This is a fabulous, tender, truthful, healing post by a gifted psychologist, therapist, writer, and healer.
It applies to so many, in so many ways.
It is practical, heartfelt, deep and deepening.
Read. Share. Repeat.
http://adeleandthepenguin.com/struggles-and-strategies-for-the-motherless-and-unmothered/
May it be a year of peace
A year of calm
A year of heart
Of reason.
May it be a year of kindness
Of compassion
Of humanity and understanding.
May it be a year of healing
For this Mother Earth
And all who are together on it.
May it be a year of wisdom
Of light over darkness
Love over hate
Acceptance over ignorance
Courage over fear.
May it be the year where violence recedes
Where patience and respect for one another
Become more valued
Than greed
And need for power.
May it be a year of history remembered
Not repeated.
A year of repair
Not more destruction
Of healing
Not added wounding.
May it be a year where we truly do
Value the future
Of our children
Of humanity
This planet home.
May it be
A happy new year.
A year of joy
Where we could know
Each day by blessed day
That we the people
Are finally
Together
Finding our way.
May you always keep a light on
In your heart
Your place of better knowing.
May you always keep a light on
Even when it may well seem
The only one
For miles around.
May you always keep a light on
To turn cold
Into warmth inviting
And isolation
Into welcome home.
As the holiday season comes into swing (even if the weather on the East Coast has not gotten the memo…), I find myself thinking of the theme of light that permeates the season; and of the fears of darkness it hopes to overcome.
Someone noted to me–rather resentfully–how angry they are with the holiday season “hijacked by all this talk of fear and dark and hate and ugliness.” I was a bit surprised, because to me it was the opposite: This is probably the most apt time of year to face polarities of light and dark … Oh, it is a most difficult subject to approach and manage, but what can be more timely than doing so in the time of celebrating light and highlighting the survival or the birth of a religion? Or humanity’s perception of possible ongoing life?
So I think of the realities of shadows that too many are hell-bent on casting (either in advocacy of terror or in preaching overgeneralized fear and hate); and I think of the many lights that can chase those shadows away. I think of those who somehow gravitate more toward dark than illumination; and of the many who find light a far more satisfying source of power than adding to the pool of dark.
This year the battle between light and darkness may be especially evident, but the struggle has been then for eons; as did the valiant effort to shine light onto darkness and highlight life, not death.
This time of year, particularly.
The approach of the longest night has always been a time of worry and wariness. All through history, humans have found ways to combat it with light and celebrations, prayer and devotion, with reminders of the light-to-come and the reminiscing on the light that did return even after times of darkness. The miracle of light and hope and life.
Peoples the world over have some holiday of light around this time of year. Christianity itself ‘piggybacked’ onto existing holidays (and moved the celebration of the ‘birth of Christ’ from the summer, when Jesus was actually born, to near the Winter Solstice), to fill the need to note light and rebirth at the time of utmost darkness. People always needed to remind and rejoice the slow return of longer daylight and the promise of regrowth, spring, future harvests; life.
So … maybe it is not so strange that we are facing yet another battle of dark and light in this time of archetypical struggle between a sense of doom and a holding on to hope. There have probably always been those naysayers who predicted death, destruction, loss (or who hung the prevention of awfulness on penance and ‘sacrifices’). However, history itself also shows how humanity repeatedly–universally–found a way to hold light high and sparkle it abundantly. Cultures chased dark not with gloom but with sharing light, kindness, warmth, and celebration.
May we, too, remember that light will come. Is already on its way to coming. May we hold fast to the knowledge that the days will slowly overcome the night of soul and darkness will lose hold and weaken. We can hasten it with sharing our own light. With spreading kindness. With opening our hearts to those in need. With refusing to feed or amplify the darkness. Dark needs growth to spread, but light is never diminished when it is shared. We can help it grow by holding on not to fear, but hope.
Wishing you and all a season — a lifetime — of light.
Thankful for the things
That could be taken for granted
And yet are not so, for too many:
Shelter, food, warm clothing,
Clean water
Safety.
Thankful for the blessings I may not even notice
And yet are never empty:
Clean air, a language others understand,
Having a place
Where I am welcome
A bed to tuck myself into and rise from,
Soft covers,
Floor, a ceiling, sturdy walls.
Thankful for the senses that I have
And do not fail me:
Sight (and insight)
Hearing (and the ability to listen)
Smell (and being able to sniff out what is not right)
Taste (in food, and things, and people)
To be touched in kindness
And to touch others
In reassurance,
In compassion.
Thankful for the love in my life
For health and the ability to tend to it,
For knowing that I have a place to call home …
My heart breaks to know so many don’t.
Thankful for connection
For access to information.
For the ability to research so I can separate truth from distortion,
The freedom to ask questions,
The space to disagree,
Without risking violence and harm.
Thankful … for so much,
And hoping that such thanks could be available
To all.
May there be
A multitude
Of thanks.
We all hang in the balance.
Can’t you see?
Be gentle.
Be truthful.
Be fair.
Above all–be kind.
We all hang in the balance.
Do you understand?
The smallest. The heavy. The brazen. The meek. The old. The young.
We all hang in the balance.
It matters.
Above all–be kind.
Life is fragile.
Treat it with care.
Life is wonder.
Find it everywhere.
Life is hope.
Do not forget.
Life is temporary.
Universal.
Precious.
Protect it from hate.
Some communications
need no words.
A lifestyle of kindness.
I love that.
If more of us take it on; just imagine the world we would be living in,
the ripples of compassion we will be creating.
A lifestyle of kindness.
Can you see it growing?
Can you feel the depth of healing it can cultivate.
A lifestyle of kindness.
Oh let’s.
Let’s!
The little family was heading to the crossway and in my direction as I was sitting on the bench in the sun, thirty yards from the crossway, waiting for a friend to emerge from a store. They made the prettiest picture: the father pushing a stroller, the mother to his left, holding the hand of a preschooler. The little one skipping, pigtails bouncing, dressed in pink t-shirt and purple tutu, light up sandals, little handbag full of turquoise rhinestones and the latest animated princess character; giddy with the unsuppressed delight that kids that age can have. I had me a feeling they were on their way to the ice-cream store across from the bench I was on. The excited anticipation was written all over the little face.
Steps from the crosswalk and probably noticing the commotion on the corner right behind a row of parked cars and flashing lights, the mother tried to circle to the father’s other side. Maybe she intended to put herself and the other adult as barriers to the scene on the asphalt.
There was a person on the ground ten feet away from the sidewalk, right behind the row of parked cars. Paramedics with a backboard. An ambulance. Two police cars flashing lights and directing traffic from the three lanes to just one, keeping a perimeter so the nosier onlookers not get too close to the accident. Another police man stood by a car parked sideways across one lane, talking to the driver who hit the man. There was concern in the air. I’d been sending some good thoughts when I noticed the family nearing.
The child was too short to see over the parked cars, but either the energy of the congregated people or the movement of her mother caught her attention. She stopped skipping. Stood. Tried to see. The mother stopped, as well, then tugged gently on her daughter’s hand. The child did not move. The woman stood a moment–maybe considering the benefit of picking up the child to get them moving away from the area but give the child a vantage point that could be startling. The father bent toward the little one, said something. The girl nodded and resumed walking, but her head kept swiveling toward the street and as they crossed and the cars no longer obscured everything, she slowed. The mother picked her up and rushed to make it to the other side before the light changed. To put some distance, too.
The child kept talking, the mother shook her head and spoke back, tried to turn the child in her arms to face the other way and still the child kept turning her head over the mother’s shoulder–looking at the scene on the street: the paramedics were lifting the man on the board onto the stretcher. The family walked faster now that the little one was in arms. I could sense the parents urgency in wanting to get her away.
I could hear them as they walked closer.
“So you are ready to get some ice-cream?” The father, his voice kind but a bit too loud and strained in the slightly false cheer of worried grown ups that children always pick up on.
The girl nodded, her attention still divided. She looked back. “Why he has a big Band-Aid?”
The neck-brace. It did look like a big Band-Aid from the distance.
“They are just helping him be more comfortable,” the dad responded. The mom looked upset, walked faster.
“He has a big boo-boo?” the little girl looked again.
“Maybe. Don’t worry. They’ll take him to the doctor and make sure he’s okay.”
“He fall down?”
“Maybe.”
“I don’t want him to have a big boo-boo,” the little girl said, frowning. Then her eyes brightened. “Maybe he want ice-cream too so he feel all better.”
“He doesn’t want ice-cream,” the mother blurted as they reached the ice-cream store and walked in.
Maybe not the kind that comes in a cone, I thought, but the energy of sweetness from this child I bet already made him feel better, even if he did not know the pigtailed gold-heart who offered it.
Evening Standard / Getty Images 1956
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