thank you. i love you. i'm sorry. please forgive me.
gratitude, delight and a hawaiian healing technique and practice
I am sure we have all heard how developing a gratitude practice can help in healing. I have read all the science and fill in a lovely pink leather faced notebook that was gifted from a friend, to host a daily diatribe. Most evenings, I jot in it just before bed.
In fresh grief, or grief of any incarnation, I find this a difficult task to endure or suggest to my clients. It feels like heavy lifting. Like a platitude. Often it feels like “bright-siding” their hardship or hard time. I have been known instead, to lean into a “list of delights”. Perhaps a round-a-bout way to the same end, only reframed or repackaged? I like to think of delight, as a crafty and creative second cousin to gratitude. The word delight, is derived from the latin “to charm” and later “light”. Today it is defined as extreme pleasure and satisfaction. When we seek delight, in this kind of exercise, we become in and of the world and in turn can notice more of the same.
This prompt was developed after reading Ross Gay’s Book of Delights. The US poet laureate leaned into an essay a day for 100 days where he reflected on delights. If joy and gratitude had a baby, I think it may have been delight. I have offered a reading from the book and asked my sweet circle to come up with a list of delights. I watch the heads go down and the lists made and shared. Nobody seems to have trouble with this one. Delights range from “I brushed my teeth”, to “a smile from a stranger”. Not such heavy lifting, right?
One of the essays I love most, is Gay’s reflection of two people trying to share the job of carrying a heavy bag, by each taking a handle. While this almost never works out just right, (wobbling ensues and one person is taller and perhaps stronger — you get it.) but it is always a delight in the offering itself. Just his gaze from afar brought his heart delight. It is one of my favorites from the book. There is delight in just sitting down for a moment and taking in the slow motion everydayness of the world walking by. Tails wag. Folks wave. Outfits glisten. Kids look up to notice the clouds and skyscrapers. Anna Quindlan wrote an essay ages ago where she talks about our obsession with business and being overbooked. She poses her query. What if we were not given time to just sit on the curb and imagine? To me, this is the very secret of meditation, creativity and wonder. It stirs us. Quiets us. Informs us. Confronts us. Introduces us.
The Hawaiian healing technique and practice of Ho'oponopono is another I use to slow and re-member. The practice recognizes self responsibility and gratitude even in the hardest times— a form of reconciliation and forgiveness. As we practice healing from within, we can then help transform the situation outside of us. The repetition of the phrases for a period of time, is meditative to me.
Thank you.
I love you.
I’m sorry.
Please forgive me.
Here is a beautiful song to accompany the practice. Let me know what you think
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Two upcoming grief support groups and a writing circle, WRITE TO HEAL, are coming in the new year. Registration is open. Feel free to book a free intake session to see if it is a good fit for you. Nobody should grieve alone.
thank you.