friday quotation

What a beautiful image and meditation:  
I fearlessly speak my truth with love. 
- Deepak Chopra

the difference between crying and grieving

I had an epiphany the other day.  There is a difference between crying over a loss or a hurt and grieving that loss or hurt . I know.  This is not rocket science, but it hit me with the force from a rocket's lift-off.  There are a number of things in my life that I have cried buckets of tears over but not truly grieved.  Crying is one thing, and in some way, it's the easy part of experiencing a loss - often because (at least for me) it's a physical thing that I have little control over.  But grieving.  Really wallowing in it and admitting that this loss (whatever it may be) is real and powerful and worth stopping over for a little while.  That's the challenge for me.  Or at least it has been.  I'm pretty resilient.  I bounce back pretty quickly in life.  I recognize loss and then do my best to move on.  And while I think, in general, this is a positive thing - it's certainly a helpful thing when it comes to continuing to live your life - it has not perhaps always been the most helpful thing for me long-term.  Because, guess what?  Even though you cry the tears and successfully "get on with your life", that sadness is still there.  That aching left by a loss is still there.  That hole left my an unfulfilled dream is very real.  And I think the only true way to find some comfort, to fill some holes, to give whatever it is that is making you so sad deserves some time set aside to give thanks for how much it or she or he meant to you in the first place.
I think Washington Irving said it well:  "There is a sacredness in tears.  They are not the mark of weakness, but of power.  They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues.  They are messengers of overwhelming grief...and unspeakable love."  So in the future when I experience the sort of sadness I've known in the past over the loss of a loved one or a grand disappointment, may I cry my tears and also listen to their message.  A message of grief and love. 

friday quotation

"Who knows?  Maybe the best hasn't happened yet..."

from "Never Say Never" by Tristan Prettyman

friday quotation

"Come to know the power and authority of your graces with the same precision with which you have come to know your brokenness and pain." 
- Carol Myss

friday quotation

"We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day."
- Henri Nouwen