A Love That Never Dies

“You taught me how to love; you taught me how to live; you taught me how to laugh; you taught me how to cry, but when you left, you forgot to teach me how to forget you.” ~ Hendie

Not too long ago, my mother was telling me about a friend of hers, Anita, who recently lost her husband after a long battle with cancer. She and her husband had been married for almost fifty years, and were only a few weeks shy of celebrating their anniversary. Theirs was a symbiotic relationship - their roles were defined and perfectly aligned, and worked together with the precision of a Swiss clock.

When her husband passed away, Anita was lost. Not only did she have to rely on her sons to take care of mundane matters - she told my mother - but also had to forgive herself for still being alive.

When someone we love suddenly leaves our lives, letting go of them feels like a betrayal. We hang on to pain as an invisible rope that keeps us connected to their essence, and feel that if we let go of the pain we will lose them completely. If we move on, and begin to live again, we feel guilty of leaving them behind, or, if they have chosen to leave willingly, we feel that by forgetting the pain we are condoning their acts.

Truth be said, what connects us to loved ones who are no longer with us is not pain, but the memories we have created over time. As long as we hold our loved ones in our hearts and minds, they will never be gone.

Regardless of how we have lost that person – through physical death or choice of a different path – we need to allow ourselves time to heal. In some Native American traditions, when someone leaves, a specific ritual is performed to “cut the ties that bind”. We establish energetic ties with all who cross our path and become important to us; when something happens to upset the connection the ties become a stranglehold, and stop both from moving forward. Cutting the emotional ties does in no way separate us from the beautiful moments that connected us to them, but only severs the need to hold on to pain.

Those of us who have any kind of spiritual affiliation know that all things happen for a reason. Maybe we had a soul agreement with that person to be in our lives only for a short while and teach us something about ourselves, or we may have something more we need to accomplish before we go while the other person had already fulfilled their life contract. We could drive ourselves mad searching for reasons that may not be for us to know. What counts is that the person we loved came into our lives and left something with us before they departed. Their gift to us may be one we might not readily see or understand, but it undoubtedly touched our lives and changed us in some way.

There is a season to seed and one to blossom; there is a season to ripen and one to harvest. There is a time to hope, to laugh and cry, but most of all, there is a time to be grateful for every chance we have to experience love.

From the Inside Out

“A lot of people say they want to get out of pain, and I'm sure that's true, but they aren't willing to make healing a high priority. They aren't willing to look inside to see the source of their pain in order to deal with it.” ~ Lindsay Wagner


About a week ago, my oldest son got hurt playing basketball. What initially appeared as a red, slightly swollen bump, changed color over time, and became a silver-dollar-sized brown and yellow bruise covering the inside of his wrist.

The other night, he reached out to pick up something while I was cooking dinner, and I asked if his arm still hurt. He shook his head and looked at the bruise; “look mom,” he said, “the bruise looks like a doughnut now.” And it really did. What used to be a solid blue mark finally faded to a rusty brown circle encrusting a small area of healed skin.

To my surprise, he said: “Isn’t it strange how so many things that happen on the outside seem to relate to experiences inside of ourselves?”

When I asked what he meant, he replied: “People think that you heal from the outside and you have to treat your body, but even this bruise shows how things truly heal from the inside out.”

I was stunned at his ability to embrace such a philosophical view of things at such a young age, and became quite curious about his theory. The way he explained it was simple, yet it was probably more powerful than most complicated versions I’ve heard before. Adults can make a mess of things when they try to inflate their ideas with big words to impress, desperate to appear erudite and wise; kids have no time for garnishes, and go straight to the heart of things.

With the perception of a fifteen-year-old naturally fascinated by electronics, he sees the outer body as a machine fed by a central “life engine”. The energy received from the central source is then distributed through an intricate wiring to reach all areas of the body and mind, all filaments connected to one another. If one bulb burns out, a whole section shuts off, and doesn’t receive energy.

The central supply is continually fed by our daily experiences and it runs freely at the center; if something happens to it, or if it slows its flow to a trickle, all the filaments depending on its power gradually turn off.

I thought about this theory long after my son went on his way. When our flow of life energy is slowed down or interrupted, a compromised sense of wellness is the natural consequence. The most important question at this point would be whether wellbeing can be restored if the flow is once again regulated. Would the secondary channels be irreversibly damaged after not being fed for a long period of time, or could they fill up with a new supply of life energy and resume their work?

Personally, I believe that some of them – those that have completely dried out over time – are probably irreparable, but I also think that a new network can be created once the flow reaches new, consistent strength.

Our work doesn’t revolve around producing the energy itself, as it is self-renewing; all we need to focus on is the removal of blocks that prevent it from moving freely.
Guilt is often the mother of all blocks, followed closely by anxiety and fear. We can easily picture our blocks like sandbags we place around the source of energy to block its flow; if we remove the sandbags, nothing can stop the energy from radiating out from the core.

If we can learn to heal from within, just as Stephen’s bruise is doing, we can hope that when the process is complete, full power will once again be restored.

Holiday Blues

When we think of holidays, the first thing that comes to mind is the time we will spend with our loved ones, but what happens when our loved ones are no longer there to share the cheer? As happy and cheerful as the holiday season is for some, it is probably the hardest time of year for those who have lost someone they love.

Several years ago – when I first moved to the US, far away from most I hold dear – a friend gave me a small book entitled “There’s No Such Place As Far Away” by Richard Bach. I didn’t touch it for a while; then, one morning, as I was sitting alone in my empty apartment, feeling alone and disconnected from everyone, I picked the little book up and began to read. It was the story of a little boy who had moved really far away from his best friend. On the day of his friend’s birthday he wanted to celebrate with him, and the pain he felt in his heart, being so far away, was overwhelming and unbearable. He asked several birds if they could help him get to his friend’s house, and all of them told him they were too small to carry him or they had other things to do. Finally, a wise bird told the little boy: “If you truly love your friend, aren’t you already there with him? The only thing that separates you from him is space, and space is never larger than love.” The little boy thought about it for a while, then realized the bird was right. His friend loved him, and knew he was loved back; most of all, his friend would not want him to be sad on such a special day; the best thing the little boy could do would be to look in his heart and find the joy his friend’s birthday brought to him, whether they could spend it together or not. So the little boy went on about his day, wishing his friend a happy birthday and knowing that, even if they were apart, their memories joined them forever.

True love and friendship cannot be cut short by boundaries of time, space or form. When we truly love someone, we can still be with them through the power of the memories built together and know they will never leave us, as the sound of their voice will forever echo through the walls of our hearts.

Our loved ones would not want to see us unhappy; although they crossed over and shed their outer shell, their true essence is still with us, and the love they felt for us is still alive. Rather than feeling guilty or empty at the thought of celebrating a special day without them, we should make it a point to celebrate it in their honor. A Christmas song, or a Thanksgiving meal, should not be daggers in the heart, but chances to reminisce the happy moments we spent with our loved ones while they were still with us; a beautiful array of decorations should not feel like an insult to our grief, but remind us of the times we decked the halls together.

By letting go of the pain we are not letting go of the love for the person who’s no longer with us. The grief we feel is an invisible chain we hang on to in the hope of remaining connected somehow, a silver cord which prevents us from separating completely. Although we may feel as if we are shamefully betraying our loved ones by daring to be happy without them, we are instead honoring their memory by infusing life into a moment they would love to share with us, and we can respectfully thank them for the beautiful memories they have gifted us with.

Never Again - How the Fear of Yesterday Can Kill the Opportunities of Tomorrow

“You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.” ~ Mohandas K. Gandhi

A few days ago, I met with a friend I hadn’t seen in years. She called me out of the blue the previous week and we decided to get together for lunch. It was great to see her, and I was eager to hear all that had been going on in her life since I had seen her last.

Her story did not take long to be told – she divorced four years ago and has been living the life of a recluse from the time her husband walked out of her life until now, only finding solace in her work and company in her two cats. When I asked her if she is planning on going out again with someone new, she looked at me as if I had lost my mind. “Why?” she said, “to be hurt like that again? I’d rather be alone for the rest of my life. At least I know I won’t walk out on myself.”

Well, it seemed to me that she had already walked out on herself. Her self-imposed isolation and fear had created such a wall around her that she could no longer even find herself. Her eyes, which used to sparkle with joy over the smallest things, were now dull and lifeless, and the enthusiasm for life I remembered her exuding, evaporated and escaped when her husband opened the door to leave – all that was left of her was a mechanical ghost of the woman she used to be.

In all fairness to her, the story of what happened in the final months leading to her divorce is quite atrocious, and her husband really did treat her wrong, but by saying good-bye to any future expectation to love again she gave him more power over her life than he ever deserved to have. He started the emotional abuse, and she picked it up where he left off. In her mind, if one man had hurt her, all men were going to do the same, if given the opportunity.

When something particularly traumatizing happens, memories remain attached to the emotional charge built during the traumatic events. Another friend, for example, was molested as a child by a man with a moustache; even if she had dealt with most of the emotions connected to the abuse, she still found men with facial hair repulsive. Similarly, the friend I had lunch with had created a mental link between emotional pain and relationships in general, thus willingly writing off any potential future connection.

In reality, each person we encounter is a unique design, and regardless of how much they might remind us of someone else we have met in the past, they are not those people. Running into a few bad apples can happen to everybody, but believing that all apples are rotten will only lead us to one unhappy certainty – never again will we taste a delightful apple pie.

Just like apples, rotten people are out there walking in our midst, but their percentage is small when compared to the amount of good people we can potentially run into, and gets washed by the good nature of the majority. No one said life is supposed to always be fair, but in the end it’s always worthy to be lived.

“There is no coming to consciousness without pain.” ~ Carl Jung


Very few things are simultaneously as loving and painful as a kneading cat. Believe me, I would know; my cat, Wizard, is a twenty-pound bag of melted sugar and he regularly dispenses his love through the rhythmic action of his lion-sized paws.

Yesterday morning I was in for another dose of loving – Wizard jumped up on my chest while I was laying down on the couch still wearing pajamas and began walking over me in circles, lovingly kneading his way to sleep. Being summer time, I was wearing thin satin pajamas, and his claws were pushing right through the material as easily as a knife slicing through butter.

He was too cute for me to push him away – his eyes were dreamy and he was purring madly – so I just held my breath whenever I felt pain. Thankfully, the slippery material caused him to slide down a couple of inches, and his paws came to rest where the shirt overlapped the pajama bottoms – instant relief! The double layer of material stopped his claws from reaching the skin. After a few moments of kneading pleasure, Wizard went to sleep. I laid there and rubbed his head, listening to him while he still purred in pure bliss. I was glad I didn’t interrupt his happy dance, as his loving actions provided a priceless portion of food for thought.

All along, Wizard never meant to hurt me – his intent was constantly motivated by love, regardless of the spot he was kneading. What made all the difference was not a change in his kneading pattern, but my own shield of protection provided by an extra layer of material.

Similarly, when we are hurt by someone’s words or actions, the pain we feel may not necessarily be caused by the words or actions themselves, but by our heightened sensitivity triggered in that particular situation. Salt poured over healthy skin is merely irritating, but it is downright excruciating when sprinkled over an open wound.

Taking notice of what upsets us allows us the opportunity to see the parts of ourselves that are in need of healing. I believe that certain people and situations are placed in our lives to help us grow and heal; when someone or something causes us to feel pain, we gain insight over a “sore spot” within ourselves that needs to be addressed.

Once the weak point is identified, steps can be taken to raise a better shield – it is impossible to heal something until we know what it is, the same way that we can’t fix something until we know what part of it is broken.

People speak and act out of their own sorrows and joys, rarely even knowing how deeply their actions and words will affect us, and by causing strife they show us our strengths and weaknesses. Once the weaknesses are dealt with, those words and actions will simply slide off like a cat on satin pajamas.

The Masks We Wear

Masks are one of the most remarkable manmade creations used in rituals throughout recorded history, used by our ancestors to form a bridge between themselves and the Divine.
Though in modern times the mask has a negative connotation of disguise with the intent to deceive, the ancient world perceived masks as tools of revelation, a connection to invisible powers.
“Identity masks” are often worn to hide the vulnerable parts of ourselves, and most of them are molded in response to societal demands, parental suggestions and peer pressure.
Most of us wear some sort of mask to introduce ourselves to the world. It is not done to deceive anybody; rather, it is an effort we make to ensure that we are accepted and loved by others. Many feel that they could not be accepted for who they truly are, so they slip the mask on. Sometimes they become so used to doing it, that they are unable themselves to differentiate who they truly are from who they believe people want them to be.
We constantly blame the world for not accepting us for who we are, yet we don’t fully accept ourselves. We would rather go on and be who we are not, rather than recognize that the standards we measure ourselves against are manmade and often based on others’ perceptions of good and bad.
The person who lives inside of us may be scared, bruised, shy, but it is rarely bad.
The need to hide behind a mask is self-imposed, and as such it can be eliminated.
If we take a glimpse of our true selves, who are we, really? Are we truly the person we are portraying? Or is that person someone our caregivers and societies wanted it to be? Do we really believe what we claim to believe? Do we really despise what we assert to despise? Or have we grown to believe we do just because it would make someone else happy and proud?
What about you? Who is the true self hidden behind your mask?