JUNE 2024
LIFE | LOVE | LOSS
“June Reminders
Make time for fun, rest, and love.
Authenticity makes you shine!
You are worthy of love and attention.
Always be kinder than you need to.
You always have a choice.
Growth is not always visible.”
- OurMindfulLife.com
GROWTH
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
- Victor E. Frankl
How do you feel like you have grown inside of loss in your life? What has loss made you more of?
Take a minute here to be with this question.
Are you more open minded? More accepting? More willing to see things from different viewpoints? Is your capacity for love greater? Are you more present and grateful for each moment? Are you angrier? More bitter? More closed off not wanting to be close to something or someone new that too could be lost. Are you more envious of the ease in others’ lives when yours feels full of struggle and strife? Are you more emotional, quick to tears? Are you sadder in general than you used to be?
Love changes us, makes us more of things we can easily say are good things. Love opens pathways in our hearts and minds no matter the type of love we are feeling. Romantic love evokes deep passionate feelings. Loving plants and animals can stir strong and powerful connections. Loving a child is a deep and binding love. Love of friends and other family can make us want to be more loyal, kind, and true.
How come it often feels like losing things and people in our lives makes us more of the not so good things?
Is it because love is lost and, in that loss, we become lost too?
How then can we grow inside this loss? I think as with all things that grow it comes with time, attention, patience, and care. We need to tend to the things in our minds and hearts that need tending. Weed out the things that are not serving us well. Plant new thoughts and nourish emotions and beliefs that strengthen healthy connections in our lives. Like tender seeds that need sunlight, water, winds to strength new stalks we too need sunlight, hydration of love from the good that remains in our lives while we grow inside of loss.
LOVE LOST
“Don’t forget:
Somewhere between hello and goodbye, there was love,
So much love.”
- faraway
Many kinds of losses leave a void where love was. It’s in this void where we can feel lost, adrift, sometimes unheard or unvalidated in our pain. So, what do we do when we have love that can no longer be spent or expressed for the person that is gone?
I don’t think there is one answer. I don’t think my thoughts, opinions or feelings are the right ones. I will share them here and if any of them resonate for you, take them, try them on like you would a new shirt at a store. If they fit, wear them, use them in your life! If they don’t. No harm, no foul, leave them here and know they were shared from love through great loss.
I spent most of the day yesterday crying. Allowing the deep feelings of loss to run through and over me. My sweet son Joey who died a month shy of his sixteenth birthday had a cute girl he loved. I will call her Olive for this sharing! It’s a nickname we gave her! In all the splendor of his young life and their short time together their feelings were real, deep, and true. Joey also knew a secret about Olive. She was suffering from depression and some significant not feeling good enough feelings that lead her to cutting herself. He was being as supportive as an untrained ‘boyfriend’ could be at fifteen years old. On the night Joey died by suicide one of the last things he did before leaving this earth was to send an email to her mom telling her she needed help. That she was struggling, suicidal herself. I know this act saved her. She got help, she was able to turn things around and yesterday she married a beautiful tall dark-haired boy whose first name starts with a letter ‘J’.
All day I cried thinking it could have been my boy. He could have been here; he could have been standing by her side. I know that isn’t a given, but maybe, just maybe!
The deeper set of tears were in appreciation for his thoughtfulness in his own pain to try to save her from hers. Perhaps she got to start her happily ever after yesterday because of the message he sent that life altering night.
Life is precious, time is a gift. Helping others whenever we can because we can is something that matters to me, it mattered to Joey even in his final moments. I love the saying, “Give more than you take.” I invite you to find ways this month to give a little more of you or something in honor of who you have lost. Find a way through love to share more of yourself with the world. One kind act, heartfelt conversation, honest connection at a time can make all the difference for good.
All my best,
Genna
RESOURCES
988 – National Mental Health Hotline
National Alliance on Mental Illness – NAMI www.mani.org/Home
https://www.samhsa.gov/find-help/988
Crisis Hotlines: Common Hotline Phone Numbers | Eluna Network
Mental Health App’s
Talkspace – Best Overall Therapy App
Calm – Best Mindfulness App
My3 – Three People / Three Distractions / Safety Plan App
Chopra App – Great mindfulness and free meditations
Pride Counseling – Best Queer Mental Health App
Youper – Best Self-Guided Therapy App
Headspace – Best Anxiety App
The Next Adventure 