Sunday, May 22, 2011 by Michelle
Tremendous sadness enveloped my life two weeks ago when my dad, my pop, died suddenly and unexpectedly. He had just left the hospital two days earlier; he had been released and was feeling pretty good. Then on Saturday, an aneurysm he was awaiting surgery for in his abdominal aorta 'went' and he died. My sister tried to save him, giving him CPR, as my mom watched her husband's life slip away. He was gone before he even reached the hospital, with paramedics who genuinely cared for him. Stunned, we all headed home to grieve the loss and care for each other. My sister's grief path is in many ways harder than mine and my brother's, and my mom's particularly painful because he had only been clean and sober for about five years and they were getting along so well. And the financial surprises have only added to the stress, and to the solidarity of this mother and her three loving children. Sometimes out of the ashes of grief beauty can rise up.
I know I'm stronger than I ever imagined. I have discovered reserves of emotional strength I never knew I had. And, I've learned to lean on people who care about me; my co-workers have been so caring and loving it makes me weep in gratitude, and a new counsellor I am seeing has helped me give myself permission to set boundaries and space for that grief. My husband built a memorial site for my dad so we can all share our stories, something our family has a whole history of telling with often great hilarity. To learn a bit about my father, click here. And if you knew Leon, share your thoughts.
As I work through this grief, I find myself apologizing to family members and friends who have lost a parent. I never realized how hard it is, and I've learned so much about giving to others in grief through receiving. I am a very different person than I was two weeks ago.
Posted in Aging
Sunday, January 23, 2011 by Michelle
I recently decided to go back to college. I had budgeted for the tuition and incidental costs and, what I thought, reasonably budgeted for texts. Imagine my outrage when the text came in at a whopping $143+ taxes. As if to help make me feel better, a classmate even said, "that's nothing - the book last semester was over $180." I didn't feel better.
Textbooks, in my experience, are used once and usually rarely ever looked at again; even if you sell them, you get a minuscule amount that doesn't remotely cover the pain of the cost. I almost dropped out. No wonder students struggle to pay for university; it's not just the tuition, it's the absolutely outrageous cost of textbooks.
Where are professors protesting by telling publishers they won't use texts that cost nearly half the cost of the course? Where are students voicing their outrage? Going to university/college is already hard to access by working-class and low-income people, or students unable/unwilling to live at home with their parents. Textbook costs, especially texts destined to never be looked at again, put an education completely out of their reach.
Posted in Learning
Sunday, January 9, 2011 by Michelle
I was at a 'sound and healing' event some time ago, and the person leading it asked, "Where and how do you experience sound in your body?" That's an odd question, I thought. Intrigued, I began to really pay attention to how and where sounds are felt in my body. I discovered that deeply resonant sounds, like when a large group of people chant "OM", are felt as a pleasant vibration deep in my chest. And the chime of a small gong, I wrote the haiku below to describe what it's like for me.
The little gong chimes
Small fish swim through my belly
Generating peace
Where do you experience sound in your body?
Tags: body, feeling, sensation, sound
Posted in Spirituality
Thursday, December 23, 2010 by Michelle
I just had the pleasure of spending the evening with two friends from my university days (I graduated in 1991). We drank tea and talked and laughed the evening away. There's something important about the knowledge of who we were that is embedded in those friendships. My husband may have heard stories from that time of my life, but the richness of that history really comes out when he hears it from those who took part in the escapades and hilarity. These friends, one whom I've kept in contact with over the years and one only last year reconnecting because of a death of a friend, are treasures to my heart. I am grateful.
Tags: friend, friendship, memories, university
Posted in Uncategorized