This is what comes of a snow day ~ I've been reading all kinds of things (and yes, cleaning and vacuuming and organizing photos, and I've even been to the grocery so we can have a nice dinner tonight).
I'm not sure that I should even write this. I hope no one will be put off or feel guilty or anything. It's just a reflection on life 25.5 Months After.
I've been aware for several days that a number of my blogging buddies are engaged in the ReVerb10 Intitiative, which describes itself as follows:
"Reverb 10 is an annual event and online initiative to reflect on your year and manifest what’s next. Use the end of your year as an opportunity to reflect on what's happened, and to send out reverberations for the year ahead. With Reverb 10 - and the 31 prompts our authors have created for you - you'll have support on your journey."
Here are the prompts so far. (I was going to paste them into this post, but they're not in a format in which I can do that easily.) They're mostly very interesting, and the responses are, too, but . . .
Wow. I just do not think in ways that would fit within these parameters any more. I wonder whether someday I will again. I am so struck by how powerfully these prompts do not fit my life that it's almost scary.
Most of my days seem pretty normal now. The grief is usually "under control," whatever that means. I am increasingly productive and aware of my surroundings and of other people, all of which represents huge steps forward.
But it also inhabits every bone, every muscle and tendon, every cell in my body. It has moved in and made a nest and settled into every nook and cranny.
When a friend of mine who also lost a 24-year-old son to suicide, eight years ago on Christmas Day, said that it changes you at a cellular level, she was completely right on.
I have been on a spiritual journey that three years ago I could never have fathomed. I have plowed back into my life in ways that, looking back, seem impossible. I live with a daily awareness of horror and sorrow that has altered my perspective on everything.
And those prompts just don't make any sense at all to me.
I hope I am not pushing aside or belittling your grief in any way by way of this comment, but I have to say that I have been reading these prompts and people's thoughtful responses to them and thought of trying them and find that they do not reverberate with me at all. It's just not how I think. Period. So my blog is staying pretty dormant or superficial because the things I really want to write are too intense and personal for what is not really an anonymous blog.
ReplyDeleteSo thanks for being willing to say it.
No, Wendy, I am not offended. You've given me something to think about. But truthfully, I think I would have delved right into the prompts three years ago. Now I look at questions about wisdom and good decisions and parties and bodily integration and letting things go and first I think: what are these about, and then I think, of course, I do think about all those things. Maybe just not in ways I could write about publicly.
ReplyDeleteNo way I'm going there with the Reverb 10 either. I'm fairly certain I do not want to reflect publically through my responses....and even though what I am dealing with is a work in progress, my life is presently at a point where I am working hard to compartmentalize and pretend that things are not as things are....
ReplyDeleteDue to the peculiarities of my own life and my responses to it I look at things like Reverb and even quite ordinary conversations and think "what DO they mean?". This sense of aloneness, which is not loneliness at all, is something that people feel sometimes and always takes me to the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus himself was changed so much that He sweated blood. I suppose this is not such a strange place to be in Advent.
ReplyDeleteAll so true. Suffering changes your heart, your eyes and your soul. Nothing can ever be seen the same again, and some of life's pursuits seem shallow in contrast, and a diversion from the realities. Karen G's link today seems to reiterate the same theme.
ReplyDeleteBlessings and comfort on you dear friend. Enjoy your quiet snow day.
I don't think it's shallow or diversionary.
ReplyDeleteBut I think the shock "reverberating" through my life has cancelled any sense I might have had of being able to send forth reverberations of my own.
And I'm thinking that that's a good thing.
As always, I am so grateful for your honesty here. Blessings.
ReplyDelete