Category Archives: Meditations

Monday Meditation: Open Your Focus to Compassion

When we focus on ourselves while suffering, when we wallow in our despair, it is easy for us to shut out other people’s experiences and other events in the world. While we need to take care of ourselves to heal from, and process, our suffering, we can become so taken with ourselves that it beginsContinue reading “Monday Meditation: Open Your Focus to Compassion”

Monday Mediation: Set Goals

The last thing that may come to mind when thinking of grief is the prospect of setting goals for yourself. Rather, grief seems to be a time when there are no goals to be found. Grief, in fact, is a chance to rethink what your goals have been and to develop new ones. Grief mayContinue reading “Monday Mediation: Set Goals”

Monday Meditation: Interconnection

Loss is a point where we realize that, despite our penchant for independence, we are massively interconnected. Life becomes drastically different when one person is missing from it. Grief is the ripping open of interconnectedness, and it is the gradual healing of that wound. We live on a delicate spider web, through which we touchContinue reading “Monday Meditation: Interconnection”

Monday Meditation: The Promise (Tracy Chapman)

I listened to “The Promise” the other day while playing with my daughter. I hadn’t heard it in years. Amidst pandemic uncertainties, my first Mother’s Day as a motherless mother, and missing my mom, the lyrics touched me deeply. The first Mother’s Day without my mother was difficult. The ones since then have largely passedContinue reading “Monday Meditation: The Promise (Tracy Chapman)”

Monday Meditation: Waiting with Patience

 Self-isolation and social distancing require a great deal of patience. We have to wait out the run of a highly communicable virus. We have to wait out a difficult economic situation. We have to wait out loneliness. If we’re grieving, we have to wait out the chance to grieve communally and receive comfort for ourContinue reading “Monday Meditation: Waiting with Patience”

Monday Meditation: Living in Fishbowls

In a state of social distancing, we are living in a type of fishbowl, and sometimes a fishbowl within a fishbowl. We can’t do anything for our loved ones who are languishing from COVID-19. We can’t do anything for our family or friends who are watching their COVID-positive loved ones and waiting, from more thanContinue reading “Monday Meditation: Living in Fishbowls”

Monday Meditation: From Suffering to Inspiration

This is a horrible and scary time. The majority of our society has never dealt with something like this before. Some lived through the Great Depression, where they saw more than toilet paper depleted from store shelves. Others lived through the turmoil of WWII, when homes were destroyed and food and goods were rationed. AContinue reading “Monday Meditation: From Suffering to Inspiration”

Monday Meditation: Resilience Goes Far

Right now our resilience, our ability to recover from difficulties and to maintain mental toughness, is being tested by a pandemic. Every day we have to commit to renewing that resilience for another 24-hour period without certainty of when the current stressors will end.  Though it might feel impossible at times, we can do it.Continue reading “Monday Meditation: Resilience Goes Far”