Month: January 2018

Saturday Sound Bites…..The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of

/ spiritualdragonfly / 14 Comments

Jumping on board with Lady Calen over at Impromptu Promptlings and her Saturday Sound Bites once again. This weeks theme……DREAMS

List five big dreams that haven’t come true yet…

See My Jim Again

Publishing my book

Buying that ranch and 1000 acres somewhere in Wyoming as a safe haven for the wild mustangs

Visit Ireland

Be a National Geographic Photographer

Ranch photo via Pixaby

Ireland Photo via Pixabay

Hitting The Pause Button…or Not

/ spiritualdragonfly / 16 Comments

Sandbox Writing Challenge 2018 — Exercise 3

by Calen over at Impromptu Promptlings

(Reblogged from August 25, 2015)

It’s Tuesday again, and time for the next prompt challenge from the Sandbox. Just a reminder to anyone reading this that you can jump in at any time. Do one. Do two. Do all if you want. These prompts are a way to get your mind and heart working on a not-so-superficial level — which is REALLY hard to do with all the background noise in our lives these days.

Plato once scribbled in his written works that “…to talk every day about virtue and the other things about which you hear me talking and examining myself and others is the greatest good to man, and that the unexamined life is not worth living…” I think that’s very important because it’s the only way the injustices of our world can be changed. (‘Course that’s just my opinion…)

So here we are at exercise 3. Have fun!

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The Sandbox Writing

Challenge — Exercise 3

What is it that keeps you from being still?

When I read this…I had to smile. Why? The first thing that popped in my head was that scene in Forrest Gump where he’s running……………and keeps on running….

From the moment my feet hit the ground after returning home from the hospital knowing Jim was gone, I was full-steam ahead. Not only did my feet hit the ground running..I ran a 7 month sprint … almost to the day, non-stop. I decluttered. Shredded old papers. Donated his clothing and most of the household things, not knowing who, what, where when or how. I was channeling my inner-energizer bunny and just kept on going, not taking to much time in between to pause.

I moved, not once, but 3 times in that time period….again, not hitting the pause button.

While living with my children and grandchildren was a blessing, there wasn’t an option to being alone, much less still. Instead, I was thrown head first into being mom and nana. As someone who needs her solitude and quiet time, while the living arrangements didn’t allow for that, looking back, it did keep me pre-occupied. Which in some ways kept my grief at bay.

But, I was able to find quiet moments in nature. I was still being drawn to the movement of water…….(as most of you know, for almost 10 years, we lived by the sea, and it was her movement, her ebb and flow, that I found solace, peace and healing, and stillness?.) This time, it was to the movement of the waterfalls, small rivers, and ponds of Pennsylvania that I was pulled to. And it was in those moments I began to once again heal….

7 months almost to the day that Jim died, I closed on my property and new ‘home’. For the first time since he died, I was ALONE. Still, stillness didn’t and doesn’t necessarily come. I’m drawn out of doors again, this time to the trees….the whispers of the wind..the chorus of the birds…..the flittering of my dragonflies. It is in the movement of nature, of life, that my real healing began and continues….

So, as I’m writing this, I’m thinking….Can anyone really, truly, be still?!? I mean, our breathing is movement. The blood rushing through our veins, our heartbeat, movement. The 1000 thoughts a minute that run through my head, (does that constitute ‘movement’?) Even in my mediation practice, monkey mind sneaks in……

Seems to me, when Jim died, and his Spirit left his body, stillness came, in a physical sense, for him. But for me, is stillness attainable as long as I’m breathing?!?!

Attaining stillness

One cannot help but be moved

By our beating hearts

©lindafedroff_january25,2018

So, at this moment of non-stillness writing, I’m putting the final period at the end of this post, and going out to hug my tree…..to find ‘stillness’ though even a tree has sap flowing through their ‘veins’….again, is anything ever really still?!

A Little Art Therapy

/ spiritualdragonfly / 11 Comments

“ART IS THE CREATION OF FORMS SYMBOLIC OF HUMAN FEELING” ~Suzanne Langer~

Been bitten by the art bug recently. I blew the dust off my meager stash of art supplies for the sole purpose of painting an Angel for one of my beautiful Earth Angels. The month of January is the angelversary of one of her sons deaths…sadly July is also a tough month for her as she lost her second son as well. Yet, with all the loss and sadness she lives with on a daily basis, she has been an incredible source of strength for me…….so I painted from my heart. Just to let her know I was thinking of her….and in doing so, it ignited something within me…….

So I painted some more….

And then this morning..out came the chalks…….

I’m no artist…but something has and is shifting within me….

“The main thing is to be moved, to love, to hope, to tremble, to live.” ~Auguste Rodin~

and I like it 😊 Heck I even got the camera last week………

“To know ahead of time what you’re looking for means you’re then only photographing your own preconceptions, which is very limiting, and often false.” ~ Dorothea Lange~

 

 

Finding Balance In My Widow’s World

/ spiritualdragonfly / 15 Comments

Okay….second go round for exercise 2 of the Sandbox Writing Challenge

It’s all about Balance. Do you consider yourself a balanced person? What are some of the things you do on a daily, weekly, etc. basis to keep yourself balanced? If you don’t feel you are, what can you do to help you find some of that needed balance?

Am I balanced? Good Question…my answer, an emphatic NOT EXACTLY! 😳

The death of a loved one always rocks our world…..the death of a spouse, well, in my personal case, it knocked mine off its axis.

With Jims death, I became half of our whole. That in of itself has had me totally off balance, in a very physical, emotional and mental way. In the beginning, I felt as though I was walking on a very thin tightrope, a tightrope of emotions. In the beginning, there was no real balance to speak of. That tightrope was more of a teeny thread, just enough for me to hang on to. But hang on I did, and still do.

My tightrope is an arduous one. I teeter. I slip. Some days all I can do is straddle that rope. But I still hold on. Some days I actually keep my footing, I call them my ‘OKAY’ days. I like my ‘OKAY’ days. I feel almost ‘normal’, and at this juncture of my journey, I’ll take that! The fact that they are happening more and more often as my journey continues to move forward leads me to believe I’m finding some semblance of balance once again.

While walking this tightrope, I’m acclimating and accepting that while we will always be us in my heart, I am now learning to compensate Jims absence in my life. I’m discovering the role I now play in my life. I’m compensating Jims absence, not with another, but with me, myself and I.

And while I was uncomfortable with this new role that was forced upon me, I’m now settling in. Each passing day, with its ups and downs, twists and turns, I’m able to hold on. I have learned I have to take the good with the bad. Im learning to counter-balance and find a ‘happy’ medium in order to keep my footing and keep living. Is it always easy, not by a long shot. But, I know in my heart what Jim would want for me, and that is to find a way to live, without him, till we can be together again……..so I turn to Nature, I meditate. I say No. I no longer feel I need to explain myself. I’m putting the wine away. It’s time for me to take care of Linda.

Will I ever find complete balance, I don’t believe so. I think, being kept slightly askew keeps me from becoming to complacent. Life has a way of keeping us on our toes.