Change is constant. How we experience change…that’s up to us.
-Meredith Grey-
While a few crave change, most of us avoid it like the plague. Change knocks us off centre, makes us wobbly and uncomfortable. But when life gets tough, change offers us the hope that things will get better. Three years ago I said goodbye to my daughter, Rachel. Without faith in the power of change I’d have remained emotionally paralyzed.
Life is full of endings, full of goodbyes; change. Even as we finish the last piece of a chocolate bar we’re reminded that nothing lasts forever. Poet David Whyte suggests 50% of life is saying goodbye; until we absorb that reality we’re easy prey for depression and anxiety. Besides, one day we’ll have to give it all away. Everything. Maybe if we practice we’ll be better prepared for that Big Goodbye.
We just have to open our fingers, loosen our grip.
As Tim Kreider reminds us in this week’s New York Times: “You are older at this moment than you’ve ever been before, and it’s the youngest you’re ever going to get. The mortality rate is holding at a scandalous 100 percent.”
We all have a date of birth, and a date of death at yet unknown. Until that day maybe it’s worth shaking things up, practice feeling wobbly: sit somewhere different, give a gift anonymously, do something others might describe as ‘not like you.’ Call it prep work. Detachment from attachment.
Changing my living situation every few weeks keeps me wobbly. Trusting that everything happens at the right time inspires a calm resolve and intuitive faith in life as it is…traits absent from an earlier life that left me ill prepared for massive change.
“How we remember our lives trumps how we experience them,” claims neurosurgeon and cancer-survivor Allan Hamilton. Today I shall reframe my thoughts about Rachel’s departure from this world. Rather than think of it as the date of her death, I shall celebrate memories of the 8533 days she lived.
“Cos’ I gotta feelin’…”
-The Black Eyed Peas-
Sources
Grey’s Anatomy, Season 7, Episode 1
You Are Going to Die by Tim Kreider
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/20/you-are-going-to-die/
7 Ways to Make Happiness Last by Allan Hamilton
http://www.dailygood.org/view.php?sid=378
David Whyte workshops
Very lovely, poignant, and right on. Thank you for sharing it. N
Thinking of you, and taking in your words which as ever challenge me. What an inspiration you are to us all, so proud to call you “my friend”.
Thank you for continuing to challenge me and Thank you to Rachel.
Love as ever
Thanks Becky, I love that inspiration word!
Becky, you are lovely.
Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts….very much appreciated and timely.
love,
Anne
You are my inspiration…..When I feel low, I think of you and give my self a shake. When I feel hard done by, I think of you and give myself a shake. my daughter left for the UK 3 weeks ago, will probably be gone 4 years and I was overjoyed at the thought of what lays ahead for her but a little sad for me, and I thought of you and gave myself a shake.
I was crying when I read your blog, I usually do, and so many times I have wanted to comment but I’m usually at work and the phone goes and it never happens. But today I just had to. So Becky, keep writing, I don’t think you realized just how many people you inspire. I think of you often and just wanted you to know that.
Love reading your blog. Feeling a little “wobbly ” myself lately…..trying to embrace change. Have forwarded it to some “wobbly” friends and relatives.