Do not tell secrets to those whose faith and silence you have not already tested.
— Elizabeth I
If we’re lucky, aging is a learning process. We all age, but we don’t all learn. Sometimes our ability to learn is determined by our willingness to see things in a new light.
All of us eventually face the decline and death of our parents. My mother died of Alzheimer’s in 2005. As you are probably aware if you are a frequent reader of this blog, my father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in December of last year. In addition to Alzheimer’s, Dad has also been diagnosed with bipolar disease. The health care professionals involved in his care reached this diagnosis partially based on Continue reading » The Consequences of Keeping Secrets
Send us some metaphors for your life, your trials and tribulations, your joys and your passions.
E-mail me at Ellie@BouncebackCafe.com or leave a comment at the end of this post. We love hearing from you!
In my last post I shared a reader’s description of grief over significant personal losses:
Think of my grief as a wave and I’m on a surfboard. I must watch that I don’t lose my balance and become engulfed by the water. Water has power and can drown me. But I don’t want to drown, so I will stay on top of the wave of grief and let it carry me to the shore where I will be safe and feel stable. This wave will crash and I will have survived. I will be stronger for having made it to shore unharmed. But I will never forget the ride.
Besides touching my heart, our reader demonstrated how potent Metaphor can be as a tool for understanding and working through our personal challenges. Jose Ortega y Gasset, a prolific Spanish philosopher says this about metaphor: “[It] is perhaps one of man’s most fruitful potentialities. Its [power] verges on magic… a tool for creation which God forgot inside one of his creatures when he made him.”
Continue reading » You Too, Can Make Metaphor Magic
We love hearing from you – keep in touch! E-mail me at Ellie@BouncebackCafe.com Or leave a comment at the end of this post.
Often we experience personal losses (big or small) as if they were physical blows to our psyches, they wobble our equilibrium and give us pause – and enduring this period of grieving is a very personal and unsettling experience. How we bounce back is also a very personal thing. Here’s a glimpse into one person’s encounter with grief and relief.
After reading my post In a Pickle a few weeks ago, one of our readers (who prefers to remain anonymous) wrote me an eloquent email describing their own A-B-C-D-E. S/he wrote (bolding by Ellie):
I just wanted you to know that your blog is helping someone else through some grief. While my grief is different than yours, I feel we share some similar pain in the process of healing. Your ABCs inspired me to write my own. It really helped me to focus on moving on, but at the same time [I could] allow the grief to be there. Grief is useful and temporary, but I need help reminding myself on that aspect.
But what blew me away was the “D” – Distract and Dispute passage:
Continue reading » Riding the Wave of Grief
I was glad to see that Ellie continued her thoughts about Seligman and his A-B-C-D-E methodology for moving towards optimism and away from despair. You may have read that I told her that it was a painful piece to read… and I still believe that the grief that she expressed was both searing and, by the time she finished the piece, hopeful.
As I was reading about her loss of her husband, it reminded me of a friend I have who has been divorced for many years. She made the choice to stay in her pain. For her, the pain of the divorce and the circumstances leading up to it are still fresh even after eight years. I have another friend who refused to vote for Bill Clinton because her own husband had been unfaithful and so had Bill.
Continue reading » Getting Unstuck
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