Nurture Joy

The other day I was talking with a friend about how to balance taking care of others versus taking care of ourselves. She had been taught to deny her own needs so that she could do more for others. 

Scripture tells us to “love thy neighbor as thyself.” Because we drag bags of guilt around behind us, often for no good reason, we tend to focus on the neighbor part of this, feeling that we already focus too much on our own lives, and we should be more aware of the struggles of our neighbors and do more to help them. Yet there is a difference between doing things and nurturing, both for them and for ourselves. 

 

Being Creative with Grief

After being batted around by grief for a time, many of us want to take this raw energy, and our new clarity about reality, and be creative with it. We want to regain a measure of control over a force that has been tossing us around for months. I don’t play a musical instrument, paint, dance, weave, or create sculptures, but I do write, and I wrote down every memory, image, insight, and story of my life with Evelyn, and shaped some of them into essays and poems.

 

We take the remnants that grief leaves us, and sew them together in a patchwork quilt with the sinews of our heart. 

 

Searching For Joy

Grief, Play, and Religion

Joy is really hard to muster when we’re grieving.

So is smiling. And if we let ourselves feel any joy, we then feel incredibly guilty for taking pleasure in something that our loved ones no longer can. In the beginning of grief, it’s a struggle just to get through the day.