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Post by charliegee on Jul 30, 2010 15:06:38 GMT -5
I wonder if anyone has shared my experience or had something similar. I'll try to be as brief as possible. In February of 2009, my wife Maryann succumbed to Ovarian cancer. We had been married forty-two years and dated seven years prior to that. I was using drugs for most of that period and was addicted the last 15-20 years. It was so bad I though I would die in that state but through the experience of her illness and subsequent death a most extraordinary thing happened to me. After praying a few months after her death to be delivered from my lifestyle of destructive behavior, I was freed (pretty much just like that) from the desire to get high. I feel my wife was an instrument in my healing and I seem to be taking on a lot of the characteristics she displayed: love and compassion primarily. So much so that anyone I come in contact with that is suffering from cancer, whether themselves or a loved one, anyone stuck in addiction or grieving, well they have my heart, my attention, and my desire to be there with them in their pain. Has anyone else experienced the transformative power of grief? Of facing death and in the acceptance to come in full contact with life again.
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Post by skyblue on Jul 31, 2010 16:30:40 GMT -5
I wonder if anyone has shared my experience or had something similar. I'll try to be as brief as possible. In February of 2009, my wife Maryann succumbed to Ovarian cancer. We had been married forty-two years and dated seven years prior to that. I was using drugs for most of that period and was addicted the last 15-20 years. It was so bad I though I would die in that state but through the experience of her illness and subsequent death a most extraordinary thing happened to me. After praying a few months after her death to be delivered from my lifestyle of destructive behavior, I was freed (pretty much just like that) from the desire to get high. I feel my wife was an instrument in my healing and I seem to be taking on a lot of the characteristics she displayed: love and compassion primarily. So much so that anyone I come in contact with that is suffering from cancer, whether themselves or a loved one, anyone stuck in addiction or grieving, well they have my heart, my attention, and my desire to be there with them in their pain. Has anyone else experienced the transformative power of grief? Of facing death and in the acceptance to come in full contact with life again.
I am glad you posted this. It really gave me a good feeling.
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Post by loverofall on Jul 31, 2010 17:57:31 GMT -5
True grief is evidence the heart opened up from being stuffed. We like to create feelings by thinking or doing things such as drugs (they are a double whammy because they have both an emotional and a physical component of controlling feelings). Little kids don't need distractions until we teach them that or they get hurt and their minds figure out ways to stop feeling so bad.
A traumatic event like this can shortcut the opening up of the heart. Your sensitivity came or is still coming back. Another way to put it is you built a callous around your feelings and the death stripped it away in a big swipe allowing you to feel grief and now you can also feel love and compassion. I agree it is a gift. People can spend their whole lives undoing these callouses. Thats basically what non-conceptual awareness does over time.
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Post by charliegee on Aug 1, 2010 12:19:47 GMT -5
thanks Sky and LOA ... it truly is a gift and I live and breathe in gratitude ... I had built a wall of callous indifference in a effort to 'feel' differently and wound up not feeling at all ... I've heard my whole life about the redemptive power of suffering but scoffed at it ... now I see the wisdom in being torn 'open' ... I now feel for others and also am gentler with myself ... what we flee from is often the very thing that will save us ... I hope to be of assistance to others somehow, someway whenever the need arises ... the love I feel now totally overpowers the sadness I felt in losing someone so vital to me ... I now realize I only lost her 'physicality' cause 'who she is' is always with me ... good, bad or indifferent I'm writing again and I'm thankful to feel life in all it's wonder, pain and joy ...
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