“If grass can grow through cement, love can find you at every time in your life.”

Now I am not saying that we must find love, I honestly believe that if it is meant to be then love will find you. What I AM saying is that we should not rule it out no matter how alien it seems. Why? Because I have met so many people who have found love again, people who said that they would never want to be with someone else. They have found a new style of love often based on a deep friendship and understanding. They have – and never will -forget their loved one, they just recognise that no matter how much they want them to come back…they never will and that they still have a heart and a life to live.

I can at this moment just never imagine being with someone else, but I also know that I cannot afford to shut down my emotions. Love comes in many different forms and that to deny yourself the chance in the future is almost to deny your very soul of being human. If love comes then great, if not then I know that I will be OK, as I have a heart that felt the great joy of love.

Post from: Widows Quest

When someone dies, you miss their voice….you still have their love….yet one thing I miss the most is their voice.

I know when I was Nana last month, because she had a stroke she could no longer speak…she could see, she could occassionally squeeze our hands…but she couldn’t convey how she felt. I wanted to know whether she was scared, I wanted to know whether she knew how loved she was…and yet she had lost the power of her voice. And in that silence lay the most incredible pain, my most incredible heartache.

I was thinking about that today and how much we undervalue the voice when we are surrounded by our loved ones…but when they pass away, you suddenly value the power of their voice.

I want the loved ones to find a way of speaking to me, I want to speak to them. I want to check if they are OK, I want a way of still communicating.

How do I cope….well, I continue to have the conversation anyway, in the hope that one day I will hear their voice somehow and they will answer……Grief can be lonely, not just because they are missing from our lives but because you are surrounded by voices – just not the one you REALLY want to hear

Post from: Widows Quest

1. I can …rather than I can’t..
2. I will… rather than I will never
3. I can cope…
4. I enjoy living…rather than I feel guilty living
5. I will do it today…rather than I will think about it tomorrow
6. I feel grateful for having them in my life…rather than I hate the fact they are gone
7. I feel proud of the way I…..rather than why can’t I…..
8. Can’t wait for 2010, it will be a new start…rather than when will 2009 end
9. I accept what has happened…rather than why did this happen?
10. It is time for me to move on…rather than holding on to the past

What would you suggest gets added to the list?

Post from: Widows Quest

Adam presents Stages of Grief posted at ZenTactics – Child Abuse Recovery, saying, “Sorry for your loss…Here is an article on the stages of grief…”

Kathleen Gaga presents Daily Awareness: Your best thinking got you where you are at…. so what do you think about that? posted at Daily Awareness, saying, “It is in the day by day choices our life is created. It is in the day by day choices, our happiness unfolds. It is in the day by day choices we design our life or we let life design us.”

Effortless Abundance presents Change Happens: What to Do When Circumstances Shift Unexpectedly posted at The Change Blog.

Derek D. Hambrick presents And for this, thanks. posted at Derek Hambrick’s Blog, saying, “Sometimes positive thinking is thrust upon us by circumstance.”

presents The Driving Force of Tremendous Change posted at The Real Mind, saying, “My article describing desire and how to find the deep motivational force behind positive change.”

Albie presents How you can be a modern hero in your own life? posted at iDevelopWorld.

GreatManagement presents Connect to Happiness at Work posted at GreatManagement Blog, saying, “Happiness is ultimately not in anyone else�s hands or controlled by anyone other than yourself. It is purely a choice you can make.”

Ralph Jean-Paul presents The Ultimate Guide to Giving and Taking Constructive Criticism posted at Potential 2 Success, saying, “A complete guide to giving criticism to friends, employees, and just about any other person in your life. This article also contains ways for you to be able to take criticism gracefully.”

axel presents Cultivating Mindfulness posted at axel g.

Aparna presents Who is a free person? posted at Beauty and Personality Grooming, saying, “inspiring, thought-provoking piece of writing”

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of positive thinking using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Post from: Widows Quest

1. Face the world without your loved one
2. Face the world who feel uncomfortable knowing what to say to you
3. Face the problems of others that seem “trivial” to you at this time
4. Not grieve. You want to be free to think about them, to weep for their loss.

But we know that loneliness will only make us feel worse. Some time alone I think is good just to come to terms but when you start rejecting the world, invitations on a regular basis – and even in my case shopping on the internet so I don’t have to bump into someone who is going to ask how I am! – then the time has come to talk to yourself.

Yesterday I was down, I was wondering what life was all about. But then a friend phoned and said “I bet you feel empty. I know that you won’t want to come out, so I am coming over, food in hand, drink in hand and we will have a good old catch up”

She has just arrived and I am so glad that she came over. Already she has brought an energy to the house. Friendship isn’t always about dragging people out of the house. Sometimes it is coming to them and providing almost a half way house to civilisation. Don’t reject those offers of friendships….see it as a sign that you are a good person who people care about….see it as a way slowly of moving through the grief cycle.

Post from: Widows Quest

“your life’s footprint’s will not be washed away by the tide of grief”

When our loved ones leave us sometimes I think that we hold on to the memories as tight as we can because we fear if we let go then somehow

• We are doing something wrong
• We may forget them
• Others may forget them

On those days when you feel guilty or you feel fear then remember what I said at Nana’s funeral. They may be gone from our everyday lives but we will NEVER, NEVER forget them from our hearts.

Post from: Widows Quest

From the loss of Nana I have learned

• The importance of family.
• The importance of dignity and respect and how when you are with someone dying. it isn’t about your feelings – it is about what you can offer them
• That you can never take anything or anyone for granted…even for a day.
• That Nana was right….be true to yourself. Be empathetic for others, look out for others, be respectful of others but never lose your true self
• That no matter what you do, no matter how close you are….you will never feel you have done enough. However, doing your best and telling people how you feel will lesson the regrets.

What did you learn? Do you see grief as just too painful to learn from…or can you take something concrete to enhance your and your friends/family’s life afterwards?

Post from: Widows Quest

“You are as young as you faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fears; as young as your hope, as old as your despair. In the central place of every heart, there is a recording chamber, so long as it receives messages of beauty and hope, cheer and courage, you are young. When the wires are all down and your heart is covered with the snows of pessimism and the ice of opinion, then and only then, have you grown old”

(General MacArthur)

How true this is…..how much do you invest your time in creating beauty and hope? How much cheer do you search for? Human life is short – we know more than most – lets not waste it with “snows of pessimism” but the “sunshine of hope”

Post from: Widows Quest

“We will have good and bad times, it is how we maximise the good to help cope with the bad!”

And I think that is true. I have written many times about the rollercoaster nature of grief….and rollercoaster’s can truly make you feel scared, feel ill and never want to experience that feeling again.

Life during ‘normal’ times can be hard, a loss of a job, money worries, illness, stresses etc but when you through in grief it makes those highs and those lows ….well, sharper and more frightening.

It is not that ‘normal’ life is level….it is just that we learn to cheer ourselves up by going to a concert, or out with friends or treating ourselves to some shoes:)

In grief we must learn to do the same. On those days that are better, try and store up that feeling, try to put reminders of you coping around the house or in a journal. Because just life ‘normal’ life it is those memories that help us cope with the troughs of depression, the lows of loneliness and the heartache of grief.

Post from: Widows Quest

As widows or widowers, we have bad days or bad periods when we feel we cannot cope. How I look at it is this…..we have created footprints, for a time we were walking with our loved ones, so there were two sets working together….but

• When they die as above – the footprints of their life won’t be washed away through the tide of grief, our memories will protect that
• Remember we are still walking, forward through life. We are still creating those memories for those around us. Whether those memories for our family and friends are good or bad – well, that is up to us. If we stop forever protecting eventually we will get pulled away by the tide of grief….and for those around us that would be unbearable.

We have not stopped, we are just in the process of protecting those footprints from being washed away during grief. Once we have protected then we get the chance to moving forward, once again planting memories which inspire other people.

Post from: Widows Quest