Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.
Victor Hugo
The following excerpt is from Dancing Alone: Learning to Live Again
“You’re carrying a lot of baggage, Ray. You need to unpack it, or it’s going to burden you for the rest of your life.” M replied. “Journaling will help lighten the load so one day you will fly unafraid through the clouds. Let your journal reflect your deepest emotions, your deepest feelings, and your perceptions of what happened to Babe and you.”
I began journaling following M’s advice and it made all the difference. Dancing Alone: Learning to Live Again contains all of my journals. They will give you ideas on how journaling can help you move through the grieving process.
I am giving away an ebook copy (available on iTunes) of Dancing Alone: Learning to Live Again to 50 lucky winners who like this post and complete the contact form below by midnight, December 17th. Winners will be randomly selected and notified by email with the iTunes code for downloading Dancing Alone: Learning to Live Again on December 20th.
Dancing Alone: Learning to Live Again is available in paperback and ebook formats from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, and Kobo
In what torn ship soever I embark,
That ship shall be my emblem of thy Ark;
What sea soever swallow me, that flood
Shall be to me an emblem of thy blood;
Though thou with clouds of anger do disguise
Thy face, yet through that mask I know those eyes,
Which, though they turn away sometimes,
They never will despise.
I sacrifice this Island unto thee,
And all whom I loved there, and who loved me;
When I have put our seas ‘twixt them and me,
Put thou thy sea betwixt my sins and thee.
As the tree’s sap doth seek the root below
In winter, in my winter now I go,
Where none but thee, th’ Eternal root
Of true Love, I may know.
Nor thou nor thy religion dost control
The amorousness of an harmonious Soul,
But thou wouldst have that love thyself: as thou
Art jealous, Lord, so I am jealous now,
Thou lov’st not, till from loving more, Thou free
My soul: who ever gives, takes liberty:
O, if thou car’st not whom I love
Alas, thou lov’st not me.
Seal then this bill of my Divorce to All,
On whom those fainter beams of love did fall;
Marry those loves, which in youth scattered be
On Fame, Wit, Hopes (false mistresses) to thee.
Churches are best for Prayer, that have least light:
To see God only, I go out of sight:
And to ‘scape stormy days, I choose
An Everlasting night.
“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.”
Robert Louis Stevenson
“Imagine you’re learning to fly and the instructor takes you into a cloud. You’re flying without a reference point of what is up and down. You’re flying blind. All you can do is concentrate on the data coming from the instrument panel. You’ll hear voices in your mind screaming at you to do something different from what your instructor is telling you to do. Your intellect wants to take control. Let your heart take control—it is your personal instrument panel.” Excerpt from Dancing Alone: Learning to Live Again
I am giving away an ebook copy (available on iTunes) of Dancing Alone: Learning to Live Again to 50 lucky winners who like this post and complete the contact form below by midnight, December 17th. Winners will be randomly selected and notified by email with the iTunes code for downloading Dancing Alone: Learning to Live Again on December 20th.
Dancing Alone: Learning to Live Again is available in paperback and ebook formats from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, and Kobo.
“The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.” – Abraham Lincoln
When silence flees before the voice of Love,
Of what expression does that god approve?
Is dulcet song or flowing verse his choice,
Or stately prose, made regal by his voice?
Speaks Love in couplets, or in epics grand?
And is Love humble, or does he command?
There is no language that Love does not speak:
To-day commanding and to-morrow meek,
One hour laconic and the next verbose,
With hope triumphant and with doubt morose,
His varying moods all forms of speech employ.
To give expression to his painful joy,
To voice the phases of his joyful pain,
He rings the changes on the poet’s strain.
Yet not in epic, epigram or verse
Can Love the passion of his heart rehearse.
All speech, all language, is inadequate,
There are no words with Love commensurate.
“[Grief] strikes like a rattlesnake: quick, painful, and intense, releasing its poisonous venom into you. Life is different, Ray. Whatever way you experienced life as before, that’s over. You can’t have it back.” (Excerpt from Dancing Alone: Learning to Live Again).
Grieving isn’t easy, it hurts like hell. I am giving away an ebook copy (available on iTunes) of Dancing Alone: Learning to Live Again to 50 lucky winners who like this post and email me (ray.brese@gmail.com) by midnight, December 17th. Winners will be randomly selected and notified by email with the iTunes code for downloading Dancing Alone: Learning to Live Again on December 20th.
Dancing Alone: Learning to Live Again is available in paperback and ebook formats from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, and Kobo.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Seeking for happiness we must go slowly;
The road leads not down avenues of haste;
But often gently winds through by ways lowly,
Whose hidden pleasures are serene and chaste
Seeking for happiness we must take heed
Of simple joys that are not found in speed.
Eager for noon-time’s large effulgent splendour,
Too oft we miss the beauty of the dawn,
Which tiptoes by us, evanescent, tender,
Its pure delights unrecognised till gone.
Seeking for happiness we needs must care
For all the little things that make life fair.
Dreaming of future pleasures and achievements
We must not let to-day starve at our door;
Nor wait till after losses and bereavements
Before we count the riches in our store.
p. 19Seeking for happiness we must prize this—
Not what will be, or was, but that which is.
In simple pathways hand in hand with duty
(With faith and love, too, ever at her side),
May happiness be met in all her beauty
The while we search for her both far and wide.
Seeking for happiness we find the way
Doing the things we ought to do each day.
