Tag: grief

how a digital frame is helping my grief…

The first anniversary of my mother’s death and the first anniversary of our calico Chloe’s death both came recently, and I found myself looking back at the ways I’ve tried to deal with these life transitions and grief over this past year. It’s been difficult – and continues to be — so I use the various things I know to do (several of them I’ve discussed in this blog) to try to move through the days.

A month or so after Chloe died, we decided to put together a paperback book of some of our favorite pictures of her. Using the book feature offered from Google Photos, we spent time going through the many (many!) photos of her to narrow down the ones to include in the project. Once the order was placed, the book was shipped fairly quickly… and we were very pleased with how it turned out.

In addition to the book of some of Chloe’s photos, we also created a small space on the mantle where we put photos of all five cats who have shared our lives. And doing these things led us to think about getting a digital frame, something we’d never seriously considered before.

A dear friend of mine had been given a digital frame a couple of Christmases earlier, and she and her husband enjoyed it so much they decided to have more than one. The times of hearing her discuss their frames must have planted the seed in my mind. But it wasn’t until after getting Chloe’s photo book and putting together the little mantle display of all the cats, that the seed took root.

So we got a digital frame.

And we love it.

Thanks to the convenience and ease and speed of taking digital photos, we have more pictures of Chloe than the other cats, but we made sure to include plenty of photos of the other four too. (As you can see from the pictures below, Chloe wasn’t our first calico kitty.)

The frame remains heavily weighted to feline photos, but we’ve also added pictures of family members, our wedding day, other special occasions and happy memories and favorite places, some scenic pictures that we enjoy seeing again, and even a few photos of my paintings. Many, many of the originals came from pre-digital decades, so this process has meant going through our photo collection and doing quite a bit of digitizing. The results haven’t always been perfect, but that’s okay.

The result we wanted is the result the frame has brought us – smiles and memories and a help with the grief of loss.

Because there have been so many losses.

All of the cats are gone. Most of the family members in the photos are no longer with us. Some of the places in the pictures are places we’ll never see again, whether it’s because we (or our families) no longer live in those homes, or because the locations are ones we probably won’t be able to visit again.

It’s because of all of the losses that I had some concern that the digital frame might actually make things more difficult. That it would be a sharp reminder of the grief without easing it. That it might cause the pain to be even worse. And I think it’s important to keep in mind that it could turn out like that, so if having a digital frame causes you more pain than ease, it might not be the right time (or the right thing) to help your grief.

For us, though, the digital frame has been a help. We keep it on a kitchen counter where we see it often throughout the day. It’s not unusual for us to stop and spend some time looking at whatever photo has randomly appeared, and we remember the good times and the love and the cats and the people.

It has helped me feel even closer to all those who are no longer present on this earth. It has helped me handle the grief.

The frame is only a holder, of course. What helps is seeing the photos. But due to the nature of the digital frame, it keeps the photos part of our day-to-day life in a way they normally wouldn’t be.

The grief isn’t gone, and I still very much miss every cat and every person who isn’t here anymore.

But the frame has been helping the grief.

♥

grief and anxiety and writing and grace…

I often think it would be nice to be the kind of writer who could write any day, every day, no matter what was going on with life or emotions.

But I’m not.

Although I’m able to paint every day, even if life is in turmoil and the anxiety is high, I can’t do that with writing. I think it’s because, for me, writing involves some part of my mind and brain and attention that’s hard for me to access if I’m not feeling a certain amount of being settled inside myself. I don’t have to feel completely calm and settled to write, but there has to be a certain level of it that simply isn’t there when the anxiety is super high.

This definitely gets in the way of writing routines and rhythms. And it can mean writing in starts-and-stops. It can even feel as though I’m taking one step forward and two steps back.

And I have to admit that it’s discouraging. But it’s something that has been true for me throughout my decades of writing.

Even though this has consistently been the case for me, though, time and again I re-visit this issue and examine it and ask myself certain questions.

Should I push myself more? Should I force myself to be more discipled? Should I find some coping technique, even if it’s unhealthy, that numbs my feelings (whether anxiety or grief) enough that I can hear the characters and stories that want to be told through my writing?

None of those feel right for me. When the anxiety is so bad, pushing through it or pushing it aside seem impossible. And ever since the end of my long slow xanax taper, I have no desire to risk more anti-anxiety meds or even alcohol to numb. Whatever calming techniques I use or try need to be things that won’t mess with my brain and central nervous more than they’ve already been messed with (and harmed by) prescription medication.

So I keep coming back to giving myself grace. Or trying to, at least.

Giving myself grace and space and time to grieve the losses in my life. Giving myself grace and forgiveness for not meeting some self-imposed ideal of what my writing or productivity should look like. And giving myself grace and permission to honor my personal rhythms… whether that’s with my writing, or dealing with life in general, or going through a day.

And giving myself grace to do it all imperfectly.

How about you? Do you need to give yourself more grace? Do you need to do more honoring of your needs and your feelings and your rhythms?

If so, I hope you’ll do just that.

♥

My art journaling page from early 2020 for my word-of-the-year – grace.

creativity every day even when…

I’ve written before about how it’s important to me to create every day. Even if it’s not much and not for long, I paint daily, and it’s something that helps me with calming and grounding and getting through.

There have been some big life changes that I’ve been dealing with, and there have been all the emotions that come when those things happen.

My hubs is officially retired now, which is a time of transition and brings adjustments to daily life and daily schedules for both of us. And our lives and our home are also very different now because our sweet 14-year-old calico Chloe passed away the week before Christmas after a long fight with cancer.

Only two and a half weeks after Chloe passed, my mother died.

And while none of these things were unexpected, they are still very big changes.

There’s a lot of grief. A lot of adjustment. A lot of feeling like life is just…different.

Through it all, every day, I continue to paint.

I paint because it calms me. It grounds me. It settles me. It brings me moments of joy even on days that are terribly difficult.

Even if I only paint for a minute, even if I only paint a heart or a circle, I paint every single day.

I do it because it helps me.

Even when life is hard, creativity helps.

What creativity can you bring into your life today, even if life in general is bringing challenges and struggle? What creative outlet gives you joy, even if you only have the time or energy to do it briefly?

Please let yourself do it. Because it can help.

♥