Saturday, November 9, 2013

Day Nine



Most of us have known times in our lives when it felt like the best we could do is just hold on. When we were struggling and didn't necessarily see a way that the situation would immediately resolve itself or improve. In those moments we might know "grit and grace", a certain kind of physical, emotional or spiritual toughness that gave us the strength to endure and find a way to a different and better day.

Think of a particular time in your life when you did hold on, when perseverance paid off for you, and you discovered you were resilient.  Looking back, how did you sustain yourself then? What resources of strength did you find in yourself that you are now genuinely grateful for?

For today's practice, write a gratitude letter to yourself for your ability to hold on at that time in your life.   Doesn't have to be a lengthy piece of writing, but just enough space for you to name the gifts you discovered in yourself. Please take a moment to offer yourself some thanks.

6 comments:

  1. I'm back on but some trouble with today's task, a little down. When facing adversity, I just think of myself in terms of just plugging along, you keep going in spite of the difficulty. Maybe this is just blind or pragmatic, but I have tough time acknowledging this as anything special. Maybe tenacity and staying strong for those you love are things I should be more grateful for...

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  2. This message comes at a tough time (or maybe a perfect time) as I am currently smack dab in the middle of the hardest time of my life.... I am just holding on now and I am not sure I am going to see myself as very resilient when it's all over... so today I wrote myself a letter address to "me, when this is all over" and I told myself that I am proud of myself for reaching out for help, for making the time to be in the trenches, for making time to be out of the trenches, and I thanked myself for the permission to just BE where I am... to let the crap wash over me BEFORE I find the soap to clean it off.... I kind of hope I never have to read it, but that's the hardest thing about this time.....

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  3. I decided not to do a straight-forward letter. I know from personal experience that in order for intentions to have any effect on me, there has to be some intensity added to fuel them.  (I guess I'm a slow learner... I need to be hit over the head with an anvil for the point to sink in.) So I expressed my letter as a painting. First of all, I used a fountain pen to write all the contributing factors to the various successes that I could think of. It's Sunday and I'm still about halfway through painting symbols and colors around the words to cover the entire piece.  As I do so I concentrate on each word...try to spend some time remembering what it felt like.  While working on this I also burned some incense and lit some candles: one for hope, one for healing. In remembering different successes and what contributed to them, I noticed a disturbing pattern. Some of my most powerful motivators are things I'm not proud of. “Spite” was an especially big one. Should I be thankful for spite? I wondered whether to use these words on my painting... I mean, I did accomplish some impressive things with spite. I decided to use them because we can't always control having these feelings, but when they contribute to success, it seems that maybe we can control what we do with them, and perhaps the ability to transmute the bad into something good is worth having gratitude for. I could have used spite to do something terrible like burn my high school down, but I didn't; I studied hard to make sure I could successfully have a different life far away from those idiots...er...I mean "personified learning experiences."  I'd still rather draw upon the positive attributes, but when you have to, drawing good out of bad isn't always impossible....just very very difficult.

    But will the painting be strong enough for me that the message will sink in? I hope so, but there's a reason that I've considered getting a tattoo...

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  4. I have a triptych called RAGE, RELEASE, REPAIR in my office. It is of a naked female figure: in painting #1, she is screaming and ripping apart her chest. Painting #2 From out of her open chest are falling words like hate, terror, despair.... Painting #3 Her chest is mended with a zipper-like configuration, and along the zipper are words like peace, love, contentment, strength. Her head is held high in the last painting. I relate to this triptych very much. It speaks to and for me.

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