Hi there everyone,
I am enjoying my post chemo days ..... and getting back to feeling better each day .
It has been a wonderful but sometimes tricky transition because once you finish chemo whilst the body feels much better the brain can start playing tricks in terms of anxiety and worry......will it come back , will I be OK, how much time do I have, what about my kids ????etc etc .....I am sure you can imagine the general theme.
So I have been off to a 3 day meditation retreat and had a wonderful session with a doctor that specialises in this kind of thing. Basically the advise is ... face your emotions such as fear, grief , anger and just acknowledge its OK to feel that way .... sit with it through meditation and allow myself to feel these emotions without being critical or trying to control them. So far this advise has been fantastic and working well.
The other important advise which I think is very true, although once again not always easy to adopt, is that the timing of all our deaths are unknown .... No one really knows how long they will live because it is out of our control.
So for a confirmed control freak like myself it is actually liberating to leave that to the Lord/ Higher Being/ Unconditional Love/ Nature/ you can fill in the blanks .... and accept that there are many many people who shouldn't be alive today who are and vice versa many people who should have lived who are gone ... What doyou think???I'd be interested in your thoughts.
I am enjoying spending time with the kids and Greg is enjoying my improved cooking .......given that I have all day to think of something to cook. No more excuses. I even ironed a couple of his shirts the other day for the fist time in about 25 years!!! Oh dear I have turned into the little house wife after all this time!! To tell you the truth I love it ....
We are all off on our wonderful Queensland holiday in about 2 weeks and Danny is all ready counting down the "school days" left till we go.
Its pretty exciting and I can't wait.
SO I am in good spirits and enjoying life .........especially walking my little doggies through the parkland's and gradually catching up with friends.
Love to you all
Pauline
4 comments:
Hi Pauline
Great news to know you have the chemo behind you and are feeling more normal with the ordinary household activities.!!!
For some reason I have had trouble getting a message to you. I have written a couple of times and got depressed and frustrated when the message would not go through for whatever reason, especially when it was the 2nd or 3rd time I had tried...the message getting briefer each time.... Know you have been in my thoughts and prayers throughout this time. Last week I even found the Darebin Parklands for the first time and of course kept my eyes peeled for you!!!
Glad the meditation retreat was so helpful. You will not be surprised that I thoroughly agree with the advice you were given about staying in the present. It is so easy to make judgements about ourselves and how we ought be feeling etc. For me it is about allowing and honouring whatever feelings are there. When you can give them their own life they seem to be content!!! The problem is that some feelings are more familiar and easier to stay with than others.
The excitement about the holiday is obviously buiding up...have a wonderful time. Savour every morsel of your new found life.
Much love and continued prayer
Julie
Your shrink is wise - and that's what a Buddhist would tell you : life is brief, fragile, a mere effervescence - we never know when it's out turn to die.
The emotions that you are going through will be same for all of us, to a lesser or greater degree - sooner or later.
Vipassana meditation practise would urge you to feel and watch the emotions but not identify with them or resist them. By observing negative emotions with awareness you can watch their energy dissolve, dissipate.
I had to meditate for ten years to overcome the grief I felt being pipped at the post for the 1978 Essendon High School English Literature prize to some upstart ...what was her name again? You can imagine my trauma.
Love
John
Hi Pauline
Yes my brother is very funny, and right too.I would just add that I think you would benefit from the tantric type of meditation visualization on purification, and also there is one on the 'medicine buddha' - they are not that weird, and they are non-intellectual and non-discursive, so they can be really uplifting. I recommend a book by Lama Surya Das, a Westerner, maybe a New Zealander in fact. its called "letting go of the person you used to be" 2003, Bantum books. I can lend it to you no problems, but its a cheap paperback. Its got specific instructions on the Medicine buddha meditation. Generally its a terrific and approachable book on Tibet style meditation and healing psychic and physical).
The other approach is to remember the compassion side of meditation, By meditating on the fact that EVERYONE in this world will be dead in a hundred years (and many before then, at random times), and all the many types of suffering experienced presently by sentient creatures, one loses one's own personalised sufferring a little. That might sound a little callous and unfeeling in your situation, but oddly it helps to realise this. None of us really should ask 'why me', but rather 'why not me'. Having said that, of course your reaction is absolutely natural, and it would be the same for me and everyone else.
Looking at samsara, the conditioned impermanent world, and seeing its quite severe limitations, is the beginning of a spiritual journey, that contains secret joys beyond what we can currently imagine. Basically the universe is a huge thing, and our little selves are infinitesimally small in the way we currently understand them. That is the Buddhist idea.
As for all the things you might be missing out on - the Buddha said in one of his teachings that normal human pleasure was like a leaper scratching at his sores - it felt momentarily good and satisfying to relieve the itch! Hey, I'm not saying become a nun. Its just a useful, and truthful perspective to keep grounded about difficulties, and pleasure. You have many that love you and hope dearly that you get some good health soon Pauline - that would be wonderful. Good health for Pauline is what we all want. let it be so!
I'd be happy to give you some meditation instructions if the visualization thing appeals. if it doe'snt, thats not a problem. Its horses for courses.
PS. Enjoy your holidays too! Sorry about the Preaching!
XX Love Hugh
Just to add to the above, I did'nt mean to be too negative. Your experiences thus far may enable you to live in the present moment in a deeper and richer way - experiencing 'the little things in life' that, basically, lets admit it, we allow to pass as if in coma in our everyday lives. So life can be good, but in a different way to our normal fantasy-type thinking. This is what is meant by 'waking up' in the spiritual traditions. So health and longevity is a good thing, a very good thing, to wish for if you plan to spend it in a meaningful fashion.
xxx Hugh
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