Morning of Mourning

So Sunday mornings are my set aside time to grieve. I did a bit of journaling this morning and allowed myself to feel all the "poor me" thoughts that I often try to hastily suppress when they come up.

A friend and I have scheduled a "Honour the Goddess" day for each month. It's our intention to make a habit out of nurturing ourselves. Yesterday was our first HtG day. We went to a spa and I got a pedicure while she got a manicure. It was very nice. It was my first time having a pedicure. I didn't know how I'd feel about it but I enjoyed it and my feet do look and feel a lot better. Other ideas that we have are to go for a steam or sauna, facials and reflexology and shiatsu massage. If you have any other ideas for Honour the Goddess days, please leave a comment by clicking on comments at the bottom of this post.

My grief seems to be less intense these days. It sneaks up on me these days. Like at the spa. There was a pregnant employee and the thought that immediately popped into my mind was, "Oh God, not me, not me. Let her work on my friend's hands but don't be so cruel as to send her to me." How ironic really. I'm going to the spa (for the first time I might add) to nuture myself and recover from the 2 pregnancy losses I've had and who do I get as an esthetician? The pregnant one. The universe has a good sense of humour. But actually, thankfully, she was not the one who helped us out. This is my day of mourning so I am not going to apologize for that thought. I know I could have "handled" the whole situation just fine but I didn't want to. Not on the day that I'm being totally selfish.

I tried to do a bit of art therapy this morning. Basically, it consists of writing down your intention (like, "My intention is to discover more about how I'm feeling and what's under the surface) and then closing your eyes and relaxing or meditating. Then, you shift your attention to your body and notice any areas of tension or pain or other physical symptoms. You gently let any images arise. Sometimes they do and other times they don't. Then you put the images down on paper or you select a colour and just start to put down colour or do a scribble drawing and look for images in the scribble drawing. I have very little drawing ability and my drawings often look like they are drawn by a five-year-old. This has provided a chance for me to come to understand my inner critic (who is loud and very mean). After creating the image, you journal about the experience of creating it and what it brought up. Some good books that describe this kind of journaling are: "The Creative Journal" by Lucia Capacchione and "Visual Journaling" by Ganim and Fox.

I've been having a lot of vivid dreams these days. Last night it was like I was viewing a movie and I was one of the characters in the movie. I was being chased by these people who were demons. These people were my highschool classmates (ha!). I was looking for help and found some protection with this one guy but then I realized that he was on their side. Paranoia. All of this took place in Prague and I was running around trying not to encounter these demons. There was more to it but it's so confusing that I don't really think I can explain it. I think that this is perhaps about some anxiety that's coming up because of returning to work after 4 months off. I think it's also related to trying to escape the grief or fear of grief. Check out this post to see some great motherly advice about trying to avoid grief.

Sometimes, I feel so bone dead tired of the grief. When I say "grief", I am labeling those feelings that come up like: "What if I'm never blessed with a child" or "Look at that sweet pregnant belly" or "I'm suppose to have a baby right now!" or "The only reason I can ski right now is because I don't have a baby" or "Maybe this time next year I will be pregnant again" or "When should we try again?". Those sorts of things. The feeling of 'lack' in my life. I know that my grief is a lot deeper than about what's happened to me in the last year. I grieve for my brother who died and my parents divorcing and even for the grief of my parents (they both each lost a parent at a very young age). I guess it is part of the human experience. The Buddhists would say that we need to make friends with impermanence because it's all that we can count on. Everything changes.