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Location: Oregon, United States

Sunday, January 03, 2010

Happy New Year!

Part of my New Year's resolution this year is to begin blogging again. I find it a wonderful way to sort things in my mind, attempt to make sense of the senseless, and put things into perspective. In short, it's good self care for me.

I need to focus more on self care this year. Work has become increasingly complex and demanding. I continue to love my clientele, and find each individual challenging, complex and ultimately rewarding. Each of them demonstrates on a daily basis the courage it takes to walk this life with a mental illness, often stemming from trauma, exacerbated by poverty, and misunderstood by family members. I realize how fragile each of us are, and grieve for "my people" as they walk through life and try to make sense out of it.

And grieving is hard work. I am constantly thankful for my education, and the time we spent working on closure, endings, and grieving in general. I would never have dreamed that grieving would be something I wanted to master, but this is indeed the case. It is necessary in the work that I do and, I'm finding, in life itself. We can't escape it, so we might as well do it with grace.

You may be thinking this is not a very "Happy New Year" posting. I beg to differ! Grieving is really a beautiful thing. If we have nothing to grieve, we have had no connection to life and love. To grieve means we have things we care about and can therefore be thankful for. I am thankful for this life and all that is in it! May you also find life abundantly satisfying this year!

2 Comments:

Blogger John Powell said...

Well said! Perhaps if we learned to grieve more, we would medicate less (medicate here applying to all the things we might do to escape the reality we do not want to face).

10:58 PM  
Blogger Rosie said...

I don't think we ever get done grieving... we just give our thoughts a different name... and our feelings become more contemplative... and somehow we survive.
Then the beauty that we saw before touches us again... although moment by moment... as short breaths in time.
And it is good.

6:12 PM  

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