I experienced a tremendous sense of loss yesterday and along with grief were intense anger, confusion and the injustice of it all. I cried and cried then stopped a while and then cried some more and the day moved on regardless. I awoke this morning to intense feelings of hopelessness, more sobbing, anger, and feelings of confusion and injustice.

My mind running amok with scenarios of how to deal with this situation included many thoughts around how to end the situation, fix the issues if only others would see my perspective and how hurt I feel. I’m sure you can imagine mindfulness was a distant relative in all of this however I am grateful to realise it was present. The self-awareness was enough to prevent me to taking any disempowered action. I desperately want to “do something” to make the situation better for everyone – and the desperation was the problem. Realising my internal process I took myself away to try and process my grief and anger – grateful and sorry at the same time that I didn’t “do something” to trying and fix it.

I wrote in my journal about my experiences and the feelings about it last night and this morning while still in the depths of despair I watched my thoughts unfold. Watched the anger play out, watched the grief scenarios, watched the denial scenarios too. I watched my inability to cope and the utter hopelessness of the situation and the tears kept flowing.

I spoke to someone today who shared their story of a painful experience along a similar vein and as I listened compassionately to their experience, their reaction and intended action, and felt my pain in their pain, I realised, like the other person, the scenarios in my head were so unhelpful and would only perpetuate my own grief and suffering. Listening to the other person’s story with acceptance highlighted the reflection of the part of me that is not loving and compassionate. I understood wholeheartedly how they felt.

Serenity prayer

I opened my eyes and ears and travelled from my head and my ego to my heart to know the truth of my deepest desires. They are always for relationship and reconciliation, and that ALL people are free from suffering and its causes and that we can ALL enjoy happiness and its causes. This is our most natural desire as a human and I am aware of how often we get lost in our grief, anxiety, sadness, feeling how we are being wronged; forgetting our intrinsic nature. Focusing on others who are not recognising this is not the solution and does not help the situation. It’s blame wearing another jacket. We have no control over others we can only be responsible for our own thoughts, feelings and actions.

My grief still runs deep and acceptance is all I can do with that for now. I can only ever ask myself “what would love do now?” and love would never consciously hurt another human being. I read the following quote and associated article which helped me shift my focus in alignment with my own insight about reacting:

“Serenity comes when you trade expectations for acceptance.” ~Unknown Taken from Tiny Buddha Website – highly recommended reading.

The love of right mindfulness and right action is the seed I choose to water and allow it to grow and blossom. Storms and drought will at times challenge its growth and if I don’t neglect these seeds and keep watering and nourishing them, they will grow and take over from all the weeds in the garden of my mind.

We are in relationship with everything in the universe and the quality of that relationship is impacted by what we bring to it – our thoughts, intentions, feelings and actions. I choose love.

“We can never erase the past – we CAN stop living in it.” – Jen Hall

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