Tag: Soul journey

Reflections, Part 8

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Soul Peace and Journeys, The Suicide and its Aftermath

The New Frontier

As I write this, I’m still doing a countdown to the anniversary of the suicide.

When I decided to do this series of posts, I had not thought them out, and I allowed my fingers to weave the tale of the last decade. I have no regrets in doing this, as the things that got said were what needed to be conveyed.

It is said that grief rearranges the address book. I’ve found this to be true. After Jon’s suicide, some of his friends struggled with what had happened, and people I knew distanced themselves for whatever reason. Most people, instead of saying something, failed to say anything. This was true of family as well. While they did help with the burial cost, there were no flowers—nothing that would have been an outward sign of being thought of. The unexpected surprise was the friend who sent money to help. We’d never met—that would happen in 2019 when I made a trip to the central US. “B,” you will always be in my heart.

The events of those first few days melt together, and I’m thankful for the therapy that I have done. My iceberg—you know, the one I’ve crushed on—kept me safe and allowed me to get to where I am today. She is now resting away.

That Monday I sat at my dining table and asked myself how I, as a disabled woman, would be able to navigate what was ahead. I found out later from someone who is now on the periphery of my life that I had been expected to fold up, board a flight, and move back to the US. I’m an eight on the Enneagram, and eights don’t run from stuff—even if it takes us decades to come out. We must ultimately face it: all of it.

Over the past ten years, I believe I’ve done a really good job of dealing with stuff.

While doing the hard work of recovering from the loss of Jon, I realized that yes, I still miss him at times, and I don’t miss him. As I read through old posts, the things I learned in that real time resurface like old friends reminding me that they still are present in my life. I honor my grief wisdom. I reflect on the Serenity Prayer and the wisdom it offers to all of us. There are things we can change, and things that we need to let be. We can’t change our feelings: we can do the work of acceptance, and that in turn might alter some of the feelings.

I think back to the night of the suicide, and how my friends took me in that night. They offered hospitality in an unexpected manner, and it came with a prayer that turned out to be helpful—well, what I remember of it.

I look at more posts and come across the one about fluffy towels, and I remember the joy. I still feel joy using them. The freedom of not having to deal with the crazy part of things with Jon is a good thing. There are no longer feelings of guilt or compassion fatigue. It is true that the quality of the tears changes in the process, and the first two years of crying jags were awful. And then, the tears changed. I’m a believer in this process. If a person allows the process to unfold naturally, the body and mind will make space for a gentle change. One day you wake up, and you notice that things are different. It’s kind of mind-blowingly wonderful. I can’t tell you exactly when it happened, just that it did, and it was sometime late in my second or early third year.

One huge happening in all of this is that I lost a village and discovered a new one. This village is filled with those that face life courageously and call me out when I need to be called out! They are friends who speak a new and better language than the one I once spoke so well.

I’ve often returned to the metaphor of crossing Styx. It wasn’t something that I read about in a book. Styx is that place we go in grief and loss to do some of the deepest work we must do to discover the new life.

The discovery I’m making on this new soul journey is that I will always revisit things I’ve learned in new ways. I used to joke with Jon about him having the “aha” moment after I’d said it ten times. The truth is that we often need to hear it many different ways until one of those ways sinks in and we sit up and take notice. The human mind is both amazing and goofy. If we can allow our minds to teach us, they will do just that. Once again, we’ll think we’re having a watershed moment when it is just our brains noticing things in a new way.

I started this blog years ago, and the title for the blog came about because of my husband’s psychiatrist. During a session he stopped Jon from talking and listened as I expressed some feelings that needed to be put out there. At the end of the session, I thanked him, and his response was: “You needed to be heard.” I knew I had the title for this blog.

The grieving need to be heard until they don’t need to be heard. We talk about our loss until we come to a point in time when the storms calm, the winds stop raging in our minds, and we can once again stand tall and breathe in the fresh air of life on the new shore and take our first secure steps forward.

Reflections, Part 6

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Discharging Trauma, Soul Peace and Journeys, The Suicide and its Aftermath

Read Part 5 here.

The Dissection

Giving that outfit I wore on the day of Jon’s death a send-off was hard, and it opened the door to other life changes. Like the outfit, I gave other changes time and sat with each one over a period of time. The first major life change was my exit from the Mormon Church. It had been brewing for years, and when I finally did leave, I left peacefully. No regrets or looking back: only looking forward now.

The spiritual direction program I became involved in was about my soul journey and being led to a new place in my life. That happened four years after I became a widow and took a full two years to complete. It opened up a new way of framing spirituality in my life. It taught me that “fixing” a perceived wrong in someone is not the only path to healing. Therapists fix; spiritual directors don’t, and whatever needs healing happens. Sometimes the healing comes from within, and spiritual direction facilitates changes in its own powerful way. Prior to 2016, I had not been aware of what power “direction” could hold. I had to be out from my former church for that to happen.

Covid-19 taught me about staying safe and challenged me to accept my own vulnerability. While we as a world sat isolated in our homes, we each came to grips in our own way that this thing could kill us. When I was told by a doctor to not risk going out, I listened, and that choice was a no-brainer for me. It also made me realize that this was one thing I was glad that Jon wasn’t around for. He’d have been unreasonably scared. Part of his bipolar pathology revolved around outside threats. We were all scared of something we couldn’t see, and watching friends and family get sick and die was hard. Knowing it could kill us was worse in many ways. And so, in 2023, when the doctors told me to not travel anywhere where I couldn’t get to a hospital fast, I listened, and I cancelled a planned trip. Four years into the process (2020), I listened because I was learning to make choices that kept me safe. This would serve me well when, in 2023, I listened to a friend, and then to myself. It saved my life—twice.

Walking this new path enabled me to admit to myself that it was time to do the personal therapy I needed to take on. I needed to stop stuffing it in and jettisoning the entire trauma. My captive iceberg needed to be freed.

Looking back on all of it now, I see the chain of events that led up to where I am now.

The freedom of exploring my life after I left Mormondom also allowed me to look at who I am as a woman. As women in the Mormon Church, we have a narrow field of options: sister, daughter, wife, and mother. Being raised in the 1960s and 1970s, the options in adult life were wife and mother.

I knew early on that marriage was not in the plans for me. I understood that I needed to follow a professional path. The problem in the Mormon Church is that you are taught from an early age to trust fifteen old white men. You are at their mercy, and if they are super conservative in their thinking, your options get quelled. In the 1960s and 1970s, women started finding jobs out of the home, and the war within raged as it did with me in the 2000s when I was married. With a prophet in the 1970s telling women to stay home, and a prophet in the 1980s telling women to leave jobs and to go back into the home, women were pulled and torn between what was best for them on a personal level and what church leadership was saying they should do.

I made the choice while in the Mormon Church to pursue my professional goals, and to work as a therapist. This was a personal choice, and one that only I could make. Like other women of my generation, I made the choice that would enable me to pursue the goal I’d set at sixteen: becoming a therapist.

When I married in 1998, the war waged on in my mind. Wife vs. wanting and needing to do what I loved doing: working in my profession. The good Mormon wife stayed home. We didn’t have children, and we’d never have children. I was torn between guilt and what I knew my personal truth to be. Whether it was volunteer work in the early 2000s, or paid work later on, I chose to work.

Once I left the Mormon Church, it all opened up! I didn’t have to play a role. I could enter into life not having to ask if I should walk a path that would allow me to be seen as Gail the woman, and not the wife, the woman who was not a mother, the woman who loves her profession, the woman who is even free to explore her sexuality—no matter who she is. This was just as liberating as the day in September of 2016 when I walked into the hair salon and announced that I wanted to go grey. Oh my, the women celebrated my newfound freedom from the bottle. That journey took six months and has been something I’ve enjoyed. Yes, Jon, I will never bottle my hair again.

And so, like the grey hair, I settled in to enjoying the real Gail.

I stand in my petiteness, and I claim myself as I am. I understand that who I am is mine alone to claim. I honor the process of releasing the trauma of my life—all of it had to go. I sit here and recall the mail I got right before the therapy session. My therapist sent it to me. It was the story of an iceberg. I crushed on the iceberg. “She” gave me courage. With her in my thoughts and at my side, I tore into the trauma, and I set it free. I owe my happy iceberg a huge thank you. I owe myself a thank you. Where will this journey head to next?

Reflections, Part 2

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in The Suicide and its Aftermath

Read Part 1 here.

The Healing Journey

In July of 2023, I got sick. I wound up in the emergency room of the local hospital, and my kidneys were shutting down. They were at twenty percent function. I was disoriented, scared, and really not understanding how bad it was. At one point in the process leading up to my hospitalization, I became so confused that I couldn’t figure out how to get out of the bed. I couldn’t even think to turn the light on. That is sick, and that is scary. I found out after things settled that this is common for people facing this type of shutdown. Back to the narrative. A friend finally convinced me to call the doctor, who came and had me admitted, and by then it wasn’t good at all.

I was in the hospital for a week, and then a taxi took me home. I was disoriented coming out of the place because the hospital I was in was new, and I hadn’t seen it before. With low vision, this is a real issue.

I walked into my house, sat down my bag, walked to the sofa, and let out the tears. I sobbed, and then listened as my body and mind told me it was time to heal. It was time to do the work that led to healing all of it. All the trauma I’d stuffed. I had some therapy of my own to do, and it was time to find the therapist who would travel with me as I called the people to the encampment of the battleground. Funny how it works. It took another ten months to get to May of 2024, and to begin the intense work of cleaning out my mind and moving forward.

The healing process is an interesting thing. I’ve seen people who come to me and aren’t ready to do the work, and so they run away rather than to what can help. Others believe that grief and loss can be worked through in six easy sessions, and that there is a magic formula that the therapist can dispense. The fact is that this is a soul journey. It is a journey of the mind, the heart, and the spirit, if you will. It leads us to someplace else, and that someplace is the place of wonder and, ultimately, healing, such as it is.

On August 29, 2016, I sat at my dining table and looked at the lights that had been installed so that I would be able to see in my home. I wondered just how I, a woman with low vision, would be able to survive in a country where my limited Dutch would only get me so far. The only thing I knew at that time was that I couldn’t and shouldn’t make any major life decisions for a year. That is something my father had told me, and it was wise counsel.

And so, the journey of healing and discovery began that day, and in many ways it will never end. We may work through our grief and loss: we’re changed by it all.

The social system here set me up with someone to clean the house. At first, my then church came with meals until I realized I needed to cook for myself. If I needed to not work because I was compromised, I needed to do something for myself. I needed to let the process of grieving take place.

On Friday the thirteenth of January 2017, my mother died of a heart attack. We’d giggled, grown together, and experienced the death of my younger sister Joyce together. My mother was also an eight on the Enneagram. We understood this shared experience in life, and she taught me things despite not knowing about her beloved number. She just did life well in many ways. Because of where I was in the process of grieving Jon, I didn’t see and get fully the fact that my siblings telling me not to fly over for the memorial service was really bad advice. I’ve regretted that, and would do that one differently if I could.

By June of 2017, I felt ready to plan a trip to the US to see family and a friend. What I didn’t know then was that the trip would change the course of my life.

In late July of 2017, I flew to Salt Lake City to see some friends of Jon’s and attend a conference called Sunstone. At the conference I ran into people who were not Mormon, and it flipped a switch. I felt, and knew, that I had to check this other church out.

I then went to Oregon to visit another friend, and travelled on to California to see my family and visit the beach.

Staying at my brother’s place first and then moving on to my sister’s place was interesting. At the time I didn’t know it would be the last time I’d see both of them alive.

We made some good memories, and my sister and sister-in-law insisted I take my mother’s green quilt home. Now, they know of my love affair with blue. That green quilt would cause me to do a total room makeover. I painted the room blue, purchased a new bed that was blue and that the quilt would fit on, and realized that I had the piece of my mother that loved green. It has turned out to be one of the things I enjoy seeing, and it serves as a link to her and the love she had for me.

That trip also created a memory of my sis that I could never have done without her help. She got me on the flight with five boxes for less than the price of five extra boxes. I stood there at the airline counter, shut my mouth, and watched in amazement as she talked to the guy. I know when to shut my mouth. So, that quilt and other things came with me to be with me here in my new life.

The trip to the US changed my ability to sleep. In that first year, everything sleepwise changed. I didn’t sleep at normal hours, and family would question me as I called in the wee hours of my Netherlands morning. “Gail, what are you doing?” Well, when I can’t sleep, I call you.

Planning for the anniversary of his death had taught me that if I thought about it in advance, I could maybe, just maybe, control the tears and what would happen. It worked well for year one and failed for year two. What I really learned was that with the body, what we’re grieving will push its way to the surface and force itself on us in ugly ways. The life lesson: let go and don’t try to control what needs to happen. Healthy grief lets grief drive the process so it can heal. Even if grief must be put off because of life that must be done, it will surface, and when it does, embrace it!

What I’ve learned about the first two years of loss are that the tears change in quality and quantity. Looking back eight years, I can see all of the journey better now. How different it was and now is. In letting it all go, I freed myself to trust the grief process in ways that opened my heart and mind to healing, and because of that, I was carried to where I am now. July of 2023 had to happen so that I could write this in July of 2026. I see that now, and that is one of the huge things this journey has gifted me with. Wow, what an amazing place I’ve gotten to!

The Gift of the Season (Revisit)

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Soul Peace and Journeys

This post was originally published on December 19, 2023.

2023, and I’m thinking about the lyrics to “Proud Mary,” and how times have changed. What I’m thinking about is the holidays, of giving, receiving, and how those who have little often give of what they have, and that the giving comes from the heart. It is a different way of giving than that of those of us who have shelter, food, and safety.

I have a cousin who lived in an abusive home. Her daughter left as a teen and lived on the streets. For her, it was a choice to leave and not have a father sexually assaulting her. I heard about this during my grad-school years and wondered why she would risk living on the streets rather than trying to become an emancipated minor. People on the streets were forming “families” of sorts and attempting to help each other survive. It seemed harsh to me. It still seems harsh as I think of it now. The realities of an economy that doesn’t work for everyone, the state of the world, and the attitudes of many people are all subjects for another post.

This week, as the Christian day of Christmas comes closer, I am focused in thought about what many Christians believe, and what many world religions do. They give. I must admit that I do have a healthy dose of holy envy at times. My client base is diverse, and I’m in a position to learn from so many good people who find their way to me. 

This is about each of us doing it well, and going into our hearts and souls. It is about finding the inner spark that drives us to find out how, and why, we’re motivated to share and to give to others. 

Lately, I’ve become aware of how many people fail to give because they believe that the only giving that matters is related to monetary giving. True giving comes from what we have within ourselves.

The catch for some people is that they feel empty inside. If I am nothing to myself, how can I give something to others? Some who have little give abundantly in love, nurturing of others, and sharing of their meager meals. When all you have is a cardboard roof over your head, and you live in a third-world nation, you may find motivation in different ways. Personally, I think consumerism is killing the human soul of those who live in Western nations.

At this time of year, in the cold of day and the longer nights, what is needed is the spirit of hope. How do we give hope when these days hope seems to be at a minimum?

I’m not a “Pollyanna” in any way. What I’m seeing in others, and within myself, is a realism that is needed to focus on the things that can enable the soul to free itself, and to learn to have more love: love for ourselves, love for each other, and love for our burdened planet. 

My work with the Enneagram has taught me so much about becoming a better self. This past year has taken me to some deep soul work, and in doing the work, I’ve experienced highs and lows. The insight therapy that I do with my clients and the spiritual direction that my directees choose to engage in move the soul to places of compassion for the self, and into areas where giving to others becomes more of a natural choice. When we fill our souls with healthier ways of thinking, living it brings peace and an inner joy to ourselves.

I know what some of you are thinking. Before you shut this down or go off on a rant about how this author is clueless and is spouting crap, please, hear me out! 

I’ve been there, I’ve done the angry-at-the-author thing, and I’ve learned that there are realistic avenues to making peace with the self.

I’m not promoting religion or even God. What I’m promoting here is deep inner work that moves each of us to challenge, and to question, who we each are, and why we feel the way we do about ourselves deep down where the soup is made. This is when we go into the places that force us to rethink, restructure, and renew. These are the thin or liminal places. These are the places where people with depression, anxiety disorders, ADHD, and so many other mental issues dwell. These are the deep places of dark questions. If we find a good therapist, spiritual director, or other support, we can work through all of it and come out on a new shore. It is as I described in Styx. Pollyanna types don’t venture into these dark places. Maybe that is why I’m turned off by the book and film. I wanted to slap her silly. Excessive positivity is damaging to the psyche.

Soul work, and exploring our shadow side, is a gamble that pays off in large dividends. I suppose I will continue to go deeper as I do the self-work that contributes to moving forward.

When I think about creating peace within the self, and peace in the world which enables us to give to each other, I realize that it is a complex issue. I understand that what matters most is that we take the first step, uncap our heads, and do a deep inner dive to discover the good, the bad, and the ugly truth about ourselves so that we can present a better self to ourselves and to those around us.

The gift of the season is deep inner work.

Leaving the Bench for the Second Time

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Soul Peace and Journeys, The Suicide and its Aftermath

The past few weeks have given me opportunities to reach back and reflect on my own process of grief and arriving at a new waypoint. What happened? The more I live, read, and experience, the more I understand the journey I’m on with building a new life.

I’ve reflected on the many people who post early on in support groups. Their partner is newly deceased and they are asking after one or two weeks, “When will the tears end?” I understand why they’re asking this. This type of pain hurts physically. The people who respond, who have had more time in the grief cycle, usually tell the newbies that things will change, and to give it time, which is not what anyone wants to hear when the physical and emotional pain are so intense. 

Here’s my question for people who jump into these groups so soon: Why are you here so soon? That is the first question I ask as I read. I answer it with a list of reasons they might have: times have changed, and society is no longer connected like it used to be. People have lost communities of support.

I’ll say this until I don’t need to say it any more: the Western world has become a place of instant everything. In the West, we’re losing the skill of self-soothing. The need to sit in silence has never been so needed, and yet the volume levels are turned up so that we fail to hear what our bodies, hearts, and heads are telling us to do: sit in quietness and be still. We’ve also lost community. Community enables us to soothe ourselves, and in time turn to others for what we aren’t able to do for ourselves. This is a huge reason people show up to a Facebook group. Instant community that isn’t community. Some of what is there is helpful, and at times some things on these pages are not helpful. 

This last weekend a friend said goodbye to her mum. It has been some time in coming, and when the end came it was a peaceful ending. I’ve been aware that she and her family are in a “thin place.” I sometimes call it the funeral bubble. It is a place of reflection, where time stops while the rest of the world continues on. For those in the thin place, things are altered. We cry; we touch the spiritual; we reflect; we can think new thoughts, and in some ways, it can be rather mystical. It can be a place of solace. Eventually, we’ll leave the thin place and get back on the conveyor belt. It is when we enter the fast-paced arena of life that we demand the instant stopping of tears. We want the pain gone. We fail to realize that just like physical pain telling us and our bodies to take notice of what is going on, emotional pain is telling us the exact same thing: take notice, sit down, you are hurt.

Sitting here, I reflect on the day of August 29th, when I sat at my dining room table wondering the unthinkable: How will I survive? I wasn’t thinking of tears or the path I’d need to follow. The crazy crying jags appeared on the scene right on schedule: as soon as the emotional numbing thawed out. Looking back on it now, I think I was more scared of the crying than questioning when the tears would stop. This type of crying is physically violent. You feel it well up inside, and like an earthquake you hear the rumble of the approaching event. Ready? Shake. Hold your breath and wait for the thing to go away. And then the aftershock hits just when you think it’s over, and it starts up again. These crazy crying jags happen anywhere, nowhere, and some are triggered by memories while others have no rhyme or reason. They happen, and we who survive become embarrassed by the crazy state that doesn’t make sense to us. We leave a grocery cart in a store as we exit stage at right and bolt for the car in hopes of a safe place to let the tears out. We want them gone. Our minds are sending us a clear signal that we’re in pain. 

At this point we might be well into the grief, and well-meaning friends and family want to help by fixing it, and so they offer up help that might not be helpful. The catch here is that they may not understand, and you may not be able to explain any of what you’re going through. The words may arrive on the scene when the pain has lessened. You don’t fully understand any of this until you are years down the road. Don’t rush it—you’ll miss the essential nuggets and treasures that will be so valuable to you in your new future. 

In that new future the pain dims, and the quality of the tears changes to something else. We cry until we cry rarely. We remember with joy and fondness the good and wonderful things. We can objectively look at the relationship with its strengths and weaknesses. We gain understanding. We question; we contemplate; and we ask questions about the paths we didn’t travel down. In our questioning we become open to new pathways. We act by beginning to move towards something new. 

This movement is healthy and essential to living our lives in a new way. Along this new path we might begin to smell the trees and flowers. We meet those on this path and either engage with them or move on. Maybe we find a lovely place to sit and notice what is going on in our lives. 

We leave that space and move forward. We might make some changes, or we may choose to wait and see what changes come to us. I allowed life to be gentle with me. I realized somewhere along the path that I needed to practice better self-care. I needed to honor myself.

One of the deepest realizations I’ve had to sit with is that grief and its aftermath have allowed me to consider options for my life that I had not thought of ten years ago. How I see myself now isn’t the view I once held. This time, while sitting in a lovely spot on the path, something came along and challenged it all. I returned to the crying. I was able to call up the feelings I experienced as a new widow. I remembered. Now I write this. The difference is that this time I’m not in severe pain, and I realize that what I’m feeling and thinking is “get up off the bench, move—this is not your place now.” The tears are gone, and I stand up and step onto a new path—one I had not seen for myself.