Category Archives: grief

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You cannot be in love with every beautiful thing you see

Here is the prompt: a write up on (sorry. the ethics of the site changed, precluding my linking to it).

You cannot be in love with every beautiful thing you see

I cannot be in love with every beautiful thing I see

why?

what is beauty?
what is beauty to you?
what is beauty to me?

I like the trees
I like the ocean
I like the dunes
I like the grass

They don’t lie to me

They don’t wear masks

If they gossip, I don’t understand
so it doesn’t matter

When birds sing
I sing back
I don’t know what they are saying
but I try

They sing back to me

My cat is here
talking to me
meow, mew
I can tell when she has a toy
or a mouse
(or a bat)
by her voice

The dunes will fall
in an earthquake

I may be buried
if I am on the beach

like lava eating houses
lava burying people alive
suffocating

though on the beach
I’d be crushed
it’s not like snow
our dunes come down with trees
when they come down

yet I walk the beach anyhow
go about my life

in love with every beautiful thing I see

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beach tower

Sections of the dunes collapse. I stopped climbing them when I was sitting above my children and I was hit from behind by a collapse and pushed 5 feet forward. There was no warning, just sound and hit. I was not buried, but I realized how I could have been. I took my kids down off the dune.

There are sections of stairs left where the bottom sections have been washed away. Some days as it warms up, you hear sand sliding down, tiny trickles. I have a friend who saw a huge section collapse, all the way out to the water, with trees. He and another walker missed being buried by five minutes.

We walk the beach anyhow. This will collapse eventually but was standing on Saturday.

 

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surf

Have you been on a beach with surf and small rocks? The rocks click as the surf rolls in and out.

 

surf

 

it’s hard hard to let go of the dead

harder still to let go of the living

and you say to yourself
they love me, they just don’t understand

you try and try and try to explain

“Don’t talk to us!” they say

Whispers return to you

a garbled version of your words
out of context
twisted
they twist your words

you keep hoping

hope slowly ebbs
tide going out
sand in an hourglass
no, slower
erosion of a rock
tumbled in surf
smashed on other rocks
over and over and over

water wins
the sea wins
hope erodes

let go

they do love you

and they are afraid

they cannot let you close
they cannot listen

your words are fearful

vulnerable is fearful
speaking your truth is fearful
you authentic is fearful

they shake

agony of longing

to be authentic

let them go

and maybe love
and longing
will toss them as rocks in the surf

until they too are changed

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Mundane Monday #162: blue

I am having trouble posting today, Memorial Day. My mother died May 15, and there is Mother’s Day, and her birthday is May 31: always near Memorial Day. Some years the last two weeks of May are ok, some years are hard. This year is hard. But I don’t mind thinking of her or grieving.

So blue, blue with grief. If you post, it doesn’t have to be grief or a memorial. You could just do blue.

From last weeks challenge: lighting.

K.L.Allendorfer with a light that is not mundane at all, here.

Send your links for daily things that are blue… or if you are blue…. much love on this Memorial Day.

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black on white

black on white

white on black

it doesn’t matter

angels falling
made to fall
at peace with falling

I let myself fall
at peace with falling

and wonder what that means?

death?

no

though there are times I long
for the Beloved
for union with the Beloved
for all in one
and one all

let go

when an angel falls
they are at peace

they are at peace
with falling

people

see black and white

people

see good and evil

people

separate
label
categorize

angels don’t

black on white
or
white on black

it doesn’t matter
there is no separation
we are one

Beloved

One

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Resources on opioid addiction

This is a list of resources on opioid addiction that I am putting together for a talk to a community advocate group this Thursday.

The big picture:

CDC Grand Rounds: Prescription Drug Overdoses β€” a U.S. Epidemic, January 2012: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6101a3.htm

CDC 2018 (It’s not getting better yet.) https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2018/p0329-drug-overdose-deaths.html


Snohomish County:

Snohomish County:

http://mynorthwest.com/878895/snohomish-co-opioid-crisis/

https://drkottaway.com/2018/03/03/reducing-recidivism-snohomish-county-sheriffs-office-and-human-services-program/

http://www.heraldnet.com/news/state-house-backs-snohomish-county-opioid-help-center/

http://knkx.org/post/snohomish-county-jail-now-offering-medically-assisted-detox-inmates

Washington State Pain Law

https://www.doh.wa.gov/ForPublicHealthandHealthcareProviders/HealthcareProfessionsandFacilities/OpioidPrescribing

https://www.doh.wa.gov/YouandYourFamily/PoisoningandDrugOverdose/OpioidMisuseandOverdosePrevention


Is it genes that make people addicts? (The short answer is genes are a minimal contribution. It is society and patterns learned in childhood and adulthood.)

Adverse Childhood Experiences (put people at way higher risk for addiction):
https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/acestudy/index.html


Books that helped me understand addiction (in my teens):

It will never happen to me by Claudia Black (about the patterns children take in addiction households to survive and cope with childhood)

Manchild in the Promised Land by Claude Brown (a black male writes about his childhood in Harlem when heroin hit the community. He was in a gang at age 6.)