a common emotion in grieving.)

Most approaches to supporting people who are bereaved are focused on the individual, but we believe that connection and community are incredibly important for healing and transformation, so our Creative Grief Coaching model hopes to train grief coaches who have a deep appreciation for the importance of relationship and connection and who are really at their core “relationship coaches” who will help their clients to handle difficult relationships with clarity and love, and discover and nurture connection in their family and community.

Dr Lerner is a highly experienced family and relationship therapist and the author of a dozen books about relationships, intimacy and connection, and has just released a new book, Marriage Rules, about nurturing and improving intimacy with your significant other or spouse, so we’re beyond-thrilled that she’s going to be contributing to our module on grief, friends and family.

Buy The Dance Of Anger

Re-Membering Lives by Dr Lorraine Hedtke

Dr Hedtke does a really great job of dispelling the myth of “closure” in this book, and clearly demonstrates the necessity and power of connection and community – both for those who are grieving and those who are not grieving right now. Dr Hedtke has pioneered a method for facilitating incredibly healing and transformational community conversations with people who are grieving – conversations that open up some form of ongoing connection to their loved ones who’ve died and also enrich many of their relationships with people who are important to them who are still living.

We’ll be teaching our participants about the power of remembering and ongoing connection, and the importance of grieving in community, and we’ll be showing them how to facilitate “remembering conversations.” We’re incredibly happy to have Dr Hedtke joining us to help our participants learn her process (and we can’t wait to pick up her new book about the “how to” of remembering conversations, which is coming out in March 2012!)

Buy Re-Membering Lives

Healing Through The Dark Emotions by Miriam Greenspan

The emotional side of grieving is where much of the discussion about “the right” approach gets heated and controversial. Emotions have been baffling (and scaring) us humans for a long time, and since they can be so baffling, scary and painful, it’s usually the side of grieving that we’re most worried about and keen to “fix.”

Greenspan’s book is a wonderful resource that demonstrates the usefulness of all of our emotions – even the really scary or painful ones. Where many people want to focus on “removing” or “overcoming” painful emotions, Greenspan shows how, when we choose to rather fully look at, allow, embrace, and own our emotions, we get access to their positive purpose, we transform our experience of them, and we access our own truth and creative power. She provides wonderful practical and creative tools for doing this and we know our Creative Grief Coaches will return to this perspective-shifting resource again and again.

Buy Healing Through The Dark Emotions

Effortless Evolution by Jamie Smart

This book doesn’t address “grieving” specifically, but it’s a really accessible and useful resource for understanding our innate, resilient, resourceful, peaceful and creative nature, and how to get back to that resilient, resourceful, peaceful and creative self when life circumstances separate us from it. Part philosophy, part psychology, part spirituality, this book offers lots of paradigm-shifting perspectives and ways of understanding ourselves so that we can more readily access our innate resilience, resourcefulness, peacefulness and creativity – regardless of what circumstantial challenges we’re facing.

Smart is an incredibly elegant, creative and skilled teacher, with a rich understanding and practice in strengths-based change-work, so we’re really pleased that he will be joining us to share more about his approach and philosophies.

This is a free ebook. You can get it here.

ATTEND: Toward a Mindfulness-Based Bereavement Care Model by Dr. Joanne Cacciatore

Abstract: “Few, if any, mindfulness-based bereavement care models exist. The ATTEND (attunement, trust, touch, egalitarianism, nuance, and death education) model is an interdisciplinary paradigm for providers, including physicians, social workers, therapists, nursing staff, and others. Using a case example to enhance the breadth and depth of understanding, this article focuses on attunement as a means to moderate the negative effects of traumatic bereavement, support the framework for posttraumatic growth in the bereaved, improve psychological outcomes for providers, and set the stage for the other aspects of the ATTEND model.”

Dr. Jo has been hosting MISS Foundation bereavement conferences since the mid-90′s and she launched the Trauma & Bereavement Certificate program at ASU.  This article, published in issue 1 of 2012 run of Death Studies journal is the basis of much of her work.  Her philosophy and work were the first I [Kara] encountered in the late ’90s whereby our grief experiences were not pathologized.  Through her work, Dr. Jo normalized much of what was happening for our family and then I watched as she continued to do that for thousands of other families at the MISS Foundation.  This is very “green” psychology, shying away from diagnosis and medication, and encouraging caregivers to be present in the moment with their clients.  I cannot find any other materials published today that I would more highly recommend than this work!

When you go to the journal site and click “buy now” button, you’ll see two options:  to buy full issue or just the article.  You only need the article.

~~~

Does this sound like stuff you want to learn more about?

Much like any other area of coaching, the theories and ideas and tools that coaches draw on in their work are very diverse. We know that to some people, our ideas and approaches might seem controversial or just plain “wrong,” because it doesn’t fit the traditional ideas that they’ve learned and used, while to other people our course will be like the little pocket of pure oxygen that they’ve been looking for. And as they breathe it in, they’ll feel their heart and lungs expand and they’ll begin to feel more alive in their work with the bereaved than they’ve ever felt.

If you feel a little of that heart-expansion and sense of aliveness when you read what we’ve written here, then this course will probably be a good fit for you and we’d love you to apply.

Worried that this looks like a lot to read?

If you’re considering joining our class and worrying about getting through all of these books, rest assured, you’ll be fine. We’ve structured our learning process and manuals so that you’ll be learning experientially, which means that we’ll usually start with a creative tool and discussion about your experience of the tool, so that your starting place is your own tested experience and wisdom (always the place to start and come back to!). Then you’ll be able to layer that learning with the content from your manuals, which we’ve written to ensure that the core ideas are clear and accessible. Finally, the contributions from our guest faculty, the reading of these books and the discussions in our private forum will help you to go even deeper and broader in your understanding and use of the ideas that we’ve taught.

So don’t panic! You won’t have to have read all of these books before we start on 2 Feb. Start reading and you can read through the course and even after the live calls are finished. You’ll have everything you need to get the most out of each live call, so you won’t get left behind – even if you haven’t started reading these books yet. And you’ll have continued access to our private forum even after the live calls are finished so you’ll always be able to come back and post thoughts and questions about the reading material afterwards.

It was incredibly fun to be on the call earlier and share more with you all about the Creative Grief Coaching Certification program and our other offerings.  We apologize profusely for the tech-gremlins that left everyone on mute during Q & A — we are using a different webinar system for the course so that will not happen again!  And, we are sharing questions with answers in this post so you all still get the benefit of seeing what you each had to ask us.

First up is the call itself, offered here as an MP3 recording:

Click to download the call

(Right-click on the link above and select “save as” to download it, or just click on it to listen right now.)

More questions since the call:

Q1) Do we have to have finished all the prescribed reading before the course starts on 2 Feb?
A1) No, no, you certainly do not have to have all the reading material read by the first session. Read what you can, and you’ll be able to continue your reading through and after the program, too. We’ll be referring to them throughout the 3 months and you can read or re-read relevant sections as we approach them. We wanted to provide that list ahead of time for anyone wanting to read now — and to give people time to find the books.  We know it’s a lot to read (5 books), and some people will sign up only the week before, when our registration closes on 26 Jan, so they won’t have time to read it all beforehand. Our manual will give you the content you need for each session and the sessions will focus on experiencing the creative tools yourself, so you wouldn’t have a sense of feeling “left behind” if you hadn’t read all of the books yet. The books will just offer you a richer layer and fuller background to the stuff we’re teaching.

Q2) Will the calls always be in the format we just had: a conference call where we listen in? Or will there be any screen sharing (Can you tell I’m a visual learner?) 
A2) The line we used today isn’t the line we’ll use for the course calls – we found something with more options (including webinar). We will soon have the “how-to” and we’ll email it out on Jan 27th to all CGCC attendees, too.  You’ll be able to call in via land / cell phone, or you’ll be able to call in via Skype (which I believe makes it toll free if you are in the USA), and you’ll get a link to a website meeting room.  When you first visit that webinar link, you’ll be asked to run a free conferencing software to see the meeting room.  There you’ll see whatever we are sharing on our screen, a window for chat, and the usernames/icons of the other people in the classroom.

We are still talking about options for visuals in that screen share.  At this stage we had planned to use the audio portion of the call for most of the delivery and interaction on the live session.  And of course, though, remember that we have the content all available in the online forum and also in pdf format for you to print out if you prefer. So if you’re a visual learner you can work with that while you listen.  We will offer screen sharing so you can see us and whatever online forum thread or whatever page of the PDF we’re talking about in that moment. We’re also creating videos for many of the creative tools, so that’s also a nice visual way that you’ll always be able to go back to the content – after any individual module and even after the 12 modules are completed you’ll have ongoing access to that.

Any more questions?

If anyone else has questions that we didn’t get to answer on the call, email me or Cath and we’ll reply to your email and share the q&a here for others, too.  Or leave your questions as a comment here on this post and we’ll answer.  (Note: comments are moderated so you won’t see it post right away. Just FYI)

Thank you all sooooo incredibly much!  See you on the first webinar date!

Download the call recording here.

______________________________________________________________________________________

This week we’ll be enjoying sending out acceptance letters to the folks who’ve applied early to our Creative Grief Coaching Certification program that starts on 2 February 2012 (They’ve been really strong applications and we’re thrilled to have these folks join the class – they’re going to add so much to the discussions.)

The February intake closes for applications on 26 January 2012, so there’s still some time to apply. We’ve now also agreed dates for the next class, which will be in September 2012. Kara and I hope to run this course twice a year, so if February 2012 doesn’t fit your schedule, you can already start applying for the September 2012 intake – just indicate which intake you’re applying for when you complete your application form.

To help those of you who are curious and sitting on the fence, Kara and I are running a free live call about the Creative Grief Coaching Certification Program.

Here’s what we’ll cover on the calls:

• Kara and I will share a bit about who we are, how we came to be doing this work, and what has informed the core beliefs and values underpinning our approach to grief work.
• We’ll share briefly about the course overview and logistics.
• We’ll explain our criteria for applying to join the course.
• We’ll discuss the difference between the certification and non-certification options.
• We’ll discuss the 6 core paradigms that underpin the course, so that you can decide whether our approach is a good fit for you.
• We’ll hold an open Q & A so you can ask us anything you like about the course.

Dates:

12 January 2012

Time: 9am till 10am PST/ 12pm till 1pm EST/ 11am till 12pm CST/ 10am till 11am MST/ 7pm till 8pm in South Africa/ 5pm till 6pm in the UK.

Call-in number:

Dial - +1 559 546 1401
Participant Access Code - 316515#

(This is a USA number and you’ll be charged rates for calling a USA number. We suggest you use a cheap calling card or call in using Skype if you’re based outside of the USA. You’ll need to purchase “Skype-out” credits if you choose to call in using Skype, but the call will only cost about 1c per minute.)

We look forward to “seeing’ you on the call!

Big love,

Cath & Kara

Sometimes looking at grief straight on is a difficult thing.  I think the idea of objectivity is myth in the best of circumstance (because I don’t see how we can ever be anything but subject to our own culture, education, environ, etc), but when you throw grief in the mix, I think objectivity is downright impossible.  We are subject to what has happened to us.  We are subject to our own personal beliefs about grief and concepts like healing or integration.  We are subject to the impulses and (explicit or implicit) rules and measures of our environment like family of origin, spiritual support system, work place and more.

With all that distortion, I think sometimes the best counter to it is more distortion in a way.  When we can’t look at grief straight on anyway, why not crick your neck, tilt your head, and look at it all sideways?!  Sometimes a metaphor is a good way to shift perspective, to gain an insight, to get curious about what is happening.

An example:  sometimes when I sit in curiosity about what grief has done to my life, I see a big stain.  At first this idea really got to me.  I was rose-tinting the past as if prior to grief my life had been some pristine, antique, sacred piece.  And then someone put down their giant cup of coffee leaving my life stained, sticky, and a big phat mess.  The truth is that nothing was pristine before either, but grief left me focused only on the stain.

It really is another metaphor that came into play to get me out of the twisted view of now living a ruined life.  Art itself came into play.  I began looking at canvas pieces I’d started and ended up hating.  A wrong blotch there, a slip in a cut out there, a lumpy icky texture there, an out-right stain I couldn’t remove over here.  I had impulses to throw the canvases away.  I didn’t want anyone to see how bad I was as an artist.  I had shame rise to the surface because 1) I was an untalented hack and 2) I was actually following a wasteful line of action in considering throwing away perfectly good canvases.

So I did my best to stop myself.  Breathe.  Put the canvases propped up across the room from myself and really sit and look at them.  The vile spewed from me.  Actually I eventually learned this vile was my own inner gremlins spewing at my own self! I was soooo not being gentle with self.  As I sat and let the vile spew, eventually I grew tired and kind of bored.  I had the impulse to get up and do something else, but I asked myself to just take another breath and keep looking.  I sort of zoned out after awhile, even feeling like I would fall asleep.  Then a little bounce of energy came, and I started to look at the canvases in a different way.  You know how you look at those 2D images and then suddenly your vision shifts and you see the 3D image embedded?  Like that.  Some shift happened.

I got up and sat closer to each canvas.  Turned it on its side, upside down, looked at the wrapped edges of them.  Eventually I started to see there was something else that could come out of these canvases.  Sometimes in re-working a new piece, I’d be working the stain into something new, too.  Other times, the stain ended up so far in the background that it was foundation for the new piece built on top of it, but you could hardly see the original stains and pieces I’d hated.

As I explored this more and more with art, I found it to be true of canvas pieces, art journal pages, even digital landscape pieces.  I work layer by layer.  There are times I absolutely hate what I see in front of me.  It all feels stained and like there is nothing contributing to the whole here.  But I keep working it.  More layers, more integration, more dancing around and with the stains.  Eventually some whole reveals itself, and it begins to feel … sort of done.

I say “sort of done” because even when I finish a piece and sell it, it never really feels done to me.  I let it go in that particular format at some point.  But usually I have a high res scan of that piece that sold, and I can take that into a digital landscape, re-work it, make new images from it.  You can see in the piece posted here today, it is totally new, *but* look at the shirt on this new GRRRRRL.  The image of the star crowned fairy on her shirt is from a canvas painting I did a couple of years ago.  That same star crowned image was a part of the MISSing Ingredients Cookbook cover, too.

Grief is like this.  Not so much the stain I hate, that ruined some rose-tinted-pristine past I think I had.  Rather it is one element layered amid all that I am.  It is integrated into this full life I’m living.  Sometimes it shows up in the foreground with some prominent element to share. Other times it is faded in the background, less seen, but contributing to the whole never the less.  And often it seems invisible to most because they are looking only at the top most social surface of me.  That’s okay.  I don’t need everyone to get it anymore.  Art is like that.  Some love it.  Some hate it.  Some have artists they love who can do no wrong.  Some are just hungry for as many new works as they can possibly feast upon…

Again, like grief.  There is no one single way to be with it, understand it, witness it.  Our experiences will be as individual as we are as unique human beings.

Understanding that helped me spew less vile most days.
And on the days when I do still spew vile, well, I think of it as playing with acid to create a layer on a new canvas.  It’s just a step along the way.  I know now that I’ll keep working the canvas till I come to some peace with it.

At this point in my young life, I’ve come to discover a few things about compassion, self development and how we can work together about the hard stuff to always come back realigned with the joyful stuff.

Now I know many of you may be hearing about things like The Secret, the Law of Attraction, and Abundance Theory. Some of you are hearing it for the first time. Others have been hearing about these things for years. For some, these things seem magical. For others, they seem impossible or at the very least, impractical.

Let me use a little metaphor here to try and explain what I see happening:

Look at music theory. Concepts about music. Written words. Available to anyone with access to a library or the Internet. But reading music theory does not make you a good musician. You have to take the theory and plunk around noisily on the keyboard; practice having all your fingers do different things and yet work together; practice everyday; eventually you can read music or hear music and mimic it; and pretty soon you are good. And then one day, you feel something in the core of your being; music that is pushing its way out through the cells of your being; and you sit at the keyboard and watch as something brand new pours out of your finger tips and you FEEL the music.

You have bridged that gap between theory and core experience.

Okay now, going back to things like Abundance and Law of Attraction – in particular The Secret and some of the broad statements about cause and effect. I disconnect with these theories at the point where a caregiver or friend or family member looks into the face of a bereaved person or ill person and proceeds to say something like, “Well I know your child died, but you have to start thinking positive again” or “Well your dis-ease comes from within, so you have to heal yourself.” These broad statements simply impose another level of “woulda, coulda, shoulda” on the person.

That is like taking someone who has never seen a keyboard before and putting them out in front of a full house at Lincoln Center with piano and saying, “Think positive, you can do it!”
Hello!!??

It is unfair, not to mention, if you are a caregiver, it is a dis-service in the biggest way. By caregiver, I mean doctor, nurse, hospice worker, but also therapist, coach, and outreach volunteer. If you do this to a person, you are not following the tenant of “Do no harm.” In fact, you are harming them further by adding a layer of guilt and shame to what they already are dealing with in their lives.

A mother comes to me after her child has drowned while she was inside switching the laundry from the washer to the dryer. She feels guilty that the child died on “her watch” and she feels shame at being a horrible person for letting it happen. These are not rational thoughts, but this is what she is experiencing – emotionally, forget rational!

For me to now say to her, “Well, you just have to start thinking different and focus on abundance” is to not connect with her at all. She will glaze over and get away from me as fast as possible. AND she’ll then add to her already burdened process, a layer of guilt that she isn’t good enough to do this abundance thing right and shame that she maybe isn’t worthy of doing it right anyway. I have just done her an awful disservice.

Instead, there are so many other ways to possibly handle this kind of situation – and as a caregiver especially, it is my job to find out how!!

Now I do happen to believe that things like the Law of Attraction and the Power of Now and Abundance theory are real and work. But I have come to that belief thru my own practice with the theories. And there are tools in this realm that can work when we meet up with people who are in crisis, but we have to be willing to meet the person where they are!!

One of the great tools that can do this is Byron Katie’s The Work. If you haven’t heard of it, look it up online or get the book, Loving What Is, from your library. You can buy the books thru their website, but also she is very generous with information on the website and you can learn all about The Work right there if you take the time to read.

Basically, The Work is about using a few questions and a “turnaround” to shift your perspective – to experience that shift emotionally within yourself – so that the theory becomes reality. Remember that a Course in Miracles and in Marianne Williamson’s book Return to Love about the Course, there is a great definition for miracle.

A miracle is simply a shift in perspective.

And Byron Katie’s The Work is a great tool for making a simple but experiential shift in perspective! I find the first question of The Work to be the most powerful. It asks simply,

Is it true?

Now you might think, okay, big deal. But look at the bereaved mom from the example above. She has written down that she feels she’s a horrible person. Now we ask her simply, “Is that true?” In talking her through it, we find she is a good mother, a loving partner, a talented artist, she and her other children often volunteer at the local food bank. This is not a horrible person. So we ask her again, “Is it true that you are a horrible person?” Something dawns in her face. No. It isn’t true. And from there we go through the other steps of The Work with this mom coming to her OWN realizations, connecting theory with experience and emotion.

Through this experience, this mom begins to feel a shift in her perspective. From there, we can go on to work with other tools as she experiments and makes the commitment to practice trying out other things like The Law of Attraction or the Power of Intention. And each time the gritty stuff of grief comes up, the thoughts that say, “I’m horrible,” we can go back to The Work and ask, “Is this true?”

It is amazing how people can make leaps and bounds in the evolution of their story. Amazing how their perspective of self can change. Amazing how much weight can come off the shoulders.

This isn’t rocket science. It’s not hard to learn about the theories and possible tools available to all of us. It just takes a commitment to practice using the tools ourselves – honestly and fully in our everyday lives. And then also a commitment to meeting other people where they are when they come to us for support.

So please don’t just throw theories around. Check out all the possible tools, use them yourself thoroughly in your own life, and then meet other people where they are in the moment. Really commit to practice the tenant of “Do no harm” – no harm to yourself nor to others.

Resources
http://www.thework.com
http://www.comfortqueen.com
http://www.ramdass.org
http://healingnest.blogspot.com
http://www.abraham-hicks.com
http://www.eckharttolle.com

I had a picture, a vision, a dream. That got shattered and I’m left with all the bits. They don’t fit together the way I had hoped they would, and some pieces are gone forever. I don’t see – I can’t imagine – creating a new picture out of this… these pieces I’m left with. And I don’t know where to start.

And yet I must start anyway. And I must believe that one day I’ll see a new picture emerging – a picture I can get excited about. A picture that will inspire me and give me reason to keep working at it, joining up and creating, learning and being alive.

I wish I at least knew what picture I’m working towards as I sit here with all these stray pieces.

I created this collage and wrote the notes for it on 17 January 2011. At the time I was still struggling with fatigue, which we later discovered was caused by the medication I was on. I was probably also just physically and emotionally exhausted after all I’d been through over the past 8 months.

Having supported so many other people through their grieving, I knew that the groundlessness and the lack of meaning and hope for the future that I felt were all normal feelings, but I really found it hard to relax into. I’ve always been a very proactive, motivated and purposeful person and a planner who likes to look to the future, prepare and feel in control, so my lack of future vision made me feel both anxious and worthless.

With my physical and mental fatigue, I found it difficult to even do anything proactive like working with someone to begin creating a new vision. And looking back now, I think it would have been too soon for that anyway. I wasn’t ready for opening my heart to new likes and loves – I was too afraid of losing it, so I wouldn’t have been able to find any likes or loves on which to begin building a new vision at that stage. I needed to rest first, to take care of my physical health and resolve my fatigue, and I needed to allow the grieving.

At first I had the idea to “work on” my grief. I thought this would make it go faster so I could get out of the groundless grieving space I was in sooner. But grief comes in waves and we can’t sustain feeling it for a very long time. Grief has it’s own schedule and it can’t be rushed. When we try to rush it or skip it, we only cause more damage.

So I would do a little bit of reflecting, feeling, talking or crying each day, and pass the rest of the day making puzzles, taking short walks and sleeping. I bought a large 2000-piece puzzle with a print of Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night – one of my favorite paintings, and I would sit in silence, hypnotized by colors and shapes that were so small that they meant nothing to my left brain. It took me about 4 months of steady work to complete the puzzle. Sometimes Andy or others would join me and we’d sit together in silence or chatting as we worked together to build the picture. I found this very calming.

At some point the metaphor of what I was doing while I built my puzzle dawned on me. My life after losing Juggernaut reflected the puzzle-building process. I had a pile of pieces before me – each too small to be able to “figure out” or understand on it’s own. I had to trust that there’s a bigger picture – one where the pieces somehow join up. The pieces weren’t going to join up by themselves – I had to get in there and try, discover, adapt, try another… until they joined up bit by bit. I had to relax into it, recognizing that it’s going to take some time to build the picture and that impatience would not make it go faster. And when I relaxed into it, I actually enjoyed the process.

You can see my impatience and frustration in the piece I wrote below. But you can also see a sense of hope and a sense of faith that the pieces would eventually come together to form some pleasing vision. My collage helped me to integrate these insights I’d had about the puzzle-making nature of life after loss, and to affirm my trust in the process, and I began to believe that, on some level, while I built my puzzle in my living room, in other less tangible realms (inside my heart, my unconscious mind, and the world at large), the pieces of my new life vision and sense of self were coming together too.

Of course those of you who are familiar with ideas on left- and right-brained problem-solving will notice that art-making and puzzle-making are both activities that invite right-brained thinking. Loss can’t be “figured out,” so left-brained thinking becomes completely stumped. We need to employ huge amounts of creativity just to find a reason to get out of bed after a significant loss – nevermind everything else involved in creating a meaningful life. Right-brained activities like art-making and puzzle-making (especially when the pieces are so small that the design on them becomes meaningless) are really useful activities for helping your brain let your right-brained thinking strategies come to the fore.

Law of Attraction. Abundance. The Work. Logotheraphy. The Secret. The Tao. The Way. Meditation. Matrix. Creating Your Own Reality. Poetry Therapy. Art Therapy. Gestalt. The Hero’s Journey…

There are a million tools in the world. And depending on the situation at hand, you may choose to take out one or the other of these tools to use them for a period of time. They can be extremely helpful. Life changing even. And so it is natural to want to share these tools with others.

Here’s the hitch though:

When dogmatic law comes into play, we find divisiveness, the beginning of disrespect, violence, patriarchy, misogyny. Organized religions or movements often fail their constituents in the most urgent moments of need precisely because dogmatic law is offered as “cure” rather than compassionate tools being offered as “care.”

Let me share a few examples to really clearly show you what I mean about all this.

*Situation One
There are two women who are not feeling well. Both are part of communities where people are exploring self development, Law of Attraction, etc.

One woman mentions her ills, and a friend replies with an offer to help her explore Louise Hay’s “Heal Your Body” work to see if anything there seems to fit for the current situation. They work together looking at materials, seeing what might feel right to the woman in need, and they both come away feeling better having lived their practice of becoming more response-able.

The second woman mentions her ills, and a friend replies saying, “Oh, look at you creating drama as a way to make time to rest. You are attracting illness so you can have an excuse to take care of you!” The woman in need feels scolded, embarrassed, and is shamed into putting on the mask of “abundance” to seem “better.” All sense of compassionate care has been lost to the imposition of a dictated cure. In other words, the dogma of the Law of Attraction has been used as a weapon, a judgment against the woman in need. And, in truth, no one feels better in this situation.

*Situation Two
There are two sets of bereaved parents trying to find their way through grief after the deaths of their children. Both families are part of communities where people are exploring spiritual development, alternative therapies, creativity. Both families struggle with the cascade of loss: death of child, impact on parenting other children, financial realities of death associated costs, not being able to just go back to work as “normal” and the realization of having been thrust into being wholly changed as people.

The first family seeks support from their community network as they begin to question their sanity, how to function in the world at large, the senselessness of it all. A friend introduces them to Byron Katie’s “The Work”and helps them through the questions and self-exploration. The first question is simply, “Is it true?” The bereaved mother puts forth that she is a horrible mother and cannot function any more. The friend asks, “Is this true?” The mother says, “Yes!” The friend asks again, “Is this really true?” The mother thinks a bit longer this time. The friend prompts her to talk about what’s in her mind. The mother reveals a myriad of ways she is a good mother, active member of her community, and discovers — on her own terms — that she is not horrible afterall. She is just hurting and in need of support. She redefines her current situation for herself, and down the line she will create meaning out of the senseless, be open-hearted to others, and “The Work” becomes one tool she uses often to explore the shadows of grief.

The second family seeks support from their community network, too. When the mother speaks up about not being able to function any longer, she is told, “Everything happens for a reason. You cannot know God’s purpose. And you have other children who need you now.” In fact, she is told that someone recently saw Byron Katie using “The Work” with another bereaved parent, and Byron told the mother and everyone watching that you have to move on and let go of these things in order to be “normal” again. In this situation, the very same tool (and some others) were used as weapons against the mother. She is embarrassed and shamed into putting on the mask of a proper believer so she can appear “normal” again. Her needs have not been met. Meaning has been imposed upon her and her family. Absolutely no one is better off in the least!

Can you see what I mean about the difference between tools vs. prescriptions; the differences between care vs. cure? Whether we are officially caregivers or just family, friends, well-meaning community members, we have a response-ability to think through the ways we uses these tools. Many fortune cookie wisdoms are actually derived from ancient systems. If you are intrigued by some current tool, seek out its history. Learn all you can before you start handing out cookie cutter sound bites and imposing meaning on others. If you have previously only dealt in platitudes, seek out the full history and truth behind that trite bit. Don’t just take a line out of the Gospel and toss it around anymore. Look up the context. Read what historians feel it meant in ancient times. Look at modern interpretations. Consider what the full weight of the words might be. Consider that line through the eyes of Jewish history, Islamic history, Christian history, Buddhist history, and modern New Age lenses. Does the meaning change?

It is never entirely possible to be objective. We are subject to our own perspectives. Subject to our own experiences. That’s okay, but don’t let that subjective view limit you and your interactions with others. Instead, use it as another tool. Share your story of how you use various tools and what they mean to you. BUT THEN actively listen as other people tell you of their experiences. Don’t impose your uses and conclusions on them. Watch, without judgement, as they pick up tools and come to their own realizations. Support them in that experience. Know that your experiences might be different. That’s okay. There is plenty of room for all of us. One does not have to win out or conquer the other. BOTH experiences can exist at the very same moment, equally valid.

In this way, all those tools I listed above can be useful. Utilitarian items available to any and all of us instead of weapons we use to control one another. It is possible to live in peace. This is just one of many possible things to play with as you create that peace in your reality. Be willing to just stop, breathe, and ask yourself, “Am I offering a tool or a prescription?” Just witness how your world changes when you are willing to be that response-able.

A big shift in my healing came when I decided to plant happy seeds – literally and metaphorically. Sadness, fear and hope all mixed up together. It was a big leap of faith for me at the time…

It helped facilitate some more grieving and acknowledgment of my fears. I cried as I planted them, all the while feeling my fear of experiencing the awe of new life and losing it all again. I acknowledged my fears, and also the fact that within less than 9 months, when the snow arrived, I would be uprooting these plants. And it was an expression of my courage and commitment to continue being a creator and nurturer of new life, in spite of the risks involved. And in this case, in spite of the knowledge that I would love, nurture and then lose these plants.

I chose to start with seeds instead of full plants so that I could have a reminder that its natural to have times in our lives when it looks like nothing is happening, but under the surface, miracles are getting ready to peek out of the dirt and blossom. Seeds remind me to trust and proceed in faith even when the results don’t show up immediately.

“May the hope be the fertile soil for the sadness and fear to grow into something truly beautiful and alive…. The flower that blooms in adversity is the most beautiful and rare…” – my friend, Wilna Wardle

Sometimes I read stuff I wrote way back when, and I think, “I wrote that… I didn’t even know that I knew that?” ‘Cos I forget, you know. I wrote this post in Sept 2009. Today I’m remembering it and wanted to share this adapted version with you.

I found this video of a sand art performance the other day. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve seen in a long time – the artwork that the artist creates, the vivid story she tells so silently and the way in which she creates it. Take a moment to watch it, and as you watch, imagine what it might be like to be this artist and to experience the act of creating in the way that she does it:

Isn’t it just so amazing and free?!

When I watched this sand art performance, I thought to myself, “That’s how I want to live my life,” and I wondered what beliefs and values I’d have to have about the creative process to enjoy living and creating in this way. Here’s some of what came to mind:

1. Give your best right now, even when there’s risk of loss. (Or perhaps because there’s a risk of loss)

This felt like the theme of the story she told, and it’s also very much the theme of her creative process. As an artist who loves both the process and the product of art-making, I’m amazed at her willingness to give her best into creating a particular scene and then be completely willing to wipe it away and have it never exist again. I wondered what it would be like to make art in this way, unrecorded, knowing that you’re going to destroy your beautiful work, and it’ll never exist ever again.

And I wondered what would it be like to live this way – giving your best to everything you do, making your contribution, in spite of all the risks, and being completely willing for it all to be taken from you at any point. Security doesn’t come from controlling the material world or preventing chaos. Security comes from knowing that, whatever happens, you can handle it. But that’s easy to forget, isn’t it?

How much easier does it become to make important life decisions when you stop fearing loss and heartbreak and know for sure that, whatever happens, whatever is lost, you have the creativity, resourcefulness and power to create something else beautiful and worth living for with the pieces of your broken heart?

2. You can create out of nothing.

This woman turns dirt into stories of people who come to life and have struggles and sadnesses and lonelinesses and losses, and so much more. We often make excuses: “I can’t do my thing anymore because of what I’ve lost…” Maybe you can’t do it the way you’ve been visualizing it. Or the way you used to do it. But there’s always something you can create out of nothing, and sometimes it’s only after loss – when we’re forced to create something new out of what feels like nothing at all – that we come to experience just how creative, resourceful and powerful we are.

What’s it like when you imagine having that much faith in your own imagination, resourcefulness and ability to create some version of what you love and need out of nothing?

3. Some things get better when you take stuff away.

Often we hold onto stuff in our lives just because we’ve invested a lot into it in the past and we tell ourselves that our investment would be wasted if we wiped the slate clean and moved on to create something totally different. In doing this, we think we’re avoiding loss, but we’re actually losing everything else that could have been in place of the thing we’re holding onto. Let go of the bad relationship/ work/ friendship investments so that you can make room for something better.

We have so many negative associations with the ideas of loss and destruction that we avoid it every chance we get. But loss and destruction are crucial parts of the whole creative process. In order to create something new, we have to dissolve what we thought we knew and unlearn what we’ve been taught. Just like the sand artist removed sand in order to create her pictures, our lives become more beautiful when we remove the beliefs we’ve learned that are standing between us and the picture we want.

Those of us familiar with loss know that loss and destruction isn’t always our choice though, and it certainly doesn’t feel like some beautiful and liberating circle of creativity when you lose someone you love. Sometimes loss just arrives and breaks everything as we knew it, and we have to figure out how to create a life worth living with the pieces we’re left with. This is a great challenge, so I don’t say this flippantly, but there is always the possibility that through the pain of these losses, your life can become even richer than it was before your loss.

Please don’t misunderstand me here! I’m not suggesting that your beloved died “so that you could have a richer life.” It wasn’t some back-handed gift from a misguided god. They died because of the cancer, or the car accident, or the heart attack, or the umbilical cord around their neck, or the pills they swallowed, or they just got really old… whatever it was. They died and now you’re left with a pile of pieces and you have to decide what you want to create with it. Creating a life that’s even richer, more connected and more meaningful than before is always an option available to you.

What’s it like when you imagine collecting up the pieces of your life that loss has left behind and continuously creating, adapting, shaping, dismantling and recreating your life in this way? If you could, what would you create?

You can find the Sand Art Video over here.