(Note:  Some advertising included, but there’s actually a story in here too.  Really.)

(more…)

Communication hasn’t come easy for me. I’m not talking about writing, although that’s been hard work at times, too.  But when I write, I can hide behind my computer and write to people I haven’t met, and may not ever see.  A certain sense of protection, of safety, accompanies that. I’m talking about the communication when we say what we really mean to someone we know, someone who is or was a key player in our lives.

It’s taken me many years to learn to open my mouth and say what I mean.  I started as a codependent peacemaker, always saying what I thought (or hoped) people wanted to hear.  Most of us know how that works out — badly!

Today, I received an email from someone who for many years called me “best friend.”  Yet, whenever I needed her, she wasn’t there for me.  And the times she referred to me as “best friend” is when she usually wanted something from me.  Part of me wanted a best friend so badly I was willing to spend many years playing this  game.

Maybe you’ve heard the statement or read the Hallmark Card that says “Romance comes and goes, but friends are forever.”  I’ve never agreed with that concept.  I’ve  thought it much more challenging to speak my mind to a friend than to someone I’m romantically involved with.  A good argument can get the passion flowing.  Making up?  That can  be  fun too.

But neither of those ideas apply to an argument with a friend.  A coldness can set in, an uneasy discomfort.  Resolving an issue can feel and be almost impossible.  While many people will turn themselves inside out to work out an issue in a romantic relationship, they’ll turn their back on a friendship in a heartbeat when a problem exists.  Maybe it’s just me?  Or is it something that’s true for many?  I don’t know.  But true self-expression in friendships has been challenging for me.

Today, when I received an email from someone who hasn’t spoken to me in five years, even when I was extraordinarily ill after my surgery and asked the person to make a run to the grocery store for me, and the person (let’s keep the person genderless) had the audacity to remind me that I’m his or her best friend, I froze.  A wave of fear ran through me from head to the proverbial toe. I had three choices.  I could ignore the email, pretend I didn’t get it and not respond, which is in itself a response.  I could play the game and say oh yeah, best friends forever, that’s what we are. Today in that relationship I did something different.

I expressed my truth.  I said pretty much what I wrote here in this blog.  I said I’ve conducted myself as a best friend for many years, but haven’t felt that same expression of friendship coming from the other side.  I wrote that while this person might choose to indulge in this little “best friend fantasy” in his/her head, I choose not to engage.

I said I didn’t want to play anymore. My hands shake now, even when I write about it.

Sometimes it’s scary to speak our truth.

I also said I didn’t want to be mean, although there was a time when I might have enjoyed it.  But that wasn’t and isn’t where I’m coming from now.  Then I wished that person the best and ended by saying that when I think of him or her, I consider that person not to be a best friend but instead, to be someone I know.

The truth sets us free, but sometimes the price of freedom is that it hurts.  When we’re truly free, it means we take complete responsibility for ourselves.  I did that today.  I can’t say I feel good.  The game felt good to play, until we hit the wall whenever I wanted the friendship returned.  Then it hurt.  Then I got mad.  Then we’d play the game again.

This hasn’t been a fun game to play.

Am I becoming curmudgeonly?  Or  mature?

Best wishes to each of you as you struggle to express yourselves.  We don’t have to (usually) shout and scream.  Don’t have to be mean or call names.  All we need to do is one of the hardest things on this earth:  say something we KNOW the other person does not want to hear.

I still wonder:  Was that the right thing to do?

Melody Beattie reporting on life from Malibu …..

How many times have you asked a friend or acquaintance, “How are you doing?” only to hear the standard reply, “I’m hanging in there” (often followed or preceded by an audible sigh)?

Let me preface what I’m going to say with this:  I’m not judging and I mean no harm.  I don’t think I’m criticizing.  But I am going to tell you about a pet peeve – those four words. “I’m hanging in there” is to my soul what fingernails on a chalkboard can be to our ears.  That phrase goes against everything I’ve learned.  I can’t stand that statement and it makes me incensed and crazed whenever I hear it said.

I don’t let on.  I don’t tell people not to use those words.   I slide right past the response and move on to something else.  I don’t want to say something I’ll later regret.  But I’m going to write about what I’ve wanted to say about that phrase for the last thirty years.   I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings or be mean.  And I’m not being mean now.  At least I hope I’m not because my karma is instantaneous and lands at my doorstep now.

But “I’m hanging in there” reeks of victimization, martyrdom, and suffering.  It gives off a vibe that doesn’t say I’m powerless and my life has become unmanageable.  It says, “I’m powerless (sigh) and there isn’t anything I can ever do. (Sigh, sigh.)  Life is so harsh and cruel.”

That life is unmanageable and often cruel are truths.  I don’t have my head in the sand.  I’m not an eternal optimist.   Some events suck and life can hurt, sometimes for a long time and a lot.  We may feel as though God has smote (smitten?) us.  There may be times when we don’t want to take a positive action because we’re that angry with God, our Higher Power, or Life.

And while we may not be able to do one thing to change the situation although we tried and tried, and not that feeble trying that fits the cliché, “Trying is lying – just do” there is something we can do beside hang in there.

Surrendering is an action., a positive one.  It’s also something that hurts more before we do it.  Afterwards, once we relax into the unwanted realities of our lives, surrounding is an action that often helps to neutralize pain.  It may not make it disappear, but we feel better, more at peace with what is even though we don’t like what’s occurred.

“I’m hanging in there,” tells me that the person is fighting a battle he or she can’t win. While nobody likes to lose, sometimes we do.  Some of us have lost a lot.  Some of us are living through hard times and we don’t know how to make the torture stop.  But I know something that may not make the pain magically dissipate but will help you feel more in control.  You know about it too.

For the Love of God, stop hanging in there.  Instead, step up to the plate and Let Go.  Let yourself fall into the arms of the unknown.  You may not be able to see what’s next and might not want to look at what’s now.  But you’ve taken an action that’s removed your victim status.  You’ve stopped surviving and you’ve told Life you trust it even though and despite what’s happening now.  You’ve stepped out of powerless and into your power by the simple act of letting go of that threadbare, frayed rope you’ve been clinging to, loosening your grip,  and just letting go.

Maybe you didn’t mean anything by saying “I’m hanging in there.”  It might be a cliché you’re used to using when times are hard.  You may well know all the above, and know it better than I.  This might simply, for reasons I don’t understand, be an unnecessary irritant that I’d benefit by developing tolerance for.  Or it may be a lesson we can all remember about how to align with our power.

Some actions in life are extremely powerful:  prayer, working the Twelve Steps if we’re in recovery, and our words – the words we think, say, write, and use.  There is so much we’re powerless over.  How about tapping into some of the true Powers we have?

Besides, that rope can leave nasty burns on your hands.

In Love and Hopes for More Surrendered Present Moments,

Melody Beattie

This post is dedicated to someone I haven’t met.

Sometimes we need a tap on the shoulder from Life.  Things might be rolling along fairly smoothly for us.  Yes, we’ve got problems, things we need to work through, things we need to live without.  But all in all, Life is good for us.  For a moment, we forget.

Happily ever after?  Ha!  At peace, one moment at a time describes it better.  It’s a place I fought hard to find.  Learning to use the muscles – the spiritual, mental, and emotional muscles – to surrender to each moment, no matter what that moment holds, took me years and years to learn.  I had to get pushed off a cliff to search for it. After getting pushed when my son Shane died at age 12 in a ski accident, I didn’t want to find anything.  I didn’t want to learn anything.  I didn’t want to get through it, because getting through it would mean I accepted his death.  I didn’t want to do that.  I didn’t want it to ever be real.

I love that boy (who would now  be a man) so much.  “You are the light of my life,” I wrote on his birthday card, three days before his death.  A week before he died we went sledding together at night, just Shane and I.  He hit a tree and pretended to be hurt, knocked unconscious.  When he finally let on that it was an act, I held him tightly.  “Don’t ever do that again,” I told him.  “I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to you.  I couldn’t go on.”  I asked him if he understood that.  He said he did.

A week later, he died anyway.  Before he left, he grabbed my heart and took it with him.  And I didn’t have a choice about going on.  I kept waking up alive.

In our country where our constitutional right is the pursuit of happiness, one quarter of a million people each year lose someone they love before it’s time.  Later, we may decide that nothing happens untimely, but that’s a discovery each of us either make or don’t.  It’s not for me to tell anyone else.  It’s not for you to hammer away at me to come to that understanding.  What helps are the discoveries we make for ourselves.

The first Christmas after Shane’s death  I ran into a friend.  When he asked how I was, I said not good.  When he asked why, I said because my son died.  “Aren’t you over that yet?” he asked.  Biting my lip so I didn’t spew venom, I walked away.

The grieving people aren’t the selfish ones.  The people who want to make them feel differently so they (the ones not in grief) don’t have to feel vulnerable, awkward and uneasy are the people thinking mostly of themselves.  They come not to comfort, but to change how we feel.  That way, they don’t have to struggle for the right words, wonder what not to, or what to, say.  They don’t want to comfort us; they want to make themselves comfortable – more comfortable than they are watching us in pain.

They like to somehow make it our fault, because then they can feel safe.  What we’re going through, they think, won’t happen to them.  They don’t want to look into the mirror of our lives and realize how completely and totally vulnerable each of us are, how fragile Life is.  It’s not just the grieving mothers people don’t want to see.  It’s the people who go to the doctor and get the diagnosis:  an incurable, terminal disease.  Worse yet, it’s incurable but it won’t be terminal for a long time.  The person will be living in pain, sheer unadulterated pain with no hope of a cure for the rest of a long and miserable life.  Should they decide to take pain medication – under a good doctor’s supervision – to improve their quality of life and ability to function, friends and family often accuse them of getting high and begrudge them any relief from pain.

The invisible majority includes all the people not living in the Promised Land, who didn’t succeed in their pursuit of happiness, and who are learning that happiness isn’t something to be chased.  We don’t find it that way.

The people in grief aren’t invisible.  We’re the people that other people don’t want to see. It makes them uncomfortable to look.   Many of us cry in our cars on the way to work so we don’t bother others with our tears.  Each finds a path, eventually.  I refuse to use the word “cope” because we don’t “cope” with grief.  Grief grabs us by the nape of our necks, and drags us through Life.  It won’t let go.

Gradually, we learn we can shut down the pain when it’s too much or when we’ve cried too hard and long.  We begin to see a glimmer of a lesson here, and one there – whether we want to or not.  One day, and this takes a long time, we  find we have have more peace and true happiness than people who haven’t lost as much as we have.  But it doesn’t help to compare pain.  This new way of life doesn’t happen overnight.  Don’t expect it to.  Learning compassion, gentleness, how to listen — all these take time, whether these are gifts we use  on  ourselves, someone else, or both.

But this deep searing pain we feel when we lose someone is the price paid by those who risked opening to love.  I don’t know if today is a holiday, or national something or other’s week.  But today, I’d like to dedicate this blog to Elizabeth and others who walk in her shoes. Her story is in the  comments.  It’s worth a read.

Even if others don’t see you, I do.  I hear you too.  I know you’re out there.  Should I forget for a moment, something happens — like the email I received from Elizabeth.  It’s Life tapping me on the shoulder saying, “Look.”  Thank you for reminding me that we’re not all living in the Promised Land.

Elizabeth, this one’s for you.

Love,

Melody

PS:  Some of you may not be able to, or want to, read this.  Some may accuse me of being maudlin.  I don’t care. Don’t read it, if it’s not for you.  But  if  one person reads this and can reach out and ease another’s pain – learn to comfort someone else instead of himself or herself, then this post has done its work.  Better yet, two people, or three, or four.  You’ll make the world a better place.

(Duplicate Comment from Elizabeth and my reply to her copied below.)

1. I am looking forward to the opening of the grief site. Melody I appreciate everything you said in this article. My 29 year old daughter was killed 6 years ago by a drunk driver. Her twin sons had just celebrated thir 1st birthday three days before she was killed. I got that phone call every parent fears. My child had been in an accident. Not til I got to the hospital was I taken to the”quiet room” and told Krystal was DEAD. I went straight to the trauma room and held and touched her body for about 7 hours before they took her to the mourge. I go to Compassionate Friends, counseling, and somehow function. I do have joy now in my life and gratitude for my husband, other children, grandchildren and friends. But I still feel so broken. I hide most of my brokeness because my family an friens seem upset when I hurt. So I let them see a soft side of my grief. I o not know how to survive Krystal’s death. I find people think I should be doing better, because it has been 6 years. Each day I wake up, wish I was not forced to live in a world without Krystal and do my best to show love and kindness in the world. I feel utterly adrift and lost. I do not see it getting better, but somehow I survive and face each moment as it comes. Is there hope for me???? Comment by Elizabeth — July 20, 2010 @ 9:12 amEdit This
2. Hi Elizabeth. (I hope I got your name right; sometimes I can’t figure out the first name on these.) First, the grief site is open at http://www.MelodyBeattie.net. There is content on the outside for the public; there’s more inside for those who want to join. The only reason I ask people to register is so that we don’t get any people in there harassing anyone and so if I’m worried about someone, I can contact them myself. There are no fees; I don’t send emails; I don’t try to sell things to people. Those are the reasons I ask people to register, as there are places to post inside the site.Now, about your email. Please, please know that no matter how God-awful it feels every day, and I can’t tell you how many nights I’ve gone to bed and prayed I’d wake up dead because I cannot take anymore Life, you are on track. Losing a child is the worst, the very absolute worst loss of all. I guess each person — depending on their losses — can say that their worst loss is the one they’re experiencing now, but truly, losing a child is documented as the worst. I had a woman (a nurse) come up to me in ICU when Shane was there. He was already dead. They were keeping him on the machines, trying to get me to donate his organs but I couldn’t, because I couldn’t believe he was dead. How could I let them cut him up and divvy him out? It all just happened so fast. Anyway this nurse put her hand on my shoulder and said, “It’s going to take a long time — at least eight years. It will be the hardest thing you ever go through. But you will get through it.” She was wrong. It didn’t take eight years. It took me ten before I began to feel human again and stopped praying for death. And I didn’t really get “through it” as I’ll never be the same person again. The experience of losing my son turned me into someone else. You don’t have your heart broken like that and just say, “Well, okay — I’m over that.” But our friends want us to. They don’t get it; they don’t understand. If I’m honest, I didn’t understand either, until it happened to me. I will never, ever, ever be happy I lost my son. It shattered my Life, cracked it, ripped it at it’s very fiber, tore it apart. Few people could handle me being who I was, in the amount of pain I was in. I was accused of everything from having a codependency relapse to feeling sorry for myself. I learned, or I should say I developed a kind of radar, and I began to know who I could talk to about it, and who I couldn’t. When my daughter graduated from high school, I moved to another state. I couldn’t handle watching the school bus drive by; every day, and not seeing my son get off. I couldn’t keep living with all those triggers, memories, all the pain. It’s almost like Multiple Personality Disorder, only I’m conscious of what I did — I moved from Minnesota to California and “grew a new me.” I had to, to survive. It was years before I could go back to Minnesota again. And I still cry. I just don’t hold it against myself anymore. I went to a therapist (actually several). But they can’t make it go away. Grief has a mind of its own. But one, when I told her that all I did was feel numb, month after month, said, “Well then, feel numb.” I wrote her a check thinking “I paid $90 for that?” But it was the best advice I got (well there were many pieces). I had to make an unconditional commitment to life — a friend dropped by and said my will was so strong, I was close to “willing myself into being dead.” I didn’t know what to do, so I drew up an agreement with Life. The loss was so big, it was too important not to see it through, and somehow make it count.Shane died in 1991, three days after his 12th birthday. It’s been 19 years now. I’m crying even as I write this email. I cried when I read yours. That pain, it never goes away, not completely. How could it, when you love someone that much? But I got used to living with missing him. And there were other lessons along the way — lessons we only learn in the dark, when we don’t think we’re ever going to see light again. Each of us has a different path, a different rhythm, a different way of grieving. It’s not one size fits all. Don’t let anyone, including me, tell you how to do your grief. That’s yours to choose. But I know you can do it. You are doing it. You’ve made it through year five and you’re in year six. God those were hard years. There isn’t any magic, but surrendering to each feeling, each moment, helps. Not picking on ourselves helps. Choosing who we want to be around helps. Movies and music helped. Nothing, though, made the pain go away. I learned to surrender to it — each day. Slowly it began to neutralize. And one day I found myself walking up to a woman, putting my hand on her shoulder (she had just lost her son) and saying, “This is going to be the hardest thing you’ve ever been through. It’s going to take at least eight years. But you can do it. I know, because my son died too.” The day I found myself saying — and meaning that — I new my soul was and always had been on the path to being healed.It just sucks. It’s a part of life that sucks. I see no redeeming this loss, although people who haven’t experienced it will let platitudes roll off their lips, “Everything works out for good; It’s God’s Will; He’s better off now (oh how I hate and despise that one — it brings no help or healing at all). They don’t know any better. They don’t know what to say or do. They want us back. They can’t stand the lack of control (our friends and family). You don’t have to take care of them. Take care of you.Melody Beattie Comment by admin — July 20, 2010 @ 8:44 pmEdit This

I’m on deadline (again) until September 1.  I haven’t forgotten you, this blog or my sites.  But there’s only one of me, and I won’t let anyone else pretend to be me and write my books, blogs, or anything in my name.  So when you don’t hear from me for a while, or don’t see recent updates, please know it’s not because the site(s) are dead.  You aren’t  ignored.  I posted a new blog tonight:  The Invisible Majority, because a comment moved my heart so deeply I had to spend some time with you.

Melody

By Melody Beattie

I stared at the picture of the overweight man, thinking “I bet he eats too much because it’s the only good feelings he gets from doing something bad.” 

I realized though, that I wasn’t looking at him.  I was looking in the mirror – at me.

I’m not talking about just acting out – doing something we’re not supposed to do (although that’s important too).  We’ve done an excellent job in our quest for mental health of taking most of the fun out of life.  Can’t do this.  Don’t do that.  Must not ever…

Barf.  I’m sick of that – all the rules, the dos and don’ts.  The fantastic sixties began as an experiment and a revolution.  But like my ex brother-in-law Chuck Beattie said, every revolution becomes an institution, thereby creating the need for another revolution. 

The world moves in circles and cycles and it’s almost revolution time again.  Maybe, just maybe, it’s okay if we do something bad, something teensy weensy that we’re not supposed to do, every now and again.  You know – let it all hang out.  Now, I’m not referring to having a slip if we’re a recovering alcoholic.  No, no, no, no, no.  But can’t we find some ways to throw away the rules and put some fun back into life?  We’ve done with Life what Musak did to music.  We took the life out of it.

So there’s that.

But what I’m talking about is the need many of us have to let ourselves not be perfect, to do things poorly or badly, in the beginning and then again, each time we begin something new.  Here’s an example of what I mean.  I’ve finally cleared the decks, pre-paid my estimated taxes, and stopped signing contracts for self-help books to make time for a goal I’ve had since I began writing – writing movies.  I want to tell stories for the screen, whether it’s for television or film.  I’ve written 18 nonfiction books now.  I want to write some stories.

Over the years, my writing has progressed more and more from didactic teaching to story-telling, even in my nonfiction writing.  For instance, Stop Being Mean to Yourself is a book I wrote in 1999 that’s really about terrorism, about the lurking dangers, and about its impact and affect on so many countries – and what they’re doing about it.  I even included a dream sequence entitled “911.”  But my contract was to write self-help books, so instead of writing the story I really wanted to write, I needed to shift its focus.  Oh, I included the terrorism stuff, but I made it a book about loving ourselves hoping some people would understand.  I had to do it that way because writing self-help was writing into my contract.

Now I’m ready to really tell stories.  I want to use a lifetime of experiences and emotions to tell stories that help people understand their Life and the world.  But it’s a different form of writing than articles, anecdotes, books, and journalism.  It’s a craft unto its own.  I’ve been taking classes for five years. 

Now it’s time to actually do it.  While I groaned and moaned about the outline I created last night, my friend Chip asked what the matter was.  I told him my work sucked, and that I was used to being able to write well. 

“It’s okay to write badly,” he said.

He had a point.  I need to remember it every time I start a book.  The first draft is always horrible.  Often the second one is too, bearing little resemblance to the final product.  But I have to start somewhere.  Like an editor once told me, “You can’t edit your work until you write something to edit.” 

Whenever I begin a new project, or whenever I learn to do something new, I need to give myself permission to do it badly.  I can’t get better unless I do. It’s not that I’m a perfectionist, although I may be.  I strive for excellence.  I want to do and be the best I can at what I do.  That’s a worthwhile aspiration.  But I can’t do my best until I’m willing to do it badly.

About ten years ago, I met with two friends.  We talked about our dreams, what we really wanted to do, and what was stopping us from doing that.  We each had a dream and the same thing stopped each of us:  fear.  We put our hands together on the table at Appleby’s and made a pact:  we would go after our dreams.  We’d walk right through the fear, the way I do each time I jump out of a plane.  We’d do whatever it takes.

Even if that means doing it badly.

Do you have a dream?  Something you’d like to do, be, or achieve?  What’s stopping you?  Maybe we need a new group.  That’s it.  We can call it B.A.  Bad Anonymous.  Or BBA — Being Bad Anonymously. 

Nobody has to know but me and you.  Let’s make a pact too, and let’s make it today, to go after our dreams and look fear in its face.  We’ll get better, soon.  But not until we do it badly.

Melody Beattie

BY MELODY BEATTIE

My siblings are all half-siblings; we had different fathers.  They’re older than I am.  I can recall as a child — after they left home (and me) and would come to visit.  I’d be so happy to see them, but even then I knew that when they arrived, it wouldn’t be long until they left.  Back then, events had already become bittersweet.

“This too shall pass.” 

How often we think of that statement — but not frequently enough — when we’re going through a painful situation.  But the same theory applies to the good times, the fun times, the times we spend with people we love.  The minute, the second, something starts  the ending has already begun.  Impermanence is  the way of the world.  We’re born, and we’re on our way to our last breath.  We buy something new, like a car, and before long we get our first ding, dent, or scratch.  Whatever works can be broken.  From dust to dust and ashes to ashes.  From beginnings, through middles, to endings. 

I love a great movie, but I also hate it because before long it will be over — the characters and the story gone forever (unless I obsessively watch it over and over, which I’ve been known to do). 

Two days ago, my sister-in-law Pam said, “We’re leaving tomorrow.”  Since I got to know her and my brother Jimmy when I was flying to Minnesota to take care of my mother when she was dying from Alzheimer’s, they’ve become snowbirds — spending winters in the California desert.  We each have little places close to each other.  We have our own lives, go our own ways.  But we’re family and we’re together.  The winters no longer drag by.  They fly by instead. 

“I’m not happy about this,” I said, giving Pam a hug.  “But I can’t control it.”  That same sadness set in, that sadness from when I was young and I knew that just as the appearance of someone I love puts a smile on my face, saying goodbye leaves an empty spot in my heart.

The winter is over.  My family has left.  I’ll be leaving soon, probably day after tomorrow.  Now who in his or her right mind would feel sad about returning to the beach on Malibu?  Me.  All my life I’ve been searching for family love, and I’d rather live in a tent and be by family than on Colony Beach in Malibu without family’s love to put that smile in my heart.  It’s more than just having family close by.  It’s having family that loves you, that shares in the game of give and take.

All my life, I’ve been without men.  My dad left when I was three or so, saying, “Okay for you,” as though I made him go away.  My marriage to my children’s father didn’t work out.  My son Shane died.  But there was one more male that I’ve adored since I met him.  He was my hero — everything I thought a man should be….my big brother.  Even now he protects me, looks out for me, calls to make certain I’m okay.  No beach anywhere comes close to that.

Family time with my brother and sistger-in-law is done.  If all goes well, we’ll see each other again when the winds blow cold in northern Minnesota.  But who really knows when we’ll see the people we love  again?  I used to think they’d always be here until the day my son kissed me goodbye and went skiing.  He never came home.  He hit his head on a mogul (an icy patch) and died.  Since then, I  try to make each moment count by being present and not taking anything or anyone for granted.

I met a woman once and a friendship developed.  She wanted me to sign an agreement that I’d never abandon her.  Her request  made me want to run away.  I don’t like clingy and needy, but I’m not crazy about the theory of impermanence either.  Whatever begins will end.  Whoever is born will die.  “I’m always afraid — when things are going well — that the other shoe will drop, that the happiness won’t last forever,” I’ve heard many people say. Well, if the person you’re talking about was wearing two shoes and you’ve only heard one hit the ground, then you’re right.  The other shoe will drop.  No, the good times don’t last forever.  Nothing comes to stay.  Everything comes to pass.  Instead of closing our hearts to love or pushing people away so we don’t feel the pain of parting, how about opening ourselves to all of life — the feelings we label good and the ones we call bad? 

Feeling sadness when we say goodbye is the price we pay for opening to love.

I’m grateful for a wonderful winter, and for all Jim and Pam mean to me, for all they’ve done.   I’m grown-up now.  I know about impermanence.  But that doesn’t mean I like it.  It doesn’t mean I don’t occasionally cry when we say goodbye.  I love them  both.  I hope Life goes the way we want and soon we’ll see each other again.

Until then, may God keep them safe and bless them.

Impermanence, the bane of life.  Make every moment count and enjoy the love around you, even though you know that the good times will end just as the painful times will pass.  Until we see each other again, remember this:  Love is not bound by time, nor proximity, nor space.  “This too shall pass.”  The only thing immune from impermanence is love.  It’s the only thing that doesn’t deteriorate.  It’s the only things that’s real.

Love  lasts forever.

But saying goodbye still  hurts.

Melody Beattie

The content to the Post, “Can You Hear Me Now,” has been completely revised.

You’d think I’d know by now.  I can accept that I forget, but what I don’t get is that I don’t remember the concept sooner when:

• I have more work than I can do in the allotted time period;
• I’m uncertain about funds, financing, and how much money is going to come in;
• I’m trying to learn something new and I don’t understand it – it doesn’t sink in;
• I need an idea but one doesn’t come;
• It feels like I’ve got too much life left to live and I’ve run out of a Higher Power’s plan.

I’m sure I’m forgetting other important circumstances, but that’s another place when and where I could use the concept again:  Trust.

We can call it Faith, Letting Go and Letting God, Easy Does It, or Living in Each Moment, but they don’t nail the idea as much as that simple word Trust.

Examples are good; I’ve learned that from many years of studying and earning a living by writing.  They’re better than vague concepts in generalized situations.  But using examples from my life causes me to feel vulnerable.  I’m showing my extraordinarily human side.  People like learning from experts and gurus, and I cannot claim stake to either one.  I’m just a person bumbling my way through Life. 

So here’s an example from a bumbler, not an expert.  It’s more recent than I’d like to admit.  It happened last week but it started when I began writing in 1979 and set my career goals.  One goal was to switch to screenplay writing in the second half of my career.  I’ve probably passed that “second-half” line but my goal is manifesting anyway and I’d like to believe it’s manifesting on time.  I fulfilled my other writing commitments.  I prepaid my quarterly estimated taxes for a year.  I cleared the board of other commitments  for the next however-many years.  I’ve been studying screenwriting for the past five years but until now, the classes have been easy.  I show up (online) and read.  This year, I signed up for a big one.  The course involves a minimum of eight and probably twelve hours of attending online classes weekly and twice that many hours of homework weeklytoo.   By the end of the  twelve week course, students will either flunk.  fail, run away, hide – or they’ll have a completed and well-written screenplay in hand, one that really shines.

It’s exciting and frightening to switch to something new.  It’s also hard work.  It’s not, I thought, that old dogs can’t learn new tricks.  I’m not sure this dog still hunts.

The person sponsoring the class isn’t kidding when he says that serious students only need apply and that not behaving professionally (which includes turning in our homework timely) will lead him to believe we’re frivolous.  We could well get booted off from our space online.  He’s not (the sponsor) just in business.  He means business.

The first homework assignment went well.  I felt proud about the work I turned in to the teacher.  “Great!” she typed on my logline, synopsis, and protagonist’s arc (industry words meaning theme, summary, and how the main person in the story changes).  Then we got our second assignment – an outline of the (I almost wrote book) screenplay’s scenes.  By outlining, we’ll see if we really do have a story to tell and if so, where  it needs work. 

I froze.  The story I’d been carrying around in my head for years suddenly seemed like a safe substitute for sleeping pills.  As time for handing in the assignment grew nearer, I grew further away from having mine started, much less completed.  I’d begin my outline, and then come to a screeching stop.  It wasn’t right.  I sent a flurry of frantic emails to the course sponsor, preparing him for the age-old line:  the dog ate my homework.  It wasn’t going to happen.  I could not get my brain to switch from paragraphs, articles, and chapters to scenes.  The more I tried to understand it (a scene), the less clear it became.  I became frantic when I passed the point of no return on the clock.  No way did enough time exist now for me to turn in this assignment.  It was only the second class and I’d failed.  Maybe this goal was an example of self-will run riot.  Was screenwriting my will, my Higher Power’s, neither, or both?

In the back of my mind a quiet word kept humming.  Trust.  The same concept I’ve had to draw on in so many situations.  When things don’t go the way I planned, I need to trust that a better plan is coming or taking place.   Trust is different from hope.  Hope is about believing tomorrow will be better; maybe we’ll win the lottery.  Trust means believing that whatever is taking place right now is okay.  It’s a lot more challenging to  trust than it is to hope.  Believing today is the best is more difficult than hoping tomorrow will be a better day.

Trust means we look at a mess and calmly say, “This is okay.”

As it worked out, the mess was okay.  The teacher had something happen.  Class that week got cancelled.  Instead of having eight hours to complete my homework, I now had five days. I started breathing again.

We can worry if we want.  We can panic, quit, give up.  Or we can take the difficult but easy way out by looking at the mess that we don’t think should be happening, and then  consciously choose to relax and  Trust.

We don’t always see the bigger picture, although sometimes like in the above example, we do.  But whether or not we see how and why the mess is okay, we can be assured  that there’s a good reason that  things are taking place the way they are.  Whether we make ourselves crazy with panic or put our hand in our Higher Power’s hand and let Him lead is up to us.

The person we tell to have Trust in the present moment isn’t the other guy or gal.  The person we remind is our self.

Have a great week.  But if things don’t go exactly as you planned, maybe try trusting that another Plan is taking place. Then, relax, Easy Does It, Let Go and Let God, and remind  yourself you never have to do more or better than you can. Come to think of it, whether or not we have a great week is up to us.

Melody Beattie

While the grief site, The Grief Club at www.MelodyBeattie.net, isn’t finished yet (far from it), please feel free to make comments about anything that appears in the public section on this blog.  Just indicate that’s what your comments are about, and comment away.  All I ask is that we respect each other’s right to grieve our losses in our own way, and our own time, and not tell people how to do their grief.  Try to keep your comments relative to your experience.  Also, because I’m reaching out to young people on the site, please keep the language pretty clean — although I know that anger is part of grief.

I had the privilege of interviewing Elizabeth Kubler-Ross before her death.  She had picked out and moved into her dream home after a lifetime of service work.  For those of you unfamiliar with her, she’s the doctor who identified the five stages of death and dying:  denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.  These later became known as the five stages of grief, and Dr. Kubler-Ross became known as “the death and dying lady.”  So after working with dying people — and a lifetime of dedicated  service —  Elizabeth moved into her dream home only to almost immediately have the first of what I believe became 17 strokes.  By the time I had the opportunity to interview her, the strokes had left her  almost totally paralyzed.  A hospital bed was set up in the middle of the living room.  So much for her dream.

What she found incredibly frustrating and anger-producing was how long this process went on.  (I believe she had strokes and was debilitated from them for almost twenty years  but it may not have been that long.  I didn’t intend to tell this story tonight, but it came rolling out.)  Regardless of the exact number of years she suffered strokes and laid in the middle of her living room in a hospital bed, it went on for a long time.  Longer than she thought it should and longer than she could stand.   She so strongly believed in Life After Death by then that she just wanted out — she wanted to  go to the other side.  I don’t blame her.  Quality of life and ability to function are two extremely important Life  issues.  When those are missing, we don’t really have a life.  However, Elizabeth continued to serve by writing books and continuing her work the best she could.  But she hated her life.  She was open about how she felt, and many people criticized and judged her for this.  Their feeling or belief was that she should be above that.  Above what?  Being human?

I became angry when I began hearing all the little “comments” people made about her:  “Oh, she’s so angry and she’s the one who discovered the stages.”  The basic comments were that she somehow shouldn’t be so angry because of the work she did.  My question is, “Why not?”  She never considered herself immune, or above her readers.  She had every right to e as angry as she was, and to struggle against what she went through.  Grief isn’t an intellectual experience.  It’s not something we think our way through, or do in our head.  In many cases, our grief  “does us” — takes us for a roller coaster ride.  And it (our grief) will decide on how long it’s going to hold us captive, in its grips. 

I also may have felt protective towards Dr. Kubler-Ross because some people put me in a similar category when my son died. However, in my cases, it was people who were supposedly my good friends.  “Oh, you’ll get through this faster than anyone else.”  And, “aren’t you over that yet?”  (This less than a year after my son’s death.)  I’ve had to work hard to forgive.  Most people don’t understand until they go through a similar loss.  Teaching people how to be a positive support will be part of the work I’ll be doing on the grief site.

Back to my story about Dr. Kubler-Ross.  I agree totally with her five stages of grief.  But after spending so many years grieving so many losses, I would add two more stages:  obsession and guilt.  Obsession isn’t always a negative.  It can be critical for someone going through grief — whether it’s over the end of a relationship, losing a job, or losing someone we love to death — to need to tell his or her story over and over.  It’s part of how we integrate the unthinkable into our life story.  It”s important — if we want to do this  – to write and talk about our story.  It’s important for people to listen to us, to be present for us and care.  We don’t want you to fix us.  We want you to listen.  And if it’s the hundredth time we’ve talked about the loss — how and when it happened , and what happened too — know that it’s what we need to do at that moment in time.  We’re healing our heart.

And guilt! No matter what the loss, we always (or almost always) look for what we did wrong, what we could have done differently, or what we forgot to do. We scan the situation, put it under a microscope.  Then we blame ourselves, feel responsible.  We may know intellectually that we didn’t do anything wrong, but that doesn’t stop the guilt feelings from hanging around.  Guilt can ride us, attach itself to us almost indefinitely and be a son-of-a-gun to pry loose.  It’s  like an octopus hanging onto us with all its might, determined to not let go.  If we could only look at this guilt as a stage, realizing it isn’t real unless we actually did cause the loss — in which case it’s then our job to forgive ourselves.

It’s important to forgive ourselves anyway — whether the guilt is legitimate or not.

If what I’m talking about in this blog is beginning to sound a lot (or a little)  like codependency — guilt, obsession, blaming ourselves, feeling responsible for other people’s destiny —  you’re correctly reading between the lines.  I’ve now come to believe that about 90 percent of codependency is unresolved grief.  I believe that many people who became alcoholics and addicts started using drugs and drinking to medicate the pain  codependency caused, and that codependency is more of a primary problem than we thought.  If we become addicted or alcoholic,  then  that  becomes a primary problem.  When we address our addictions or alcoholism, the why we became addicted or alcoholic doesn’t matter (at least not at first).   Our cure became a disease.  But for many of us, this disease ironically may have saved our lives.  At some point in recovery, it then becomes important to address the issues underneath the addictive behavior and those issues, many people are discovering, are loss and grief.  But they manifest as codependent behaviors.  We become stuck in a stage of loss, and that behavior then becomes habitual.

So many people flippantly say that “God never gives us more than we can handle.”  Oh no?  A five-year-old can handle being beat or sexually abused?   I’m not saying God did these things;  I’m referring to what  people say, the beliefs we buy into  that aren’t necessarily true.  Life often gives us more than we can handle.  The emotions become overwhelming.  We may be too young to deal with the feelings, or not have appropriate emotional support.  So we turn to survival behaviors (codependency) instead to cope.   I hate that word cope because it represents living less than an authentic life but for many of us, that’s the best we can do until we became older, got more information, and received more support and help. 

Understand, these are my personal opinions.  We are each entitled to our own.  But let’s just say this is true.  That would then imply that we can forgive ourselves for becoming an addict or alcoholic because doing so  may have saved our lives  even though the alcoholism caused pain and problems, and may have begun destroying us too.  But it was all we knew how to do — then.

On the grief site, I will aproach grief as a seven stage process.  Please remember, if you’re greiving, that the stages don’t occur in a neat, orderly fashion.  We can be in two stages at once, bounce back and forth.  Grief is a mish-mash of emotions.  It’s a messy, untidy, awkward process that cannot be controlled.

People also say “Time heals all wounds.”  However with grief, the pain can become worse over time.  Later we get used to living with the emotions and then our hearts begin to heal.  But for me, the second and third years after my son’s death were worse than the first.  I had the blessed relief shock and denial offers — a numbness similar to novacaine for the soul — during the  first year.  By year two, knowing that I’d never hold my son, kiss his cheek again, go sledding with him,  attend his graduation or wedding,  became real.  All the primary and secondary losses sank in.   Year three, reality really slapped me around.   Besides, the longer that I didn’t see him, the more I missed him and longed to see him again.

We all have our own way of grieving.  I believe that Life sets out a path designed just for us — one that meets our particular healing needs.  Life will bring the experiences we need to heal, to use grief not as a waste of time, but as an important time of transformation — if we’re open to that.  But one thing needs to happen first, for many of us.  See, I didn’t want to heal from my grief.  Healing from my grief meant that I’d fully accept my son’s death and I didn’t want to do that.  Many nights, before I finally fell asleep, my prayer was that I’d die in my sleep.  Then I could see Shane again.  But I kept waking up alive.  Plus, I had another c hild at home — one who needed me.  That didn’t stop the longing to not go through this experience — although suicide wasn’t an option.  Just in case reincarnation is real, I didn’t want to take the chance on doing it wrong and having to come back and re-experience everything I’d been through this lifetime again, until I got it right.  Nope.  But some of us have such strong wills we can literally will ourselves to death.  Most of us have heard stories about how  a spouse often dies within a year or two after his or her spouse dies.  Many parents die  after a child’s death too.  About the second year after Shane died, I began to fade.  My spark went out.   I was willing myself to death.

I had to get off the fence before grief could produce a  positive transformation in me.  I needed to make an unconditional commitment to Life, and to the process I was in.  So I did.  I wrote  a business agreement, between me and God.  Then I signed and dated it, and put it in a sacred place.

That was the day my grief turned around.

No matter what our loss, when we surrender we become putty in our Higher Power’s hands.  He can change us, shape us, turn us into who He wants us to become.  Our friends may be waiting for us to go back to the way we were.  Sorry friends.  Not going to happen.  This loss has changed us for good. 

You never can tell what’s right around the next  corner — bad or good.   I’ll never be happy Shane died.  But I  become happy again.  Even more surprising, I became happier than many people I knew who hadn’t lost nearly as much as I had. I redefined happiness.  Happiness now means surrendering to whatever I feel — anger, sadness, joy.  Happiness means being at peace with who I am and how I feel.  I no longer live in the world of illusions.  I knew things wouldn’t make me happy and people couldn’t either.  That (making me happy and fulfilled) was my job.  I accepted Life on its terms and that meant that Life comes with no guarantees.  We may think we’ve got 80, 90, or 100 years on this planet, but each year approximately 250,000 people “die before their time.”  By that I mean, die before they  see fifty-five or  sixty.  (I arrived at these figures  by averaging statistics from the National Dept. of Vital Statistics and the Center for Disease Control.)  We may think we’re going to work at that company all our lives, but we may find ourselves called in “for a talk.”  The company is down-sizing and we no longer work there.  Or we lose our home.  Or we go in for a physical and discover we’ve got a serious illness.  Sometimes it’s an illness that won’t every go away and causes us to lose all quality of life.

Can you boldly show up for Life each day anyway, knowing how vulnerable we are?  Can you suit up and show up, knowing there are no guarantees — we can behave well, try our best to be a good caring person,  to give not just money but of ourselves to others and still have our life shattered in one moment?   Can you still stay present for each moment, letting go of your need to control and instead  surrendering to that moment — to the people in it, to how you feel, to what is — exactly as it is?  Can you carefully put one foot in front of each other, even though you’re walking through the dark and don’t know where you’re going or where the path leads? 

Can you stop judging and blaming others, like the people who judged Elizabeth Kubler-Ross?   None of us is immune from the stages of grief, and coming down with an incurale illness that takes aaway ability to function and quality of ife is a huge loss that causes overwhelming pain and suffering.  I don’t care who we are or what we do, if we lose sometihng big,  we’re going to grieve the loss and grief — not us, what we do or did, or even what we know — will control the process.  It’s bigger than us, and grief  gets to call the shots.  There is no right way to grieve.   There are only two rules:  don’t hurt yourself (or let someone hurt you) and don’t hurt anyone else.   When it comes to loss, it’s safe and convenient to make the loss the person’s fault.  Because if that person did something wrong (in our minds) then we can control Life, protect ourselves, make it so that loss doesn’t happen to us.  But that’s not how it works.  How often do we hear the words, “God really loves me.  I was in an accident and I came out of it without a scratch.”

What does that say about how God feels about all the people who got scratched? 

We can do our best to do the right thing, and still get dealt a real crappy hand.  It’s not our fault.  We’re not being punished (although feeling like we’re being punished by Life or God is part of grief too). Most of us can scan our past and find something we haven’t totally forgiven ourselves for, something we believe that has brought God’s wrath pouring down on us.  For me, it was divorcing Shane’s dad.  At the intensive care unit, I recall promising God I’d remarry Shane’s father, if that’s what it took to get shane to live.

Let yourself off the hook.   Don’t live a day at a time.  We can live our entire lives a day at a time waiting for tomorrow to come but that isn’t what that  saying means.  Learn to be fully present for each moment instead.  Make every moment count.  If you’re grieving, do your best to relax into,  sink into your Life.  Feel whatever you feel.  Or go numb.  It’s your grief, your loss,  your emotions.  You get to do it how3ever you want and nobody has the answers for you.  The map — the way through — is between you and God, or G_d.   Don’t let people get by with telling  you that you can’t get angry with God.   (I had someone do that to me.)  In any intimate, personal relationship we’re going to become angry.  Why can’t we become  furious with God  if that’s how we feel?  Our Higher Power can handle it. 

I couldn’t pray for years, I was so enraged.  God carried me through.  He knew what was going on with me, what I needed,  when I couldn’t.  He held my hand, even when I didn’t reach it out to Him because I felt so betrayed.  He made the Way through for me  when I didn’t want to get through it because that would mean Shane was really dead.  He gave me knowlede of Hiw will for me only and the Power to carry that through.  Some days, it was all I could do to complete a crossword puzzle.  That was a big day.  Couldn’t write.  Had nothing to say, at least not anything people would care to read.  I’d get letters from grateful readers saying that my books  helped them and they were finally happy and at peace now.   That’s great, I’d think.  They’re happy.  I’m not.  I’m dead inside — broken in a way that cannot be fixed. 

That was the hardest journey I ever took. But I made it through, by learning to become aware one moment at a time, learning to live in the Now (which it always is), and by staying present for myself and others — which is Eckhart Tolle’s definition of true love. 

You can  and you will too (make it through) whether, like me,  you want to or not.

That’s what Living in the Mystery is about. 

The next blog may be abobut the law of humor. I’ll have to see what comes rolling out.  It’s the middle of the night, and I didn’t plan on writing this one — but I did.  Grief  is heavy stuff, and humor is a law.  No loss  is too sacred for this law.  We aren’t trivializing the loss by laughing while we’re going through it.   To come out the other end of that long dark tunnel you’re plodding through, you must quickly begin laughing again — even for moments.  You’re  not betraying the person you lost.   Humor is a universal law that works. When it comes to grief, it’s critical.

See you next time in the Mystery.  Until then, may the angels protect you, may your friends be real ones, and may you know how loved you are.

Melody Beattie

PS:  Feel free to make comments concerning the public section of the grief site here, until we get the Members Only section up and running (and we’re only days away).   You can continue making comments about grief  here, if you like or if you don’t want to become a member for some reason.  At the grief site, however, comments can only be made by members (no dues or fees to join).  The reason for asking people to register is to keep the site a safe place.  If you’re comfortable sharing here, do.  You don’t have to use your real name.  I will read all comments before they’re posted though, and if I feel it’s inappropriate, I’ll either discuss it with you or not publish it.  These are sensitive subjects.  Censorship will be minimal though, limited to respect for others and limiting profanity.  See you around,  living in the here and now.