Posts Tagged ‘Remembering’
Who Lives on in Your Heart?
Tuesday, July 13th, 2010
The anniversary of my mom’s passing was Monday (July 12) and I can’t believe it has been 10 years. If I close my eyes, I can remember that day like it was yesterday. And yet, so much of my life has changed in the last 10 years. I’ve changed jobs twice, studied shamanism, facilitated drumming circles, traveled to Italy to stay in the Vatican, started my own healing arts company, journeyed to Louisiana to meet Mary Ann, and became a certified life coach. Through all of these transitions and changes, I have had incredible teachers, mentors, therapists, healers, and friends.
The world has changed a lot too. We have seen our first African American President in the United States. We watched the world come together through major tragedies like 9/11, a tsunami in Indonesia, Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana, and an earthquake in Haiti to name just a few. We have helped one another through our times of change and turmoil.
What I have learned over the past ten years is that the earth below our feet moves and shakes. How we deal with a shaking and ever-changing earth is up to us. As the writer Dominique Browning says about life, “It never gets easy. But if we are paying attention, it can get simpler.”
For years I experienced my mom’s passing as the worst grief in my life. I have come to realize these past ten years that she never really left because she lives on through my memories of her, in my work, and in my heart. People never really leave our hearts.
The earth will shake again. This time I will pay more attention and I know it will get simpler.
Who lives on in your heart?
In loving memory of my mom,
Mary Anne
“Lost” Taught Me About Remembering
Monday, May 24th, 2010
The final episode of “Lost” aired this weekend and for anyone who has been watching the show for six years it was a typical ending in that it left viewers asking more questions. I think what the show did best over the last six years was allow for amazing discussion around time, faith, redemption, light, darkness, and interconnectedness. For me, I became deeply invested in the relationships of the characters, and of course, wanted a happy ending.
The show’s brilliance was its ability to move us through time and connect the past, present, and future. It felt very shamanic as people called forth their emerging self while releasing their past. Characters were often asked to “let go.” I felt like the show asked us to remember our original selves. It gave us the big questions: Who am I? Who am I now? And who was/am I to you? And as Charlie asked on the last episode of the first season, “Guys, where are we?”
The highlight of the last episode was watching the characters in the flash side-ways remember who they were on ‘the Island’ in relation to one another. Our ability to remember is often what connects us. Even small glimpses, like remembering a smile, can keep people alive in our hearts. After my mom passed away, I told my spiritual teacher, “I’m not afraid I will forget her. I am afraid I will not remember.”
If the show did nothing else, it reminded us that we are all related and connected. It’s about finding one another and remembering one another. It’s about the journey of life (and death). It’s about choice and acceptance. It’s heaven on earth and earth on heaven and everything in between. Each character’s transformation through the multi-universes showed us a journey through self-awareness and ultimately personal enlightenment.
What is our state of remembering? What allows each of us to remember that light within that is always there?
To remembering,
Mary Anne