{"id":216,"date":"2009-10-17T11:15:12","date_gmt":"2009-10-17T18:15:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/192.168.205.130\/?p=216"},"modified":"2009-12-06T11:18:46","modified_gmt":"2009-12-06T18:18:46","slug":"finding-my-own-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lewismoon.com\/?p=216","title":{"rendered":"Finding My Own Way"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Sharon’s Blog<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\"myself<\/p>\n

myself with my mother at six<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Some of my friends have suggested that I see a therapist.\u00a0\u00a0 Recently, after a bout of arrhythmia I was evaluated at the Washing<\/p>\n

ton Hospital Center and the psychiatrist there, who saw me for only ten minutes, also suggested I start taking an antidepressant SSRI, and gave me the name of a colleague who could see me.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Maybe, quite possibly, I do need to see someone.\u00a0\u00a0 The tests indicate that my heart is basically sound, I was reassured.\u00a0 Yet I puzzled over the issue of her referral.<\/p>\n

All my life, when I have been struggling with problems, significant problems, I have looked outside myself for answers.\u00a0 I have read books.\u00a0 I have talked with my friends.\u00a0 I have googled what could\u00a0be googled before there was a google.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But this time, I don\u2019t think this is what I need to do.\u00a0\u00a0 I believe that I need to\u00a0turn\u00a0my search inward.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The truth is there cannot be anything much more devastating to me than to have lost my husband so suddenly, while we were both still quite in the fullness of our lives.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

I see now how everything about me was so fastened to him and it was from our connection that I experienced meaning in my life.<\/p>\n

We observed our friends, our children, the political process, the beauty of each day, even the despair that comes from defeat or tragedy, from the aperture of our relationship.\u00a0\u00a0There was a unity of perspective and\u00a0experience.<\/p>\n

But now I am one again.\u00a0\u00a0 A lot of who I became in the relationship was unconsciously driven\u2013what we ate, what we accumulated, the way we spent our money, the friends we made, the cultural pleasures we shared\u2013and Lewis, more than I, was much more aware of his choosing and the need to simplify and separate the wheat from the chaff in our lives.<\/p>\n

Now that he is gone, the choices are mine alone.\u00a0\u00a0 The friends I make and keep.\u00a0 The books I will keep and the ones I will throw away.\u00a0 His belongings:\u00a0 where will they go, to whom will they be given?\u00a0 Do I keep the house or sell it?\u00a0 The boat?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Do I try to see more of the world or stay here near my sons, their families, the grandchildren?\u00a0 Some of both?<\/p>\n

One thing is for certain.\u00a0 I am more conscious and grateful in my work with my clients.\u00a0 To have the opportunity to share in the depth, struggles and triumphs of their lives is a rare privilege.\u00a0\u00a0 And without their\u00a0understanding and\u00a0support these weeks I cannot imagine how I could have kept going\u2026\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

And my friends:\u00a0 how fortunate I am to have them.\u00a0 Lewis and I were so fortunate to have made such good friends.\u00a0 My awareness of their\u00a0kindness, goodness\u00a0and generosity grows with each passing day.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Meanwhile,\u00a0everything in my life is re-examined.\u00a0\u00a0 I am on trial, sitting in the witness stand, pondering in the jury box, standing in judicial robes pronouncing myself verdicts, and then watching\u00a0from the seats in the court room and\u00a0writing and reading\u00a0my daily news, sometimes just a twitter.\u00a0\u00a0 I am\u00a0given more days to live but what am I to do with myself?<\/p>\n

I remember once being moved so much by a sermon of a chaplain in Huntington, West Virginia.\u00a0 The chaplain worked with young students at the university and observed that when each student came there it was as if they had to sort through every value they had accepted\u00a0in their childhood and examine each one and then decide for themselves what they wanted to keep and what they wanted to modify or discard.\u00a0\u00a0 He compared it\u00a0to a cloak one would wear and there would be symbols or badges covering the cloak and each student wearer decides\u00a0which figures would continue to worn and kept in their emerging identity.\u00a0\u00a0 One at a time.<\/p>\n

I have to do something similar while I am at the same time losing what has been my comfort zone and I know all too well that I cannot be sure at all what number of days may lie ahead.<\/p>\n

To turn inward at this time is challenging.\u00a0\u00a0 It is easy to glide<\/em>, to let time pass and\u00a0pretend<\/em> or imagine that little has really changed.\u00a0\u00a0 Some part of me wants\u00a0this bargain with\u00a0reality.\u00a0\u00a0 And as a therapist I know that I help create\u00a0my own reality and that often in life\u00a0the best answer to any dilemma is to do nothing.\u00a0\u00a0 To let things be.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em>So I weigh these paths and choices in my mind.\u00a0 A kind of to be or not to be sort of thing.<\/p>\n

Often\u00a0my\u00a0loss breaks through and I find myself feeling as if I am broken and\u00a0beyond repair.\u00a0\u00a0 I ache in every possible way.\u00a0\u00a0 Everything I touch, see, smell, or hear reminds me of what is gone, of him<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0 I rebel, moan and lament.\u00a0 I mourn and mourn some more.\u00a0 I am in a\u00a0blind and\u00a0altered state and I\u00a0have missed the fullness that is left, the love that surrounds me.\u00a0\u00a0 The happiness of my grandchildren.\u00a0 The morning air.\u00a0 The delight and mess of my pets.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

I readjust myself and just as\u00a0quickly, almost, the experience is reversed and everything I touch, see, smell, or hear seems all the more significant, precious and irreplaceable.<\/p>\n

My awareness softens and I can see more easily the whole of my life again.<\/p>\n

One thing is for certain.\u00a0 I must simplify and\u00a0redraw the lines of my identity so that I am\u00a0ME<\/em> and not what WE<\/em> were.<\/p>\n

And while I am doing that I must deal with the task of reducing the stuff that was his and ours\u00a0determining what to keep, what to\u00a0sell or give away, and what I can discard forever not just put in a box somewhere.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I am just getting started.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I have a ways to go and a certain zest for the journey, tears and all.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yesterday I talked with my office manager,\u00a0Betty, about my decision.\u00a0 I told her I thought I would continue without professional advice or medication.<\/p>\n

I asked her opinion.\u00a0 She says she thinks that I am OK and that she would be worried if I weren\u2019t<\/em>\u00a0struggling like this.\u00a0 She has assured me that if she sees that I am really faltering she will let me know.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 She reassured me.<\/p>\n

Her reassurance helped.\u00a0 So do the words of others.\u00a0 And so do writers and poets.<\/p>\n

Take these poems for instance:<\/p>\n

Poems by Rainer Maria Rilke<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ich liebe meines Wesens Dunkelstunden\u00a0<\/p>\n

I love the dark hours of my being.
\nMy mind deepens into them.
\nThere I can find, as in old letters,
\nthe days of my life, already lived,
\nand held like a legend, and understood.
\nThen the knowing comes: I can open
\nto another life that\u2019s wide and timeless.
\nSo I am sometimes like a tree
\nrustling over a gravesite
\nand making real the dream
\nof the one its living roots
\nembrace:a dream once lost
\namong sorrows and songs.<\/td>\n

\u00a0<\/td>\nDich wundert nicht des Sturmes Wucht\u00a0<\/p>\n

You are not surprised at the force of the storm\u2014
\nyou have seen it growing.
\nThe trees flee.
\nTheir flight sets the boulevards streaming.
\nAnd you know: he whom they flee is the one
\nyou move toward.\u00a0 All your senses
\nsing him, as you stand at the window.
\nThe weeks stood still in summer.
\nThe trees\u2019 blood rose. Now you feel
\nit wants to sink back into the source of everything.
\nYou thought you could trust that power
\nwhen you plucked the fruit;
\nnow it becomes a riddle again,
\nand you again a stranger.
\nSummer was like your house: you knew
\nwhere each thing stood.
\nNow you must go out into your heart
\nas onto a vast plain.
\nNow the immense loneliness begins.
\nThe days go numb, the wind
\nsucks the world from your senses like withered
\nleaves.<\/p>\n

Through the empty branches the sky remains.
\nIt is what you have.
\nBe earth now, and evensong.
\nBe the ground lying under that sky.
\nBe modest now, like a thing
\nripened until it is real,
\nso that he who began it all
\ncan feel you when he reaches for you.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Sharon’s Blog myself with my mother at six Some of my friends have suggested that I see a therapist.\u00a0\u00a0 Recently, after a bout of arrhythmia I was evaluated at the Washing ton Hospital Center and the psychiatrist there, who saw me for only ten minutes, also suggested I start taking an antidepressant SSRI, and … Continue reading “Finding My Own Way”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lewismoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lewismoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lewismoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lewismoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lewismoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=216"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lewismoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":219,"href":"https:\/\/lewismoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216\/revisions\/219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lewismoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lewismoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lewismoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}