Closure? No Such Thing But Inside of You

You don't really hear the word used all that much any more. It used to be that you couldn't turn around without someone spouting off emotionally about how they just needed closure. "I'm doing this because I really need closure," they'd say, referring to the belief that some process external to themselves or definitive interaction would give them the answers they are seeking, the peace they long for, and that they'd finally get to "the bottom of everything".

After enduring more than a few roller coaster rides of emotional chaos in my past, I can guarantee anyone in search of closure one absolute. Here it is. Are you listening? Repeat after me. The only person who can give you closure is yourself.

Now,  it's not that I'm saying there is no value in seeking answers or that healing can't be gained from interacting with an individual that you have unfinished business with, but as someone who has endured the suicide of a man I loved and launching a complaint against a "professional" counsellor, I'm not a big fan of the "I just need closure" sentiment any more. 

You need closure? Give yourself permission to grant it to yourself. Do whatever it takes, as long as it has nothing to do with self medication, addiction or violence in order to resolve the disappointment and ambiguous feelings, the disbelief, the shock, the anger, the fear and the grief. That's what therapy is for.

Sweat lodges. Marathon running. Silent meditation retreats. Yoga. Skydiving. Or, ideally, quiet and wondrous acceptance that life is short and every moment you spend embroiled in emotional chaos and pain is a moment that you're handing back to the past in lieu of the present and the future.

The last time I had the burning thought that I just couldn't move forward without some "closure" (and it was a burning and enduring thought at the time), I ended up in an arbitration that required lawyers, testimony, cross examination, the subpoena of my personal journals from 1993 and more soul searching than an astronomer on the verge of a Nobel prize discovery or a new solar system.

To be fair, it was a process that did bring closure and personal strength and the recognition that I had done everything I could to get an individual who in my heart I believed to be someone different than he must have been to explain how he could know better and do what he did. But, it also brought emotional exhaustion at that time and resignation, specifically as it pertains to men and love.

What it didn't do was give me any of the answers or the kind of face-to-face conversation I would have preferred to have with the individual I was seeking to get closure from. While I was seeking something more like what I imagine might happen in a restorative justice process, I got nothing of value except knowledge that my inner voice is the most important one; one that I most need to listen well to, hear and trust absolutely.

The reason this whole focus on closure for me has even surfaced is that the word, closure, has had a resurfacing of late. It has come up in interviews on radio and TV as the Missing Women Inquiry gets underway. It came up while being bombarded by the media circus around the 10th anniversary of 9/11. It comes up time and time again in listening to reports by victims of violence trying to find a way back from their anguish, to the life they used to know and will never know again in the same way. Think Air India.  And, painfully, it comes up every time a First Nations person looks at their shattered present and is stuck in the tragedy of their clouded childhood betrayals.

Closure. If some interaction has already happened, it's over. Give yourself the self-love you're seeking to create a better reality, anew.

Do You Know When to Leave Your Ego At Home?

 I went to the United Church on Salt Spring, Wednesday night, to hear Makere Stewart Harawira speak. She's from a tribe in New Zealand called the Waitaha. Apparently, they have existed for 2,000 - 3,000 years. Dr. Stewart-Harawira said the word Maori is a generic term that means essence; the natural peoples.

The talk was hosted by the Child Honouring Centre and its founder Raffi Cavoukian was there to introduce her at which point she sang a beautiful song in her language and began to speak about how we are at a critical juncture in human evolution where we can either make decisions that have the potential to lead to huge evolutionary leaps or we will make decisions (as we have been) that will lead to our extinction.  Nothing new in that statement unless you really digest the information and say it to yourself  and truly hear it at a cellular level.

"The sacred needs to be returned to our economic and political structures." For me, that was the most significant insight she shared becauseI feel that everyone feels a lack of "the sacred" every day even when they can't put words  to the angst they might be feeling at any given moment.

When the talk was over, it was question period.

How many times have you been to a talk where someone, usually one or two people, interpret question period to mean, let me bring out my soapbox. Let me challenge the speaker. Let me reveal my own brilliance read, my ego needs stroking, please see me and acknowledge me and help me to feel superior.


Most significantly, this man represented a way of being that would be beneficial to move away from at this point in human history. Instead of a listening and an open spirit, he brought antagonism and his own sense of rightness seeking affirmation and acknowledgement for himself in place of respect for others; not just the speaker but for the mainly female audience.

When I worked at UBC Computer Science, one of the professors  there who was Mormon once said to me, "If it doesn't add anything positive to the conversation, you really need to ask yourself whether it should be said."

So many people (including myself more often than not) are incapable of assessing that and unfortunately this man brought a negativity and a violence (as a result of the interchange it evoked between Raffi and him) to an evening that had been rooted in peace and soft energy prior to his serious error in judgment.

Suddenly, there, in that beautiful little church, what played out replicated what too often plays out in boardrooms, around kitchen tables, in casual groups. The collective anxiety his way of being evoked was palpable.

It was a really useful (albeit inappropriately-timed) lesson for everyone there to reflect upon.
1. Is the thought I just had necessary to articulate out loud?
2. Will this information add to the conversation or merely bolsters my ego?
3. Is this the right time to bring our concerns to the forefront?
4. Would a private conversation be more appropriate?
5. Am I coming from a place of love or a place of judgment?

The Wellspring of Talent on Salt Spring

It's so redundant to say there are so many incredibly talented people on this little rock of approximately 10,000 called Salt Spring but people keep saying it because every day it's in their face, not to be ignored.

This week I met with one of them at his beautiful low-slung home right on the water which runs the length of the shore and angles off in interesting directions. His entire front yard is a view of the ocean with little wooden decks staged for perfect summer lounging. It seemed appropriate that a photographer should live in a house where the windows frame the view in the same way the viewfinder in a camera frames potential photographic images. 

In winter, it's grey but in summer one can only imagine the beauty. He told me that his wife, an interior designer, has been coming to the island for 40 years. They also own a little "shack" on the water on another part of the island and when the sun goes down on their main house, they pack a picnic lunch and head over to the shack to enjoy the evening until sundown.

Originally from Scotland, with the true beginnings of his 40 year photography career originating in London, England, he has worked as an editorial and advertising photographer for all of Canada's major magazines and its top advertising agencies in Toronto.  At this point, he's choosing to do what he wants and brainstorming the type of creative projects that he really wants to do: portraits, architectural photography, still lifes of subjects that he, not a client, chooses.

What struck me most about him is his quiet manner. He's very easy to be around. Everything about him and his lifestyle seems very low-key and civilized with ego kept at bay. I like that.

I have decided that I will only agree to offer my writing services to people who I like as people, whose integrity is beyond reproach and who are professional in every aspect of that word. Some people might think you only get to do that when you're financially successful but that's the thing about getting older, you get to make up your own little rules in compliance with your own values and, of course, reap the consequences.  I think it was Tony Robbins who has said, The quality of your life is in direct proportion to the quality of your relationships..."

I think making the decision only to work with people who are professional in every sense of that word will eventually pay off even if it means I say "No" when I intuitively know that saying so is the right decision for moi!

He is going to be one of the photography presenters at this photography event taking place in Campbell River at Painter's Lodge in April. I'm debating whether I can find a way to justify going.

I notice there are 4 photographers from Salt Spring Island presenting: Amy Melious, Steven Friedman, Janet
Dwyer, Gillean Proctor.

Conversations with Oneself

Before I left for my mini trip to Saltspring, I scanned the bookshelf knowing there was no need to buy a book when I had so many in my own bookshelf that I'd yet to read.

The book I grabbed was Conversations with God. I had purchased this book at least 10 years ago and for some reason, I read the first little bit of it then but never actually completed it. Lately, for more than a month, it has been in the back of my mind as if nagging me to read it.

I think because I have been feeling in a similar place to where the author Neale Donald Walsch was when he first was used as the instrument to impart the conversation with God that he had according to his book. I find it very strange when things like that happen; when the right book comes to you at the right time.

I'm sure every wannabe author would hope that someone else would just come through them and voila, their best seller would be written almost as if they had been in a trance while the exercise was being conducted, only to wake up to great hoopla and find themselves being interviewed on Oprah's couch.

Conversations with God was originally published in 1995. I believe it was a bestseller. A friend of mine said that if she had only one book to take with her to a deserted island, Conversations with God would be the book.

I finished it on Saltspring reading the last bits by flashlight in the tent. It's the kind of book where you must be in a place where you're receptive to the insights within it. You'll know whether you are, I expect, by whether you're able to continue reading it.

If I remember nothing else about the book, I will remember the part that asks you to ask yourself the question, What would Love do?

The next time you're having difficulties in any relationship and let's not forget the most important relationship we'll ever have - the one we have with ourselves - try asking yourself: What would Love do?

What would love do? Maybe I'll try and remember to ask myself that a little more often.

Word of your Life

-Calla Lily in Stanley Park near Malcolm Bowl, June 23, 2008

A few days ago, knowing that it was nearing the time when David from Tennessee would be going to Ghost Ranch in New Mexico and I wouldn't be going to the ranch at all this year, I thought of some books that he had brought with him last year and left in the Ghost House where our class met every day.

I went back to my journal and read what I had written down. Jan Phillips. Malidoma Patrice Some. Oriah Mountain Dreamer. I had heard of Oriah Moutain Dreamer but I had no idea that she was a Canadian. So, I got two of her books - The Call and The Dance - out of the library.

Her first book is called The Invitation and it's based on a long poem that she wrote. I didn't know that she was the person who had written that poem which had elicited a strong response the first time I'd read it quite a while ago. I'd never forgotten its intent long after all the words were gone.

I find it interesting that I would have those thoughts at this point in time and now that I have read her books they are so in line with the kind of thoughts/feelings I have been having and that I am needing to hear. I found them very comforting.

In her book The Call she speaks about how if we were to get really quiet, to stop, to breathe and be still we would each know, instinctively, that there is a word that is ours. It's a word that captures what we have always struggled with, what we fear, what challenges us and what needs awareness and change.

Her word is rest. She is, by her own admission, a Type A overachiever who is always doing too much. It's hard for her to be still.

Your word, she says, might come to you quickly. Or, it might come when you get yourself into a still, quiet, meditative space. Don't force it. But, it will come and when it does you will know it. When you find your word, you will feel a rather humbling sense of recognition.

Living your word, embodying it in your life is never about doing. Your word is your key to stopping a repetition of that which is consistently a challenge for you.

What's your word?

Soul a la Mode

I was reading one of my favorite books that I haven't looked at or even thought about in about 12 years. A friend suggested I take a look at it again based on a conversation we were having. It's called Care of the Soul by Thomas Moore. It's fair to say Moore should know something about the soul because he lived as a monk in a Catholic religious order for 12 years.

In it there is a reference to the bardo state. It says that The Tibetan Book of the Dead describes this state as a time between incarnations; the period before the next birth. Bardo takes time, it can't be rushed. There's no point in premature birth.

That's where I feel I am at. It's why finding "a job" is not happening the way it should: with ease. There is no reason on the surface of my life why being employed should be a difficult thing for me at this point in time.

However, what is happening on the surface is insignificant in a way compared to what is happening deep down and that, in my own soul, I know is the real reason why this transition is becoming in the words of another friend "biblical" in nature; the stuff of Greek myths.

I have often been Saturn's child and Saturn according to Moore, locates identity deep in the soul rather than on the surface of personality. We know who we are because we have uncovered the stuff of which we are made, sifted out by melancholy or depressive thought and experiences then reduced to "essence".

This description makes so much sense to me at the moment. It's a time that stops in time. You are apart, separate, forced to look at what you have not looked at while your life has been light and happy, full of activity, purpose and the stuff of dailiness.

During those times things are going well and you no longer must think very deeply at all because there is no time, there is no need really and with ease all the right people and experiences are flowing towards you. It's good. It can't last long enough especially for one of Saturn's children. And, inevitably it never does even if years unfold and it seems like you'll never go to that place again. All your lessons have been conquered. Or so you were hoping.

This may not be true for everyone. Some might say, a consistency of spirit and a life of little reflection is part of their own dilemma even though, on the surface, there appears to be no dilemma at all.

Have they ever been forced to ask difficult questions; to move closer to their own essences in order to transition to that next place where there soul will not be completely abandoned, left to wait, feeling an opportunity has been lost even though, on the surface, where life gets measured by others, everything is going so well.

The Truth about Lies

You've probably had this experience. You're reading. And, an idea or two strikes you as so important at the time that you stop. You read it out loud. And again. And, then you just want to SHARE it.

You'll recall, because you're hangin on my every word of every Blog post, that I won a book at the Ridge Theatre sometime in the past month from the doctor who was speaking about why giving, or more specifically loving kindness, is good for our health.

Here it is. From Why Good Things Happen to Good People. Here's my stop and read out loud statements...

Three lies:
1. The lie that we are what we have
2. The lie that we are what we do for a living
3. The lie that we are what other people say about us

Now, I believe that I was never that tied to lie No. 1. That's just a no brainer. And, I've never been able to afford an Emerald Green Jag, a private island or a pool boy. I'm so far from that reality, I don't even know what I should be wishing for. What it's called. Who makes it. The name on the label. My monetary reality makes not buying into Lie No. 1 pretty easy. George Carlin set that one straight a long time ago.Just stuff, Baby! Nice stuff in some instances, really beautiful stuff, but still, the monkey on your back, the Albatross around your neck, the Garage Sale covered in dust, this guy is trying to get the damned thing for free and I'm only asking $5 stuff.

My big problem lie was definitely No. 2. Especially when I was younger. It may have been because I had such lousy jobs.

But don't be fooled. It works both ways. Don't lie to yourself because you're the President. Don't lie to yourself, underestimating yourself, because you're the janitor. Who are you really if you know what I mean. As a person? How do you treat other people? What does your inner self bring to the world. It's got nothing to do with how much you're being paid and what your job title is. At some point, you won't be attached to any title. Then what? Just you and the mirror staring back.

This past 10 months, which I like to think of as "the pause" between the first and second half of my life, has been fantastic at allowing me the luxury of time to take a more objective look at those things that we sometimes just accept but may no longer be valid for us.

The past 10 months has definitely been about getting closer to the truth.

What are you hanging on to that just has no place, anymore, in the present? What's the hardest thing to let go of? What does it say about you? Does it really say what your ego is saying it says. Check it out!

Maybe you can come up with a few more - lies we tell ourselves. Feel free to add them as comments so we can think about those as well.