Willingness to Grow

"Allow events to change you:
You have to be willing to grow.
Growth is different from something that happens to you.
You produce it.
You live it.
The prerequisites for growth:
the openness to experience events
and the willingness
to be changed by them."
 {Bruce Man}

Story Made Beautiful

I want to thank you for being here with me Thursday, as I used some of my courage to not only remember our baby {that is so easy to do} but to speak his name.

Jordan.

Your comments and your tears were a gift, and I thank you.

6 years. Shocking that it has been that long, but as you know if you've read this story before, I had a healthy child afterward, in the midst of some years which are easiest to describe as the years of Perpetual Operations.

Not only was she healthy, she was hearty -- born pink, crying, 9 pounds and 8 ounces of second chance.

Today she is tall, lanky, and turning FIVE this month. A "rainbow baby", or baby after a loss, she is my breathing representation of grace; a symbol of God's presence in my story.

We named her Natalie Kate.

Having children was my life-long dream and there were a few times when I thought it might not come true. Life threw obstacles. And yet, here they are, these little women, my dreams come to life.

So humbling. So humbling that He saw fit to allow me to be a mother, their mother. So humbling that it worked out, in spite of, despite, the obstacles.

I am so grateful. Soaked through to the bone with gratitude. This was what I yearned for, and they are here. Not all three, no...

Not all three, and that is hard.

But these two, Hannah and Natalie, they are here and they are breathing and growing, and I breathe thanksgiving and grow faith.

He has made my story beautiful, even with not-so-beautiful ingredients.

Breathing gratitude today.

Thoughts on Healing

Healing is a touchy topic. Especially when you are the one deemed needful of healing.

There are all kinds of healing -- physical, emotional, spiritual, mental, social, marital.

Throughout my three plus decades I've experienced a few of those. Not necessarily instant or dramatic. Not easy.

I have felt conflicted when people suggest I pray for healing, get anointed, etc....

I wasn't sure why that was. It's not that I want to be sick and in pain.

During this past weekend, while attending a Women of Faith conference, some of my thoughts and feelings on the subject became more clear. I haven't written about it for a few days, trying to allow time to process it more fully.

I hesitate to put it here because of reactions and comments. I hesitate because I'm not sure I can express it clearly enough.

But here it is anyway:

I believe healing comes in different forms.
I believe healing looks and feels different to different people.
I believe my healing might come in the form of physical pain & disease.




i'll give us all a minute to think about that.




I want what God wants for me.

I desire to be the woman He created me to be. I trust His plan for my life.

If that includes this, so be it.

Please understand, I don't make that statement lightly. It doesn't mean that I won't fight and keep searching for effective treatments. It doesn't mean I'm giving up. It doesn't mean I'm succumbing.

It means that as I go to physical therapy, do my exercises, endure times of severe physical pain, limp, swallow vitamins, swallow medications, drink lots of water, take my heating pad to bed every night..... as I do those things, as I fight the best I can, I trust.

I trust He knows what's best for me.

And while all of this doesn't appear to be the best, if it draws me to His heart, if it forms me into who I am created to be, if it helps shape His plan for me, I trust.



*all images in this post taken by our friend Terence McLeod.

The Story of Live Art.fully

The year I turned 30, between two trials in my life, I adopted a way of looking at the world. It is a perspective, if you will, that is much more than two words can contain. I dubbed it Live Art.fully.

To Live Art.fully, bare bones, is to live fully, using art. But how do you live fully? And what if you're not an artist? Then what?

I spent most of my life convincing myself I was not an artist. I was creative, yes. I was a writer, or at least wanted to be. I doodled, wrote poetry, and scribbled endlessly in spiral bound books. I read voraciously. I loved hearing people's stories and at times, liked to tell my own, especially through the medium of writing. I loved drama & acting. I dabbled in music, learning three musical instruments and singing, but mastering none. I liked taking pictures. Through school, personal, and professional endeavors, I learned elements of design, layout, formatting, writing, editing, and publishing.

But I was not, absolutely not, an artist.

What I have learned is that what I do, all those outlets of creativity, is art. My life is an artful life.

Everyone faces obstacles in their lives, some more than others, and everyone has their own tragedies. I am not exempt from that, and have experienced many things in my life that were painful. You have read about some of them in previous posts.

What I learned, and still learn nearly daily, is that growth is a choice. We can take these hard things and let them help us grow. It's not easy. It's not pain-free. It's very difficult sometimes. But I can use my...

courage

resilience

honesty

positivity

faith

writing & art

...to heal, to grow, to process, to learn, to truly live an artful, authentic life.

If and when I fall, I get up. And so do you.

Releasing the Past

Words, and how we use them, help define our experiences. The language we use has the power to trap or free us. I want to begin identifying my problem words and replacing them with language that still holds a positive connotation for me, so I can go into situations freed to embrace the experience, not trapping myself into the same box as past journeys have been stored. This concept has the potential to evoke change over the past, the present, and the future.

Past hurts, sorted through and re-processed using new language, may well be released or forgiven, leaving behind peace and freedom. Unintentional hurts, for example, hold less power for me than intentional hurts. If in my reexamination of something in my past that hurt me, I come to the conclusion that my wounds were secondary to someone else's (their hurt caused them to hurt me), my compassion for their pain can help erase mine.

Learning these tools is Drivers Ed for trauma. Once educated, I can give my traumas license to take their leave. They can pack their baggage and hit the road.

Writing for Healing Prompts

Here are the prompts I wrote for the Live Art.fully Journaling Retreat. I hope they're helpful to you:

For Physical Healing:
The pain is like...
Being pain-free would be...
If I am never pain-free, I will...
Living with pain has altered me...
Being sick is...

For Emotional Healing:
I still can't believe it happened...
I am still bothered by...
Perhaps before I wasn't ready to deal with...
Today I am strong enough to say that...
I resolve that the person I am today can...
[Unsent Letter] I forgive you for...
[Unsent Letter] It hurt me deeply when you...

For Grief Healing:
I can't believe I lost my...
Living without [     ] is like...
Grief feels like...
I didn't think I'd have to say goodbye...
I remember feeling stunned when I heard the news...
There's a hole...
I can't let go...

-------
Prompts are original. Please do not claim them as your own.

Retreat Recap

This past weekend, eight women gathered on the Oregon Coast for a weekend of journaling. We had yummy breakfasts of quiche and crepes and oatmeal, laughed and laughed, wrote & stamped in our journals, talked, reminisced, and shared some of our personal journeys.

Overall, I think the retreat was a big success. Some things can only be learned by experience, though, and I now know better how to be an effective host and leader. I'm so thankful for the seven ladies who joined me in being, to quote Holly, "The Original Eight."

To the seven ladies who were gracious with my veteran attempt at leading a journaling retreat: for your encouragement, excitement to learn, and support of my dreams, I thank you.

One of my favorite parts of the weekend was Saturday evening, when we gathered around a large table and talked about using writing to process and heal loss, trauma, relationship difficulties, and our own damaging perceptions. I had prepared writing prompts for emotional, physical and grief healing. We set a timer for 20 minutes and each chose a prompt to write from. When the timer rang, we shared what we had written. It was a powerful exercise and I'd like to thank everyone for being vulnerable with your feelings. For those of you who weren't there, I'll post the prompts we wrote from in my next blog.

It was incredible to watch healing begin, and inspiring to witness these women be open to releasing damaging perceptions, forgiving those who had hurt them, and processing their traumas. I love journaling -- the creativity, the expression, documenting life -- but the aspect I feel most passionately about is that it can heal us. Thank you, members of the Original Eight, for letting me be a part of your journey.

This journal cover was made by Kezia during the weekend. Oh, and before you think the words on the cover were pre-printed on the paper, she hand-wrote them.... The talent and creativity of these ladies was so inspiring!

Gillian

Holly & her journal
Verna & her journal

Thanks again for everything, ladies! It was a weekend to remember...

Writing for Healing

Something close to my heart is the desire to help people heal. I am not a doctor or a nurse or a surgeon. I am not a pastor or spiritual leader. I am not a therapist.

I am a writer.

One of the incredible aspects of the art of journal writing is its healing properties. Studies have shown that journaling reduces stress levels and lowers blood pressure. People have used writing to help rid their bodies of physical pain (for more on this, check out Pain Free for Life by Scott Brady, M.D.) Writing is invaluable, when used with therapy or by itself, to process loss and trauma.

So how do we do that?

The first step, as so often said, is identifying the problem.
The second step is to say it aloud or write it down. This makes it more real.

Now that it's written down or verbalized, the mind can begin to work on processing it.

A book I highly recommend is Writing as a Way of Healing by Louise DeSalvo. A couple years ago, I used an idea I found in her book to journal out an issue I had. It was a big enough problem that it was bogging me down. I didn't know how to heal from it, but wished I could so that my life could be more functional and I could be more free.

So I decided to write about it. I took a pen and a journal and I began to write as quickly as I could without paying much attention to what I was writing. I wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote until my hand cramped and my body had stopped shaking. A few days or a couple of weeks later, I wrote about it again, in the same fashion, trying not to think between sentences, trying not to self-edit or "correct" my own thoughts.

It worked.

Today I consider myself to be significantly healed on this issue, which was something that had been effecting me negatively for many years.

Writing it down gave me new perspectives I hadn't thought of. Having it down on paper gave me a way to have it separate from myself. Transforming my pain into words, written down in black and white, dejumbled things. It was more manageable somehow.

I believe everyone has baggage (issues from their past or present), and that everyone deserves to live a functional, joyful life. If we can flush out some of the toxins from our traumas, they will just be a part of our past, and won't continue to harm us as much. We can go forward without the extra load.

"Why keep a journal?"

I believe in journaling. There are numerous aspects of writing in a journal that are beneficial. It's wonderful for record-keeping, lowering your stress level, making goals and tracking your progress, reflecting on the day, remembering the best days of your life, and counter-intuitively, documenting those "worst days" too.

Another, deeper, aspect of journaling that I've found tremendously valuable is using it to work through tough stuff. Are you grieving? Are you a survivor of abuse? Have you been diagnosed with cancer or some other serious medical condition? Do you live with chronic pain? Write about it.

Research shows that unresolved issues can create physical disease. That is to say, your mind is not at ease, and left alone that can lead to real medical disease. Work through it. Write through it. Write it out.

Here are a few prompts to get you writing if any of this post resonated with you:

1. I am a survivor...
2. Living with pain is like...
3. What I don't want to remember is that...

Yes, it's hard. Yes, it hurts. No, it's not pretty. But sometimes the most important step we can take to start down the path of healing is to rip off the scab and bleed a little.