Community

Loneliness and belongingness

The C – Word

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It might explode like a grenade thrown into a small room. I worried that everyone might be put right off by it. They might log out, log off, shut their laptops and go for a walk.

What do you mean ‘Celebrate’? What is there to celebrate? Nothing. NA – Not Applicable.

After a severance such as this. The death of my child? How can I? To me, it does not apply. I belong to another club now. Here, the air is laden with a sense of exclusion and non-deserving. Here, the rejection of invitations to celebrate is automatic.  

Memories of our kids. The foods they loved, toys, TV shows, films, books, nursery rhymes, practical jokes, school and Christmases. Our hugs. Sweet stories revealed through their friends after they died. Their hidden kindnesses. Laughter. Tears. A whole life worth remembering. Worth honouring. Celebrating.

What of us? Parents. Alive. Old labels stripped off and new strange ones slathered on. The ground beneath our feet taken away and replaced with quicksand. Our identity shattered. Life in the After becoming something resembling life. An unthinkable exile. Aloneness, inside the non-understanding of the world. Every day, a fight. A reconciliation. Every day, showing up and facing whatever shows up. Keeping the broken bits of our hearts held together with the glue of love inside our silently sighing chests. Still alive.

The invitation at the Circle of Remembrance was to celebrate ourselves for being here. Now. It did not go off like a granade in a small room. No one left in a huff. It was accepted graciously. At the end of an hour and a half, the virtual space was filled with acknowledgement of things to celebrate – our love, patience, resilience and compassion reflected in this poem by Lucille Clifton written in the 1960s. We can replace ‘nonwhite and woman’ with any other phrase:

won’t you celebrate with me

what I have shaped into

a kind of life? i had no model.

born in Babylon

both non-white and woman

what did I see to be except myself?

i made it up

here on this bridge between

star-shine and clay

my one hand holding tight

my other hand;

                        come celebrate

with me that everyday

something has tried to kill me

and has failed.

PS: Circle of Remembrance is an international online peer-support group for bereaved parents that has been effectively working for the past three years and four months. Please visit the website http://www.core-community.com to learn more. Please recommend it to any parents you know who might be struggling alone after a tragic loss.

Meeting old friends for the first time.

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Meeting old friends for the first time. In at least three dimensions. Sharing a physical space together, not just a bland rectangular screen. Actually holding hands.

“Gosh! You’re for real!”

The sparkling smiles of recognition mixed with disbelief. The hugs offering heart to heart resuscitation and healing. Sitting down side by side on the sofa, sharing stories, tea and cake.

A year ago, this could have been fiction but last weekend it was fact. While volunteering at a retreat for Bereaved parents hosted by The Compassionate Friends, we finally met people we’ve only ever seen on Zoom. It was held at the simple and serene Woodbrooke Centre, a Georgian manor house in Selly Oak, Birmingham with tall trees, beautiful flower beds and a family of geese perambulating the grounds, intermittently honking. It is a Quaker centre and has a poster in the main foyer which reads “Nameless helping the Nameless”.

The garden in front of the main house has a labyrinth mowed into it. Early on Saturday morning, birds were singing and the light was inviting me into the open. I decided to walk bare feet into the center of the labyrinth. I took my shoes and socks off at the edge of the circle. As soon as I started walking, it turned into an extremely mindful experience as the ground was littered with geese droppings.

The silence in that place was sweet and the views a treat. We talked about the importance of finding meaning. We shared the joys and challenges of taking the inward road. We watched a film and sang together. We wrote from our hearts and created pretty little candle holders for our kids from jam jars at the crafts table. We cried and laughed, reassured that in this company, it was completely acceptable to do both, sometimes simultaneously.

A pleasant exchange. Giving and receiving with compassion. Understanding. Belonging. Learning. Holding the utter magnificence of life in one hand and the absolute devastation in another. That’s what this game is all about, I guess.

Invitation to the Circle of Remembrance

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Towards the end of 2020, a series of phone calls with mums and dads from the USA, Australia and the UK resulted in the formation of an on-line peer support group that has met every other Saturday evening for an hour and a half. The first meeting was held in the middle of January 2021. We’ve recently had our 32nd meeting. The group provides a warm space for sharing and offers non-judgemental listening and understanding. It provides a fertile ground for post-traumatic healing and growth. We call it CORe: Circle of Remembrance.

The loss of a child is different from other losses. The purpose of CORe is to honour our children, to create an opportunity for sharing our inner and outer experiences and to seek tools and mutual understanding for establishing a firmer ground of compassion, from which to live our new lives.

Over time, I have come to appreciate my need for a tribe to belong to. Other people who are also living through the loss of their child validate our experiences, witness our pain and help us feel less alone.

After many years of trying to make sense of something so treacherous, I now know that it is impossible to make any sense of it. However, I also know that it’s possible to create a new path for ourselves. A path of learning and peace.

It has been an honour for Si and me to facilitate the CORe group of roughly 20 friends and witness their journeys. The rich, life-sustaining conversations and friendships within the group are a delight to be a part of.

It therefore gives me great joy to invite bereaved parents to a new group that will meet on alternate Wednesdays from 7.00 – 8.30 pm (UK time). Please visit the website of CORe (link below) for more details and testimonials and sign up if you would like to join.  In our experience with the Saturday group, the upper limit to attendees is 25. Once we have about 15 members, we’ll get started. The tentative start date is 4th May 2022.

https://www.core-community.com/

A Vision

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By JR Leach

I had this vision back last spring,
When the land was ruled by corrupted kings,
And greed was fueled by hoarding things,
But things that one could touch.

The vision spoke of melted gold,
The value of the world resold,
“The price for life” is what we’re told,
By men who own too much.

As fear spread through a world; forlorn,
With threats of plague that ne’er were born,
Fresh chains were forged and willing-worn,
By those who feared the lie.

And though once joy had been assured,
Through weighing risk, and griefs endured,
Death could no longer be ignored,
For all souls fear to die.

This fear was stoked by those town criers,
Who peal the bells but start the fires,
And sing the songs their lord requires,
To whom they humbly thank.

Fresh tides of evil rise with haste,
As hands of Midas are replaced,
By hands whose touch turns all waste,
And paper sharp and blank.

“But rules are rules” the fearful sigh,
Content to see their forebears die,
No hand to hold, no last goodbye,
Just pixels, bright but cold.

“But rules are rules”, the state replies,
While deaf to all those muffled cries,
That sound from those with honest eyes,
And doubt the fear they’re sold.

And even children are not spared,
For misery is widely shared,
And dished by those who swore they cared,
But cared for guidelines more.

So mired and masked, the schools return,
Devoid of joy but forced to churn
Out abstract facts, for all must learn
That learning’s just a chore.

The vision ends when all is grey,
While shapeless, mouthless words relay,
The promise of a brighter day,
But no such day arrives.

A year drifts by, and so does youth,
The vision now a dismal truth,
But ‘truth’ is passé and uncouth,
While fiction blooms and thrives.

But even in this twilight hour,
imprisoned in our lonesome bower,
The words we speak retain their power,
And words can never die.

So speak your thoughts, and rise above
The barbs and briars of those who shove
The truth away, just think and love,
And you’ll escape the lie.

Freedom on a page

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Writing is a friend. It sustains. It slowly pushes open the rusted, jammed doors of many hearts and allows for the gaping wounds in there to heal. Over the last few weeks it’s clear that it is not just possible but fun, to attend and host meetings remotely. Despite challenges, it can be enriching. A wise man/woman has identified 3 things one needs, to get through a day :

  1. Someone to love.
  2. Something to do.
  3. Something to look forward to.

No wonder people are gardening, baking, embroidering and doing various things, spending time or connecting in creative ways with people they love. We have been setting one episode of ‘The Crown’ as our carrot, to look forward to at the end of a long ‘working from home’ day. I have been writing some poetry and dreaming of putting a book together and getting it published some day. There goes my Ego …. again!

This seems like a good time to do something new. I would like to invite you to write with me. To connect with your hearts and bring a blank page to life. To find your own expression and share other people’s worlds through their words and prose. We would call ourselves “Freedom on a page”. In this time of partial captivity, this title seemed appropriate. If you have other suggestions, please bring them to the group. We would meet every Tuesday morning for an hour and a half – between 9 and 10.30 am on Zoom. We would write as much as we like during the week but have 200-300 words to read out to the group. If you would much rather only listen, that’s fine too. Join in. Don’t think so hard that you talk yourself out of it. You have done that before. Haven’t you? 😉

If you would like to join, please

(1) e-mail me at kidsaregifts20@gmail.com by Saturday, the 23rd of May. If you’d like more time to decide, take that time and send me the e-mail when you are ready.

(2) familiarise yourself with Zoom (https://zoom.us/) and download it on your computer/phone. It is free and easy. You can switch the video off if you don’t want to be seen. You can participate by writing on the ‘chat’ if you don’t want to speak.

I will send you an invite by e-mail on Monday, the 25th. I will start the meeting 15 minutes before 9 am, UK time (GMT+1) on Tuesday, the 26th of May and wait for you. Then we’ll see what happens. I have never done this before so I am a little bit nervous too. Shall we write about what ‘Freedom’ means to you? Feel free to pick any other subject. I look forward to this adventure. Depending on how you feel, we can continue to ‘meet-up’ every Tuesday.

Try it. Magic happens when the naked tip of a pen meets a nude blank page. The fingers holding that pen are deeply connected to the real you. So are the fingers typing on your keyboard.

Freedom on a page

Feathers fall from heavens like rain

A splash of sun-rays on the pavement lifts dust

Fills my senses with petrichor

The romance of which dances

In every gap, crack and crevice

I float up with the fragrance

And glide along the tops of trees

Breathe in bliss, touching green

Everything IS, as it IS

Watching its own ISNESS

Wrapped in a melodious silence.

This must be it

One moment of being fully alive.

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