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DON’T BECOME A MUSEUM TO GRIEF Dear Ones – A friend of this page asked if I wo…
DON'T BECOME A MUSEUM TO GRIEF
Dear Ones –
A friend of this page asked if I would re-post this essay I wrote last year about cleaning out your house from sad, stale, negative mementos. So here it is…and this quote below seemed like a good attachment, too!
Here goes:
QUESTION OF THE DAY: Is your home a museum to grief?
About nine years ago, a dear friend called me one morning in a state of joy, to inform me that she had spent all night throwing out old letters, photographs and diaries. She sounded so free and light, it was amazing.
My jaw dropped.
Letters and photographs and diaries???!!! Who throws out letters and photographs? That's the stuff you're supposed to run back into the flaming house to rescue during a fire, right?
But she had thrown away several giant black garbage bags of it, she said. Because many of those letters and photos and journals, it emerged in the conversation, were relics of her sad old failed relationships, or documents of bad times. She had been holding onto them the way we often do — as some sort of dutiful recording of her complete emotional history — but then she said, "I don't want my house to be a museum to grief."
The historian in me balked at the idea of this — you can't throw away letters, photos and diaries!!!
But I took her words to heart. There was something so eloquent and haunting about the phrase "a museum to grief." I couldn't shake the sense that my friend was onto something. I couldn't forget how joyful her voice had sounded. I couldn't stop thinking about what miseries I had stored in my attic, literally hanging over my head.
Later that week, I took a deep breath. Then I took two big black garbage bags and did a MAJOR cleansing. Divorce papers. Angry letters. Tragic diaries of awful times. (YEARS of them: the chronicle of my depression — page after page after page of sorrow and tears.) Vacation photos of friendships now severed. Love letters and gifts from men who had broken my heart. All the accumulated evidences of shame and sadness. All of it: IN THE TRASH.
What was left were only items that made me feel light and lucky and free when I saw them.
That was nine years ago. I have never missed one single piece of it since.
So I ask you — are you holding onto anything that spurs memories of shame, of abandonment, of loss, of sorrow? (I don't mean healthy sorrow, like photos of a beloved friend or relative now deceased. I mean items like the letter where your ex-husband explains to you in careful detail what a loser you are. That kind of stuff.)
Throw it away. Trust me.
IN. THE. TRASH.
Don't be stumbling over your unhappy past every day as you walk through your home.
See what happens when you stop hoarding sorrow. See what space it opens up for new light to come in, and new, happier memories to be born.
Don't be a museum to grief.
ONWARD,
Liz
Remember This Advice From Elizabeth Gilbert When Your Family Pushes Your Buttons
via The Huffington Post
They may get under our skin, but best-selling author Elizabeth Gilbert says there are some things that only family can teach us.
“I had a great teacher in India who said to me, ‘If you think you’re spiritual and evolved and enlightened, go home for Christmas and see how it goes,'” Gilbert says in the above video.
Addressing a live audience during Oprah’s The Life You Want Weekend Tour, Gilbert goes on to explain why the people you love the most are also the ones who challenge you the most.
“In AA they always say to you, ‘How come your family knows how to push your buttons? Because they installed them,'” she says. “They know where they are because they put them in you.”
Though they can be the biggest cause of stress and anxiety, Gilbert says we can learn a great deal from family. “These are the greatest spiritual teachers of your life,” she says. “And when you go into these situations where you feel your back going up and you’re bristling — watch it. Because this is an opportunity to have a real spiritual lesson where it counts, where the rubber meets the road.”
The moment you start to feel that stress and anxiety building up, Gilbert says to stop and think. “This is a teachable moment. What am I being asked to learn here? Patience? Dignity? Boundaries? Generosity? Compassion?”
Or maybe, it’s getting up and leaving the situation. “That same monk said to me, ‘We have an obligation to love everybody in the world,'” Gilbert says. “‘But some people we must love from a safe distance.'”
Watch what Gilbert has to say about moving past the fears and anxieties that control us.
TIME TO WRITE! Dear Ones – What an autumn it has been. Over the last three mon…
TIME TO WRITE!
Dear Ones –
What an autumn it has been. Over the last three months, I've been traveling around North America like a hobo, bouncing from town to town, on the biggest (and sometimes most intimidating) speaking tour of my life.
Last night was my final stop, in Toledo. (THANK YOU, TOLEDO!)
I figured out last night in my hotel room that — over the past three months — I have spoken to over well over 100,000 of you Dear Ones. Thank you for coming out to see me in city after city after city (after city after city….) Thank you for your kindness, and your questions, and your laughter, and your presents, and — most of all — your presence.
Now I'm going home. Not to rest, but to do something much, much better: TO WRITE.
Cuz I got them stars yanking my hair around again.
Love you so.
ONWARD!
LG
Goodnight, friends. Be good to you. Heart, LG
Word of the day… Oops, I mean: WORD OF THE LIFETIME. Dear Ones, A sweet rea…
Word of the day…
Oops, I mean: WORD OF THE LIFETIME.
Dear Ones,
A sweet reader named Jackie painted this for me, gave it to me the other night at my event in Cleveland. I love it and I will keep it always.
Readers of EAT PRAY LOVE will remember this as the last word in the book. Italian for "let's cross over" — the most elegant way I can imagine to remind myself to let it go, to put it all behind you, to face the future rather than dwelling in the past, to stand up and try again.
Another way to say it, I just realized, could be: ONWARD — my other favorite word.
Today, let's share some stories of crossing over.
I will start with one from me. Lately I've been really showing up for my work on processing forgiveness. Much of this is inspired by having met Iyanla Vanzant, whose e-course on forgiveness I've been taking all month.
I had no idea how much work I had to do on this subject, y'all. I mean, I knew I had some garbage in my heart and mind, but I hadn't realized just how MUCH resentment I was carrying around still. As I've done my work on this, I've discovered that what lurks at the very deepest bottom of all my old resentments is usually nothing but a pile of my own shame. (Shame for my own failed relationships, shame for having been stupid or a sucker, shame for my own inadequacies and mediocrity, shame for not having handled things better, shame for still holding on to ancient anger, etc.)
And instead of trying to force all of those negative feelings out of me (I've never had any luck forcing negative feelings out of me…How 'bout you?)I've been making all kinds of interior space to allow those feelings to be revealed, to give them space to breathe, to accept them as human, and to forgive myself for all my own perceived faults and shortcomings.
In other words, all my work on forgiving others has unexpectedly turned into a giant exercise of self-empathy.
Which has, by accidental extension, turned into an exercise in feeling greater empathy for everybody else, as well…stuck as we all are in these crazy-town human minds.
Which has, ultimately, led to a great and sudden diminishing of old resentments.
Which does, in fact, feel like crossing over.
So that's been nice. (TO SAY THE LEAST.) And I'm grateful. Because, like you, all I ever want is to be more free.
So what about you?
How have you been crossing over lately? Let's share some stories of liberation and its rewards.
And, of course, ATTRAVERSIAMO!
LG