Listen deeply...

"When you listen deeply, you help people suffer less." - Thích Nhất Hạnh

We all appreciate and need a true listener. Someone who will offer a nonjudgmental listening ear. When we open our hearts, we do not ask to be fixed. We ask for kindness, understanding, and compassion.

"Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a relationship between equals. Only when we know our darkness well, can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity." - Pema Chödrön

Compassion allows us to feel our connectedness, it allows us to feel our unity. We are one.

Let us listen with a soft heart and an open mind. Let us be a safe place for anyone to share their vulnerability.

Familial embrace...

There is an abundance of love and compassion throughout humanity. It is sometimes overshadowed by acts of hatred and fear. Please help others understand that we do not need to fear our vulnerability. Our vulnerability is our strength. Our ability to grieve together, to hold each other, to laugh together, and love together, brings us firmly into the circle of humanity.

Let us extend our arms, hearts, and minds in a warm, familial embrace. 

Failing and Falling...

 "Do not judge me by my success.

Judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up."
- Nelson Mandela

I have learned so much from my failures. I have learned more from my failures than my successes. I have learned to be resilient, kind, caring, empathetic, and compassionate. I have learned to never take anything for granted.

Like a toddler, first learning to walk. In every new endeavor, I take a few steps and fall. I get up, reassess, try again, take a few steps, and fall. Again and again, and again. And finally, I am walking.

Failing and falling is an essential part of learning. Failing does not make you a failure. Failing and falling invites you to be fully human. Every human has failed. Every artist, musician, scientist, inventor, athlete, and writer has failed. Then they continue, they experiment, they improvise, they work on their skills, and they find success.

Vulnerability. Failing and falling teaches us to be human. Every day let us embrace our vulnerability. Let us practice falling, getting up, and being good human beings.

I have been feeling...

I have been feeling "How is it that I am here, and Ashley is not?" I see her everywhere. In my office, in the spot where her wheelchair sat, in her bedroom where we prayed together and still do. She is here and yet not. Her soft, deep, brown eyes. Her baby-smelling hair. Her little tiny fingers. Her perfect little nose.

The sun still comes up in the morning. The moon still moves through its cycles. We still get mail. Traffic is still busy. Everyone is rushing somewhere and I wonder where do I want to go? I am disoriented. I am confused. She is here, but not here. I want to scream at disinterested people passing by. "Don't you know my precious angel is gone?" "Do you know how it feels to have unconditional love taken from you?"

So I stumble in my new life, knowing she is in her new life, blessing and loving me as she always has, and always will.

I know unconditional love can never be taken from you. It just moves through you in a different form.

Letting Go

At this time in my life, I am learning to let go, again. In the past few years, I have let go of some dreams, I have faced open-heart surgery, and I have been at my precious daughter's bedside as she passed from this life. All terrible letting go experiences.

Each time I needed to let go, I needed to believe in something holding me, comforting me, loving me. I have come to believe that prescence, that unconditional love, is God. As my fear dissipates, as my grief becomes less immobilizing, I gradually open up. 

All that I love, all that I am is in God's hands.

I have come to experience that even in moments of sheer terror and unceasing grief, there is a light. Similar to the eye of a hurricane. In its center, pure calm. When I was wheeled into heart surgery, at the core of my fear was the knowing that I was in God's hands, and whatever the outcome, all would be well. When I kissed my little girl's forehead for the last time and told her I loved her and thanked her for being with us for 39 years, even then, even now, as I weep writing these words, I know she was in God's loving embrace and somehow, even though I don't know how all would be well.

Each time I let go, I learn and re-learn God's unconditional love is always with me.