I’m usually a real kid about Christmas. It’s one of my favourite times of year.
This year, though, I’ve really had to try hard to muster my Christmas mojo, and I’m not sure I really succeeded.
Christmas Eve was particularly hard this year. I felt so disconnected and indifferent, and I didn’t know what to do with that.
My response was the same as always: write something!
Verbalising these feelings helped me deal with them. They were — and are — still there, but I have been able to relax and let them coexist in counterbalance with my enjoyment of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
Today is what today is. My feelings are what they are. It’s all part of the process of grieving and moving forward and reconciling conflicting emotions while continuing to live.
Joy is elusive this Christmas Eve, Anticipation is aloof. The empty chair, the missing gift, The place not set at the table, All murmur a silent, sorrowful chorus Like a incantation, warding off The overruling spirit of the season. The magic of tinsel, baubles and tree Cannot dispel the indifference Cast by Memory and Grief as they linger, Neither out of sight nor mind Amid the coloured lights and carolling On Christmas Eve without you.
When this image appeared on my Instagram feed this morning, my immediate response was “Yes!”
I don’t know who created this image. I acquired it via Instagram.
This is why I have been writing and posting poetry and blog posts to help me deal with my feelings about my first Christmas without two very special people in my life, my father and one of my closest friends, both of whom passed away within five days at the end of June.
I have been doing everything I can to make Christmas joyful. Part of that has been working through my feelings and accepting the changes in life that have happened in this mixed up and turbulent year.
It is not that I have no joy or excitement. It doesn’t mean I don’t want to celebrate or focus on the positives in life. It means I need to works out how to manage the shades of guilt I experience when I feel joy, and the weight of sorrow at the very same time as enjoying the lightness of excitement and anticipation.
I fully realise that Christmas is very different for many, many people this year. Lockdowns, halted travel plans and distance have made sure of that. Like me, many people are grieving. Others are facing different sets of challenging circumstances.
The fact is, though, that it is my life that I am living. I have to manage my grief and work out how to balance things for myself. Nobody else can do it for me, and it has to be done. To refuse or fail to deal with my feelings isn’t healthy.
So, I write poetry and blog posts. I blurt my feelings and ideas down onto the page, then shape and craft them into something that both expresses how I feel and lets others in similar situations know that they are not alone, and that their feelings are not wrong or abnormal.
That is my Christmas gift to the grieving people of the world; empathy, understanding and the room to feel as they do without judgment.
Writing It Instead of Carrying It #emotions #grief #WritingCommunity
After several absolutely brutal weeks, my bestie and I headed out to spend the day together— a day just for us.
We didn’t talk about grief, or death, or funerals, or wills, or medical treatments. We just enjoyed each other’s company and pretended as much as we could that the rest of life and corona and lockdowns and work and pretty much everything else was not happening.
Don’t get me wrong, though. We sanitised , we distanced, we avoided people as much as we could. We’re neither stupid nor irresponsible.
We drove up-country and visited places we haven’t been to before.
We stopped in a little country town, took some photos, bought a Coke, and kept going.
We stood on top of a mountain — well, technically it’s a dormant volcano, albeit not a very big one— and saw as far as we could see. We watched in silence as a wallaby fossicked for sweet blades of grass to eat, then hopped away. We listening to birdsong and tried to work out how many different birds we could hear.
We visited a bookstore, as we always do on our expeditions, and we both found a couple of new treasures to bring home with us.
We visited two different waterfalls about 9 kilometres apart on the same river, and looked at rocks and water and cascades and lichen and soil profiles.
Nigretta Falls and Wannon Falls are both on the Wannon River, west of Hamilton, Victoria.
We ate lunch as we watched the water running and leaping its way down the rock face, and as we watched other visitors walk all the way down to the river bank and back up again. That’s a great way to wear out the kids during school holidays! We packed up our rubbish, along with some left behind by some other less considerate visitors to the park, and put it in the car to bring home with us, then returned to the falls to take photos.
We watched the most delightful older couple walk hand in hand as they explored the park around the waterfalls, obviously as delighted with each other’s company as they were when they first met. She used a walking stick with her other hand, and he carried two umbrellas. The way they looked at each other was just adorable.
We looked at trees and enjoyed their beauty, their shapes, and their different profiles. Then we drove down country lanes where the gum trees on either side almost made a tunnel and commented on how magical and beautiful that felt.
We found a campground we want to go and stay at. It’s nestled in the bush near one of the waterfalls, and it’s just natural and quiet and beautiful.
We met a lady with a gorgeous little dog named Milo, who insisted on wrapping his lead around my legs not once, not twice, but three times. We laughed.
Oh, it felt so good to laugh. It felt so good to breathe fresh air, to not feel pressure from time or commitments or places and things that reminded me of my losses.
It felt so good to just be. No responsibilities, no demands. Breathing deeply, enjoying the moment, and feeling refreshed. I can’t remember the last time I was able to do that.
I am so blessed to have a friend with whom I can share days like today, but who has also supported me so faithfully through the trauma of the past few weeks. She has been an absolute rock for me, and I am thankful.
I am blessed to live in a place where I can go and spend time in nature and feel at peace there. I’m very blessed to not be in an area that is locked down, as Melbourne has been once again.
Today didn’t make all those other things go away — far from it. But it gave me time to breathe, and it was very good therapy.
A Day For Healing. #therapy #emotions #grief #trees #waterfalls #personal #reflection #blogpost
In my post on Songs and Poetry, I explored the idea that lyrics of songs are often poetry. Indeed, one could argue that the more poetic and emotive the lyrics, the greater chance of that song becoming an anthem for some listeners. This is certainly true in my own experience.
One of the artists in my “Anthems” playlist is P!nk. I love her attitude, her style, and her voice. Even more, I have found some of her lyrics to be enormously powerful and emotive, and very relatable. She may be a rock goddess who knows how to entertain, but she is also a poet who knows how touch someone’s soul.
That’s why it came as no surprise to me that she used to write poetry. It shows.
What P!nk says about the therapeutic effects of writing poetry is true, too. It does feel good to get the darkness out, and to shape it into something that is meaningful to others as well as oneself. As I have often commented, writing poetry is the most effective therapy I have ever had.
WordyNerdBird 
