True Stories: Rising Up Out of Grief

Dear Friends:

I have been working a great deal with grief during this last month and want to share some positive outcomes from that work, to assure any of you who are sad, overpowered by grief and just blue for a day or so, that there is movement in sorrow. 

It is indeed like the old cliche, grief is like a river. It is a river you swim through to reach a new shore, enlightenment, enrichment and to shed old patterns and ways of living. There is no rut or sameness in grief. It hurts. We, you and I suffer and out of that suffering comes newness. 

Grief often begins with a rough current, a shock, a horror, a betrayal, cruelty and even death. All of these experiences create a wrenching, a battering that carries one along until the first shock settles into a heaviness, a stillness and a smoother ride that can still turn into a sudden rapid and a spiral down a waterfall. 

I have been working with two women, one in her forties and the other in her late fifties. Both are wise beyond their life experiences. Both are brilliant and have had much success in their lives. Grief has visited them in different ways yet each woman is willing, often against their frightened selves to stay with their sorrow and see it through. 

Courage is what buoys them up and carries them along. They face each dark day with tears, often after a night of little sleep. They get up, try to move through their day. They have both gained or lost weight. Both have experienced physical illness. Both are lonely within and tired to being sad. 

One has, after months of grieving, turned to Spirit and is writing a program she will share with other women. She wants to give back, out of her grief. She has gained insight and purpose. She is in a creative time wherein she is researching her work and putting it into interviews, on paper, to be published and aired on television. 

She has become a wise woman. She wants to enhance the lives of other women. She is energized now that the worst of her grief has passed. She can see deeper, feel more and give in ways she did not imagine possible before grief visited.

The other woman is living in a dry and desolate landscape. She has lost most of her possessions. She has lost a dear friend, a beloved. She has lost her family. Yet is in a new home that is far removed from her former well appointed place. Yet, this woman gets up and takes care of her dogs and the children of others. She does not complain to those around her yet at night she cries and rails against her fate. Out of that rage and sorrow, she is being reborn with a wonderful courage and sense of fight. She is smart and able and that depth in her in being renewed. She is on the road, literally, toward a new job, a new home, a new relationship to fit her new sense of self. She is a seer. She is wise. She is most of all, what we call a very old soul. She is a survivor. 

Grief can be a pathway to newness. When the worst of it subsides, their is a sigh of relief, yes, but with that sigh comes a sense of fun and joy is deepened. 

As one person I have worked with said as his grief subsided, “the worst has already happened. I am ready for a new day.” 

I send you all courage and hope in the dark times and celebration in the light times.

The two are twins who help us to know and cherish our lives. 

Blessings. 

Mercedes

Rebirth, Re-patterning & Renewal

I witness a significant depth and change when a person has worked through pain and fear to a great enough extent that they can envision a new way of living. He or she senses within themselves new being and describes themselves as being renewed as though a door has opened and they have walked through into a new world. At the essential levels of self is that the energy and force at the base of their being has become energized by their own determination and hope. They can envision and act as though all the fears and sorrows they have experienced can no longer hold them back. They take their first steps like a newborn and go on, step by step, from there.

I can think of two clients who have dared to do this over the last month. The first is a single woman in her forties who was severely abandoned from birth on. She is highly intelligent and capable but has had trouble with attachment and trust based on the manipulation of her mother in particular. She has lived a single life with many friends but few intimate attachments. Her work with Shamanic Healing has enabled her to trust a new friendship and to move away to a new state, far away from her old residence. She ventured along an actual highway with trust and self respect and hope that she, despite her losses from childhood onward, could and would meet the challenges of a new life with new people and a very different atmosphere. She even called it a "1,000 mile birth canal".

This is rebirth. She feels new. She feels joyful. She has courage. She is hopeful. She knows herself and trusts she can manage her life. She actually seems like a different person to others. She is ready to love and be loved and to hope that in trusting a new relationship she will not be abandoned. She is now in a new life and says she can do this because she wants to, has to and is willing to overcome whatever obstacles she must to continue.

The second has been a heroin addict. She is no longer using drugs. She is a young woman in her early thirties who has been abused and abandoned by both parents. Her life, from eleven years on, has been one of increasing addiction. 

Today, after much work and effort, a depth of understanding and courage, she is enrolled in college and is thinking of a career working with animals and/or environmental problems. She is eager and energetic.

She worked with both parents and they have been helpful in her recovery. She sees herself as a different person, both physically and mentally. Her spirit is strong and because of her high intelligence, she has great potential. Although her parental problems are not completely solved, she is able to stand alone without drugs. She takes each one day as a renewed chance to stay strong and free. She is a heroine and a good mother to her own inner child. She uses her source or force or spiritual strength to meditate and to empower her new life. She is reborn a free and very able woman.

Learning from the Chumash - the benefits of indigenous teaching and shamanic practice

This past month, I took a journey to a Chumash Village in Malibu, California, established by the Chumash Nation after the land was returned by the U.S. government several years ago. My good friends, Mati and Luisha Waiya with the Wishtoyo Foundation, sponsored this land with the help of Spirit, their mentors and elders, their own hands and hearts and their deep commitment to this land and to the Chumash people.  They rebuilt the village, paying close attention to the authenticity of the site and the sacred nature of the work. 

We spent several days there with them and our families telling stories around the fire and deepening the mentorship of Mati and of Luisha toward all of us.  We shared our hearts and our hopes for all indigenous people and looked at paths we can follow to help in our efforts toward the deepening spread of Shamanic practices and healing for all people throughout the world as this effort is intended for all peoples, worldwide, whether indigenous or other. 


During the week I spent there in the Chumash Village, I thought about how to articulate the tremendous benefit to the soul and spirit that shamanic practice has had on many of those who participate in it.  The simple answer to the benefits of shamanic practice and indigenous teaching is that it brings one to the center of the self, to the ember that is the force, and to alternative thinking, feeling being taken in through the body and spread from the self into the mind and heart.  Shamanic practice is a daily ritual that keeps one in the center of Spirit while honoring the four directions, the four elements, living a life of awareness and gratitude toward Father Sky and Mother Earth and the balance created by their union within the self and in the world at large.  

This practice asks for action in the world with others and with the earth and sky and air and water.  Animals and other beings are honored.  Life is lived in humility and grace with careful attention to integrity and respect.  Shamanic practice is intended to help others.  It is intended to give out toward what is needed outside the self.  The self is not hidden or harbored as a special secret but is shared as an energy to be given to those in need.  Shamanic practice respects and treasures family and tribe and clan and nation.  All growing and living things are treasured.  Life is considered a gift to be shared.  Gratitude is a state of being.


I have committed to work with Mati and Luisha in any way we need me to to bring honor and success to their endeavors.