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Archives for January 2019

Death Releases Love

January 21, 2019 By Julia Menard 4 Comments

Welcome to the 17th year of HEN.  I can hardly believe it’s been that long since I started a small experiment to share some of my thoughts and learnings with you, dear HEN reader.  This year and this moment marks a momentous turning for me.

I’d like to bring you along.

A few days ago, before I had written HEN, I received news from my brother, that my mother had died.  My mother, definitely the strong matriarch in our family, had been bed-ridden with advanced dementia for a few years, and my brother had signed on to be her primary caregiver.  This loss is tremendous for us, and especially for my brother, who has been tied to my mother’s increasing care needs for over a decade.

Fresh into this experience, here is what I am learning:

It starts with what I am noticing some people say to me as I tell them that my mother has died.  They often respond with almost a visceral pained reaction: “Oh, I’m so sorry.”  Their reaction (through mirror neurons) stimulate a pain reaction in me.  That is often quickly followed with them sharing their own story of a loved one they have lost and how painful it was for them.  I know the best intention would be to say that they understand; it’s just not the impact in the space and state I am in. These responses don’t feel particularly good to me.

Then, there are people who have responded differently to the news. I notice these are people who I would say have done their own “grief work.”  When I have shared my mother’s passing, there is no big emotional reaction of how sorry they are, or any immediate sharing of the pain they have endured and still endure.

What happens instead is there is a presence that opens up between us.  It feels as if there is a space that is created which gives me freedom.  This freedom is to simply “be” in whatever way I am in that moment.  That feels good.

Everyone, I believe, responds to grief differently. When I am in it – just in it – what I most want is the space to breathe and be.  And, I want you to be with me.  Please don’t assume that I am in pain in that moment.  I also do not want to hold space for you to share your pain with me, when I am in a resource-depleted state.

What feels good to me in these first days after knowing my mother died is:

  • Make sure I’m fed.Some have asked me about eating, and some have simply fed me.This is a blessing.Give people food.
  • Ask me how I feel. I have a neighbour, a band mate actually, and he’s texted me asking me simply: “How are you feeling?”I’m often not feeling in this state – so him asking me is a gift.It makes me stop and feel.I also like that it’s in a text.I don’t need to respond if I don’t want to go into my body in that moment.And I can be reminded.Lovely.
  • Listen to me with your heart and tell me you care. That will make me feel like I matter. I have to laugh!As I was writing this, my downstairs neighbour (one of my angels) just texted me this message as her morning message to me: “You are so loved!!!”  That message just spurned me to send a similar text to my brother just now.  Love, love, love.

This morning, I watched a short video blog post by Sarah Kerr where she put out one way to think of death – I love it:

“Death is really hard. When we’re dying, or when someone we love dies, it’s hard. Mostly we don’t want it to happen, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. It’s not a bug in the system that needs to be fixed. Nature doesn’t design things that way.

If it’s here, there’s a purpose to it. So, what is it?

Perhaps one of the purposes of death is that it helps us release love. Big loss and big grief show us how much we really love each other. In our collective body, and in our communities, sometimes death gives us a kind of reboot of what’s really important. It reminds us of our connection to each other, of how much we need each other, and of the love that we feel, from this side of the veil to the other.

Meeting death with love, and appreciating its purpose, is of service to the living, the dying, and the dead.”

Want to Look After Your Community?

January 21, 2019 By Julia Menard Leave a Comment

In many indigenous communities, the role of the elder is varied and relevant.  There are designated people to turn to, to hear stories from, to sing songs, to sit in community. 

The idea of having people designated to tend to our community fabric is a foreign one in most communities I know of, whether that is the community on my street, in my neighbourhood, my city or country or workplaces that I know of.

Yet, we do have community tenders – they are just not clearly and consciously seen or understood as such.

For example, I live on a great street.  Most people who live on this street say it’s a great street.  We have a block party every year, we share information about small things like a break-in on the street, and we help each other out with rides, cleaning up a neighbour’s leaves, offering to shop if someone is house-bound, etc.

But how did this kind of street come about?  Not by accident.

There are certain people on this street who play the role that could be seen as tending to the community fabric.

There’s a couple on this street who is the first to lend a hand.  They look after my dog when I go out of town.  They look after my neighour’s dog when they go out of town (and yes, sometimes there is overlap).  When they heard my mother died, they brought over a huge bouquet of white flowers. As I look at them now to identify which kind of flowers make up the bouquet, I am overcome with emotion (white roses, white gerber daisies, white freesias and a white lily in the centre).

My neighbour across the street who texts me to ask how I’m feeling after my Mom dies, is the same neighbour who quietly cleans up the fallen leaves from another neighbour’s lawns (someone who is too elderly to tend to these things) and makes sure they have a clear path if there is an unusual event like snow, etc.

My downstairs neighbour just offered to send my brother some food, knowing that’s a concrete way she can help my brother in his grieving.

I had a party at New Year’s and some of my neighbours on the street came.  They came bearing food and together we sung our hearts out and danced our little feet off.  It was generous of them to come and partake of this celebration.

Together, we were knitting the fabric of community.

Who looks after your community?  Can you notice them and appreciate them?  Are you one of them or can you grow into being one of them?

Community is the medicine we all need and are starved for.

How to Get Someone to the Table

January 21, 2019 By Julia Menard Leave a Comment

My colleague and podcast co-host, Gordon White, and I have had the privilege of interviewing many guests, asking them questions about conflict.  One of our favourite questions is about how to motivate people to come to the table.

Our most recent guest, Dr. Ben Hoffman, knows a lot about that.  He has spent a major part of his career engaging with the “bad guys.”  People he’s had to negotiate with include prisoners, hostage-takers, abusers of women, and even Joseph Kony himself.

Hoffman definitely has experience with a lot of power-over tactics.

So, getting the “bad guys” to the table has to be one of the most important questions and Dr. Hoffman is someone to ask!

His answer to the question of how to motivate such people to negotiate surprised me.

Essentially, he said most people who wield power, will not want to come to the negotiating table.  When I heard him say that, it made sense to me.  Perhaps it does to you too?

What is the motivation to settle, when it appears you have the upper hand and you have operated with a “win” (or “win-lose”) paradigm?  None!

So what are we to do?

Hoffman made some clear suggestions, including relying on our elders and others who have influence with the powerful, to be the levers that cause the powerful to come to the table.

Many years ago, I had the opportunity to go to dinner with a prominent Mexico City environmentalist, who had his own radio show and a high media profile in Mexico City.  At the dinner was someone who used to own garbage barges, moving them from port to port.  It was an unseemly business and controversial.  One time, this man told us, his garbage barges were in the news and his granddaughter looked up from her playing to the TV.  She was concerned about the story and started to cry.  That momentary incident ended up being the catalyst for this person to get out of the garbage barge business – seeing himself through his granddaughter’s eyes.

This man’s turning of heart resulted in other impacts. He became over time an ardent environmentalist, befriending my radio host friend and having a hand in stopping the possibility of the Rio Grande being used as a garbage dump area.

That’s one example of influencing a powerful person to re-think his perspective.

Listen to the full Ben Hoffman interview here.

Free Conflict Tips Here!

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