Gretchen, thank you for reading my post and for sharing what Death means to you. I really appreciate what you have written. If it feels right, can you share why you fear death? Why is it that that you are afraid to reach out and hold hands with Death?
I guess because I am afraid of the nothingness that (I think?) comes after. I would like to believe I would still have a connection to all those I love, but will I? It is the same when my Dad died: I could not fathom or accept that he was "gone" but was he? Is he? If energy is never destroyed, then what happens to us? It's all the unknowing that scares me, I think. I would love to have more information from you or continue the conversation.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts here. I have been away, thus my delayed response.
It is hard when someone we love deeply dies. The physical representation of them certainly is gone...their walk, their conversations, their smell etc. I believe though that they still live on in many ways...through our memory of them, though the stories we share of them, through the photos we look at etc
Through our dreaming state too -our night dreaming or day dreaming. Sometimes our loved ones come to visit us... Does that make their spirit die or does it make them still live on in another way? Sometimes we long deeply for our loved ones to visit us...and yet maybe they do in the subtle, in the messages, in the silence, in the way the birds chirp or the butterfly flies...
Gretchen you wrote "While our energy is never destroyed what happens to us" I really love that question. The answer is different for different folk...some people believe we return to the stars and we watch over our loved ones, some believe in an afterlife, some believe that we don't have a spirit and that we just die.
My personal belief is that when I die my spirit/energy will merge with the essence of nature herself..so I will become part of the sunrise, the storms, the earth, the ocean, the rainbows, the ants and butterflies, the birds and the trees...essentially part of everything. My spirit will be no longer in my physical body rather it will be everywhere in nature.
It is very unknown. Death. I believe that our society has made death scary, fearful, isolating. I feel that because we have lacked such conversations as this we fear death even more. I see death in life. In night turning to day, in spring turning to summer, in the falling of the autumn leaves, in the tiny and yet important day to day things. That helps me befriend death...the smaller deaths help me befriend the larger death.
In the very first comment you wrote that "Death wants to be friends yet you are too afraid to take its hand"...I wonder is that Death of something else...death of a belief, relationship, job, ideal, habit...maybe Death wants to teach life. Maybe Death wants to show Joy or offer you a key for something greater...yet first something must "die" for that newness to come forth.
What do you believe, Gretchen? If you could ask your heart, what would it deeply say...Sometimes deep questions such as this is confusing for our mental thought process and that sometimes gets in the way of a deep real answer. I wonder, when, and if the time felt right, if you could ask your heart..."What does Death mean to me? What is it trying to show me? What do I believe will happen to me when I die?" I wonder what your heart will answer...
Grethen, I would love to continue this conversation with you. Please let me know what these thoughts/ words meant for you.
When you asked: "If you could ask your heart, what would it deeply say...Sometimes deep questions such as this is confusing for our mental thought process and that sometimes gets in the way of a deep real answer" I busted out in tears. I am such an analyzer. I'm a PHD. I want to research my way out of and through *everything.* I think answers lie outside of me, but I also know that is not true. I am struggling with WHAT IS LIFE ABOUT right now, and death is in this, too. You have a way of cutting through muck that I really appreciate. I just have so much fear!
I honour your vulnerability and your tears. I honour the big questions you ask...WHAT IS LIFE ABOUT? Where do we go after death? I honour the confusion, the doubt, the questions and the lack of answers...I honour that the PhD part of you is finding it hard to stop researching. I honour the part of you that knows that the answers lie inside rather than outside.
To feel is such an exquisite gift. It invites another part of us to open and be heard. It invites a deeper part of us to, instead of researching the answers, to just ask the question and know that our body and heart has the answers if we allow ourselves to "feel" into it.
We are incredible beings.
We run. We hide. We fall. Sometimes we are so close to our truth we can reach it and touch it. Other times it is so far that we feel lost and confused.
Gretchen, you have so many answers, just there -inside of you. To pause and ask your heart, your body, your pain even..."How are you feeling today?" such a simple question, invites such profound answers.
Every part of you is both a teacher and a student, a healer and a part to be healed.
I wonder, would you be open for me to hold sacred healing space for you one day...to hold your heart as you gently navigate the bigger questions your mind wishes to ask? This is what I do...I hold space for folk to come home, home to the innate wisdom that lives within. You are your wisest sage/medicine person/healer.
I invite you to hold her hand and let her talk to you.
If in this process you would like someone to walk with you, I would be honoured.
YES, YES, YES! Death is what makes life real. Death is what supports me in appreciating the movements the wildness, and the impermanence of our world. Walking with death continually guides me back to the moment. To relish it, to be fully present and to both give and receive. And death is hard and messy. A time to mourn what is gone, to grieve that which will not return. And death is part of a cycle. When it fades, birth naturally arrives. Thanks Sam this was beautiful.
Oh Julie...my beautiful Death-walker Friend, thank you for your comments. You are so enthusiastic about Death that it makes me smile with LIFE. You are a wonderful beacon of both -the Death and the Life. I am grateful for this friendship. x
This came at the perfect time for me Sam. I was on the bus this morning on the way back from the hospital after checking a minor injury to my wrist and I was looking out of the window and I could FEEL death with me. I've felt this before but not as strongly as today, as if I were really about to slip from this world and return, yet, I knew that it wasn't my time to leave, it was my time to live. It's almost as if death came to show me that, although this phase of my life is full of much uncertainty (saturn returns haha), and less movement, it is still life - it is still worth living and experiencing for what it is right now, rather than what is on the other side of this uncertainty - of an exhausting myself to try to get to the other side. What if there's never 'another side', what if it is just all more of a river flowing to an ocean? It also came to remind me, I don't have to loose who I am, even if where I am doesn't feel like the environment or circumstances for that fullest expression and experience, yet. Like your question, "Can we forgo the noise and find the music within?" - death was reminding me that when I can't see it, I can still feel it from the inside and, in my eyes, that's equally as real. This is my real conversation, thank you for sharing this at a moment I needed to reflect on it. <3
Emma, thank you so much for sharing your heart with me here in this space. What you wrote is so powerful, so vulnerable, so fragile and yet at the same time it feels as though there is a spark within that wishes to "find the music within." May Death open a space within that invites Life to shine its beautiful face deep in your heart.
Saturn Return is such a tricky time. Looking back on mine, it now feels like it was an initiation of sorts. A sense of forgoing what was truth to find the deeper truth, to let the noise go to find the music and stillness within, to look myself in the eyes and say, "Yes, the new path that is opening is actually where my heart feels happier, safer and more hopeful." Yet during this time, oh it was awful!!! My prayer for you is that it becomes softer, simpler and more hopeful for you.
Emma, thank you for letting me sit with you on the bus and for your profound sharing.
I am fearful of death. I feel it next to me, wanting to be friends but I am too afraid to take its hand and meet it and greet it.
Gretchen, thank you for reading my post and for sharing what Death means to you. I really appreciate what you have written. If it feels right, can you share why you fear death? Why is it that that you are afraid to reach out and hold hands with Death?
Thank you for being a part of this conversation.
I guess because I am afraid of the nothingness that (I think?) comes after. I would like to believe I would still have a connection to all those I love, but will I? It is the same when my Dad died: I could not fathom or accept that he was "gone" but was he? Is he? If energy is never destroyed, then what happens to us? It's all the unknowing that scares me, I think. I would love to have more information from you or continue the conversation.
Hi Gretchen,
Thank you for sharing your thoughts here. I have been away, thus my delayed response.
It is hard when someone we love deeply dies. The physical representation of them certainly is gone...their walk, their conversations, their smell etc. I believe though that they still live on in many ways...through our memory of them, though the stories we share of them, through the photos we look at etc
Through our dreaming state too -our night dreaming or day dreaming. Sometimes our loved ones come to visit us... Does that make their spirit die or does it make them still live on in another way? Sometimes we long deeply for our loved ones to visit us...and yet maybe they do in the subtle, in the messages, in the silence, in the way the birds chirp or the butterfly flies...
Gretchen you wrote "While our energy is never destroyed what happens to us" I really love that question. The answer is different for different folk...some people believe we return to the stars and we watch over our loved ones, some believe in an afterlife, some believe that we don't have a spirit and that we just die.
My personal belief is that when I die my spirit/energy will merge with the essence of nature herself..so I will become part of the sunrise, the storms, the earth, the ocean, the rainbows, the ants and butterflies, the birds and the trees...essentially part of everything. My spirit will be no longer in my physical body rather it will be everywhere in nature.
It is very unknown. Death. I believe that our society has made death scary, fearful, isolating. I feel that because we have lacked such conversations as this we fear death even more. I see death in life. In night turning to day, in spring turning to summer, in the falling of the autumn leaves, in the tiny and yet important day to day things. That helps me befriend death...the smaller deaths help me befriend the larger death.
In the very first comment you wrote that "Death wants to be friends yet you are too afraid to take its hand"...I wonder is that Death of something else...death of a belief, relationship, job, ideal, habit...maybe Death wants to teach life. Maybe Death wants to show Joy or offer you a key for something greater...yet first something must "die" for that newness to come forth.
What do you believe, Gretchen? If you could ask your heart, what would it deeply say...Sometimes deep questions such as this is confusing for our mental thought process and that sometimes gets in the way of a deep real answer. I wonder, when, and if the time felt right, if you could ask your heart..."What does Death mean to me? What is it trying to show me? What do I believe will happen to me when I die?" I wonder what your heart will answer...
Grethen, I would love to continue this conversation with you. Please let me know what these thoughts/ words meant for you.
Until next we share,
may your heart find peace.
Kind regards,
Sam
When you asked: "If you could ask your heart, what would it deeply say...Sometimes deep questions such as this is confusing for our mental thought process and that sometimes gets in the way of a deep real answer" I busted out in tears. I am such an analyzer. I'm a PHD. I want to research my way out of and through *everything.* I think answers lie outside of me, but I also know that is not true. I am struggling with WHAT IS LIFE ABOUT right now, and death is in this, too. You have a way of cutting through muck that I really appreciate. I just have so much fear!
Dearest Gretchen,
How are you?
I honour your vulnerability and your tears. I honour the big questions you ask...WHAT IS LIFE ABOUT? Where do we go after death? I honour the confusion, the doubt, the questions and the lack of answers...I honour that the PhD part of you is finding it hard to stop researching. I honour the part of you that knows that the answers lie inside rather than outside.
To feel is such an exquisite gift. It invites another part of us to open and be heard. It invites a deeper part of us to, instead of researching the answers, to just ask the question and know that our body and heart has the answers if we allow ourselves to "feel" into it.
We are incredible beings.
We run. We hide. We fall. Sometimes we are so close to our truth we can reach it and touch it. Other times it is so far that we feel lost and confused.
Gretchen, you have so many answers, just there -inside of you. To pause and ask your heart, your body, your pain even..."How are you feeling today?" such a simple question, invites such profound answers.
Every part of you is both a teacher and a student, a healer and a part to be healed.
I wonder, would you be open for me to hold sacred healing space for you one day...to hold your heart as you gently navigate the bigger questions your mind wishes to ask? This is what I do...I hold space for folk to come home, home to the innate wisdom that lives within. You are your wisest sage/medicine person/healer.
I invite you to hold her hand and let her talk to you.
If in this process you would like someone to walk with you, I would be honoured.
Until next we share,
May your heart find peace.
Kind regards,
Sam
YES, YES, YES! Death is what makes life real. Death is what supports me in appreciating the movements the wildness, and the impermanence of our world. Walking with death continually guides me back to the moment. To relish it, to be fully present and to both give and receive. And death is hard and messy. A time to mourn what is gone, to grieve that which will not return. And death is part of a cycle. When it fades, birth naturally arrives. Thanks Sam this was beautiful.
Oh Julie...my beautiful Death-walker Friend, thank you for your comments. You are so enthusiastic about Death that it makes me smile with LIFE. You are a wonderful beacon of both -the Death and the Life. I am grateful for this friendship. x
Me too Sam - you are a treasure!
This came at the perfect time for me Sam. I was on the bus this morning on the way back from the hospital after checking a minor injury to my wrist and I was looking out of the window and I could FEEL death with me. I've felt this before but not as strongly as today, as if I were really about to slip from this world and return, yet, I knew that it wasn't my time to leave, it was my time to live. It's almost as if death came to show me that, although this phase of my life is full of much uncertainty (saturn returns haha), and less movement, it is still life - it is still worth living and experiencing for what it is right now, rather than what is on the other side of this uncertainty - of an exhausting myself to try to get to the other side. What if there's never 'another side', what if it is just all more of a river flowing to an ocean? It also came to remind me, I don't have to loose who I am, even if where I am doesn't feel like the environment or circumstances for that fullest expression and experience, yet. Like your question, "Can we forgo the noise and find the music within?" - death was reminding me that when I can't see it, I can still feel it from the inside and, in my eyes, that's equally as real. This is my real conversation, thank you for sharing this at a moment I needed to reflect on it. <3
Emma, thank you so much for sharing your heart with me here in this space. What you wrote is so powerful, so vulnerable, so fragile and yet at the same time it feels as though there is a spark within that wishes to "find the music within." May Death open a space within that invites Life to shine its beautiful face deep in your heart.
Saturn Return is such a tricky time. Looking back on mine, it now feels like it was an initiation of sorts. A sense of forgoing what was truth to find the deeper truth, to let the noise go to find the music and stillness within, to look myself in the eyes and say, "Yes, the new path that is opening is actually where my heart feels happier, safer and more hopeful." Yet during this time, oh it was awful!!! My prayer for you is that it becomes softer, simpler and more hopeful for you.
Emma, thank you for letting me sit with you on the bus and for your profound sharing.
In honour of the beautiful music that is Emma.
Thank you Sam 💖