Monday Mindfulness

Cultivating Strength, Joy, Calm & Resilience

Category Archives: loss


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Healing Salve

I hold your broken heart,

recognizing the worn and chipped pieces

of injury, loss, humiliation, and dejection

and the pains of long ago never repaired or attended to,

grown over with patchwork scars and gaping cracks and holes.

I am sorry for picking at and reopening those wounds.

I am sorry for creating new fissures and further weakening your heart’s integrity and your ability to feel whole.

I only ever meant to hold your heart gently and sweetly,

but at times my fear of losing it made me grip so hard

and cling so forcefully

that I only added to its brokenness.

I never lost sight of its beauty and worth.

I never lost touch with its essence.

But as I began to doubt the essence of my own heart, I chipped away at yours.

I only hope now to heal my heart

and send ripples of unconditional love across the void of brokenness,

applying a healing salve and restoring integrity.

With the deepest love of my heart, I render this prayer for forgiveness.


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Dear tears…

Dear Tears,

The pain is so intense, at times, taking the breath away.

Your arrival is a sign of hope,

and a forceful reminder to surrender.

You cleanse and clear the way for a new perspective.

Diving in so deeply and fully, consuming the moment,

you somehow soften the pain and bring breath back into the body.

This dance of flowing, heaving, melting, twisting and turning kneads the suffering into softness.

Every droplet contains an ocean of loving tenderness.

So beautifully pulling back the curtain,

allowing the light in,

transcending time,

washing out all bridges of reality,

exposing the space between,

bringing us home for healing.


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Healing Light

Sometimes the light is too bright.

It is quick, and big, and so expansive.

Uncomfortable.

Unfamiliar.

Intimidating.

Too adventurous.

It feels great,

But a little unsafe.

Taking sips.

Feeling cautious.

Going slow.

Becoming curious.

Letting it tingle and flicker.

Allowing glimmers of ease.

Breathe by breath,

Becoming just a little lighter,

Peeling open with an achiness and stiffness,

Untangling and unfurling,

Nourished and relaxed by the light.

Beginning to awaken and transition.

Now softness and trust expand.

Permission granted to feel,

To release,

To become

Something else.

Freedom to be, anew.


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Ripples of recovery

Pain provides an opportunity to turn towards lessons and lessening or to adopt as a wounded state as a part of identity.

For sure, the wave of wound on the heels of pain can feel logical and essential. It may perhaps be needed in order to make a choice. The wound from pain can be like a riptide that is easy to get caught in…that can provide great struggle and even the potential to drown.

However, to ride that current, perhaps even begin to understand it’s make up and direction and feel more fully into it just briefly, produces the wisdom to release the struggle and be propelled to its edges by its own force.

Without resistance, the riptide has nothing to hold onto and pushes away what it cannot drag down.

In due time, the churning and swirling when met with curiosity, tenderness, and patience has the capacity to deliver an object once more to calm and safe waters.

It is in returning to this calm space where wisdom is found…the pain lessened and the wound converted to a lesson.

While woundnedness perpetuates a perceived lack of safety imposed externally, wisdom reinforces the notion that safety is created in the choice to experience but not drown in the wound.

While ideally the sea of life hopes to offer smooth, calm, clear waters, it also aspires to shape future landscapes and to never remain the same, retaining unintentially in its purpose the potential for pain.

And in this way, there lie endless opportunities to ride or resist, to learn or succumb.


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The fruits of loss

For so long I have worked to convert false and illusory love into something genuine and real.

I took every secret, every lie, and tried to make good of it, convert it with my own love, and hold it in my heart as if somehow sacred.

It cut me off from believing I was worthy or capable of experiencing authentic love…so much so that I lost the connection to my own self love.

My heart never forgot. It diligently safeguarded that little piece of me while it held all the other illusions and hopes.

The portion of my heart that held onto dreams of apologies and repair finally grew so heavy and full of empty promises that it ripped itself away. Painfully it twisted and tugged, like an overripe piece of fruit trying to resist gravity’s pull. It finally fell away. Oh the sorrow. Even letting go of something rancid and rotting is still a severing, a deep and real loss.

As that fruit of my broken heart smashed to the ground, its void still consuming my awareness, little seeds of potentiality embedded in the ground. I saw in them hopes that somehow we have all learned from these lessons of untrue love.

Somehow we will remember that without filling there can be no emptying. Without love there is no hope. Without unabashed openness and courage, the fruit cannot ripen and go on to somehow grow into something beautiful.

And in the meantime, the void from the fallen fruit begins to fill with new leaves.