Oh how this quote spoke to me love! Thank you for sharing it. 🙌🏾♥️🙌🏾 As we navigate the loss of my Dad, I am leaning into deeper presence - connecting with those I love, hold dear, in whatever way feels most supportive. I am choosing to see even more expansively with my heart (even when it’s hard). I am slowly catching up to your words here. Thank you for your work in the world and in this space. ♥️ May we continue awakening.
Amanda, I'm grateful for you. Thanks for being here, being open to the painful stuff, like broken-heartedness, and sharing. YOU are helping create community w/ that.
Yes, I feel the layers of loss and suffering like a beautiful aching 7 layer dip. We have lost 7 people in our immediate family to normative and non normative deaths in the last few years, plus cancer scares, accidents, and also trying to carry and uphold joy and reverence for life. We feel shifted, lost, and concurrently grateful for the chance to have family in our life. That our losses were not due to violence or a shooting. I love this quote. And have been thinking about resilience while broken hearted and how we build it in community.
"Resilience while broken hearted." That is concept I'd love to explore more. I am so sorry for all the loss you've experienced and so grateful that you are trying to keep going and hold joy.
Acknowledging the caveat for "Kingdom of God," I both love and hate that it's for the broken-hearted. Love: because it's open to anyone, even those of us who've tried and fallen short; Hate: because that feels like a cruel toll to have to pay to get to a good place.
Which takes us to note #5. My body and life feel ripped apart by multiple conflicting ideas-feelings-perceptions-and more. For instance, Covid: stay safe, keep others safe, get on with life. Rip, tear, slash.
Those are powerful verbs you used, Jen. I can really feel how much you are struggling with the conflicting ideas, both because of how descriptive you are here, but also because I think it's familiar to so many of us right now. It does seem like a cruel toll to pay, and it feels like a balm for how hard this world is.
I do come from Evangelical roots … a Texas transplant from Boston. It’s a kind of salty defiant, I’ll do my own deconstruction, thank you very much.
As you talk about the broken-hearted, I can’t help but think of the “blessed” Jesus talked about. It’s one of those words that has been so commodified and twisted that I cringe every-time someone says, “have a blessed day.” But when I consider the last year, I have become intimately aware of mental health suffering … Dad’s dementia and my son’s neurodiversity, anxiety and depression… and all those around us who live in this space. I think the blessing is opening to the suffering and sitting close, and discovering my own fears and anxieties that sit below the surface. And finding community by sharing the hard truths and discovering pilgrims along the same path.
Oh how this quote spoke to me love! Thank you for sharing it. 🙌🏾♥️🙌🏾 As we navigate the loss of my Dad, I am leaning into deeper presence - connecting with those I love, hold dear, in whatever way feels most supportive. I am choosing to see even more expansively with my heart (even when it’s hard). I am slowly catching up to your words here. Thank you for your work in the world and in this space. ♥️ May we continue awakening.
Thinking of you very often right now, E. I love that you ended this w/ "May we continue awakening." Yes. That. <3
I’m definitely feeling it and am so grateful for this community. ❤️
Amanda, I'm grateful for you. Thanks for being here, being open to the painful stuff, like broken-heartedness, and sharing. YOU are helping create community w/ that.
Yes, I feel the layers of loss and suffering like a beautiful aching 7 layer dip. We have lost 7 people in our immediate family to normative and non normative deaths in the last few years, plus cancer scares, accidents, and also trying to carry and uphold joy and reverence for life. We feel shifted, lost, and concurrently grateful for the chance to have family in our life. That our losses were not due to violence or a shooting. I love this quote. And have been thinking about resilience while broken hearted and how we build it in community.
"Resilience while broken hearted." That is concept I'd love to explore more. I am so sorry for all the loss you've experienced and so grateful that you are trying to keep going and hold joy.
Acknowledging the caveat for "Kingdom of God," I both love and hate that it's for the broken-hearted. Love: because it's open to anyone, even those of us who've tried and fallen short; Hate: because that feels like a cruel toll to have to pay to get to a good place.
Which takes us to note #5. My body and life feel ripped apart by multiple conflicting ideas-feelings-perceptions-and more. For instance, Covid: stay safe, keep others safe, get on with life. Rip, tear, slash.
Split.
Those are powerful verbs you used, Jen. I can really feel how much you are struggling with the conflicting ideas, both because of how descriptive you are here, but also because I think it's familiar to so many of us right now. It does seem like a cruel toll to pay, and it feels like a balm for how hard this world is.
I do come from Evangelical roots … a Texas transplant from Boston. It’s a kind of salty defiant, I’ll do my own deconstruction, thank you very much.
As you talk about the broken-hearted, I can’t help but think of the “blessed” Jesus talked about. It’s one of those words that has been so commodified and twisted that I cringe every-time someone says, “have a blessed day.” But when I consider the last year, I have become intimately aware of mental health suffering … Dad’s dementia and my son’s neurodiversity, anxiety and depression… and all those around us who live in this space. I think the blessing is opening to the suffering and sitting close, and discovering my own fears and anxieties that sit below the surface. And finding community by sharing the hard truths and discovering pilgrims along the same path.