Showing posts with label resilience. Show all posts
Showing posts with label resilience. Show all posts

Friday, 31 October 2014

In the face of grief: Madonna Badger on resilience

Some days, all you can do is find a friend
This was a timely rerun for me. Still sick with a virus, I'm am slowly improving. It gives one time to reflect. Resilience is an important tool in our repertoire of keeping ourselves mentally and physica

lly healthy. I was pretty sick last week. I've been sick in spirit, as well, with the horrible news our country has been facing. The trolls come out of the closet. The hate mongerers darken the comments sections. The people in power who did nothing. Shameful.

What was I thinking about? The news is full of horrible stories: including the sexual harassment by a former powerful CBC personality, bullying, murders of Canadian soliders, death and dying.
When my principal harassed and bullied me. Documented with 7 single-spaced pages, the powers-that-be shoved it under the table. You cannot risk your job. I understand how many women feel.
Remember the beauty in the world
The times I was sexually harassed, groped on the subway in Toronto as a kid, have come back to my mind.
The grief you feel over mistakes you've made.
The grief you feel over dreams that die.
It is all grief.

The recent news events, has made me think about how I managed to get better. How you survive such heartbreaking circumstances?  The behaviour causes much guilt in the victim. Whether you are 10 or 20. People tell you to let it go. One cannot. One must share the burden, charges must be laid, closure must be had, things must change, and prevention is the key.
I found some comforting words.

It was an Oprah interview. She does get to the heart of things. In the light of the recent murders of two soldiers in Ontario, I found these comforting words. They say there is nothing worse than burying your children. Madonna Badger would know.

This is an amazing woman. Her three lovely blonde little girls (7-year-old twins, and 9-year-old), and her parents, died in a fire in Connecticut, on Christmas Day, 2011. She tried to save them, she climbed outside on the scaffolding, facing the horrific fire, but could not.  The powers-that-be were blaming the family, to determine a cause; ashes from the fireplace, and a lack of smoke detectors. Madonna says that the embers were dead. It sounds fishy to me. As she searched for the truth about the fire, she was blocked. She saw sparks on the home, coming from the Hydro box and arcing that Christmas Day, but the municipality tried to blame her, and had the house torn down for safety reasons the very next day. No investigation.
Badger tells us,
"There is peace in the truth. There is dignity and honour in knowing the truth."
You don't have to like the truth, but you can accept it.

Madonna spent months in bed, being cared for by a friend, under the care of psychiatrists, and finally emerged. She has recovered, remarried, but still cannot 'celebrate' Christmas.

Madonna told Matt Lauer on The Today Show that she’s been comforted by a book written by a neurosurgeon called Proof of Heaven, and further buoyed by dreams and visions of her daughters Lily, Grace, and Sarah:
I’ve seen my children in my dreams. When I pray, I see my children. Lily came to me very early on and said, ‘Don’t worry, Mommy, I’m right there in your heart and I love you.’ Once when I was having a level 10, the worst sort of crisis, (where it) feels like blood is coming out of my eyes, Sarah came to me in the mirror and she said, ‘Mommy, there’s nothing to be afraid of. Everything is going to be OK.’’’


When you share your burdens with another, they take a piece of your burden with them. This lessens your load.

When the connections between children and their parents are severed through death, the nerves are raw as the bond is cut. You need to form scabs, and heal a little at a time. Severed from the ties that bind, we must grow more skin.

You must feel the feelings of grief, experience mourning and bereavement. You can't stay outside your pain or outrun the pain, or you become manic.
I've written this: you take your cloak of bereavement out and you wear it for short periods of time, until you work through your grief. You can put it away when you cannot manage, and bring it out later when you are ready to deal with the emotions.

When you ask, 'why me?', remember, why not you? You're no more or less special than anyone else who suffers. Hopefully, those of us who learn resilience will survive and have lessons to teach one another.

"God is not a puppeteer. God cried first."

You can't think your way through your grief. You have to get up each day, just get up out of bed, put one foot in front of the other until you achieve small goals.


Read also: the difference between
GRIEF, MOURNING AND BEREAVEMENT.

Thursday, 26 September 2013

Let's Talk Resilience! The Sustainability Project - 7th Generation Initiative

Press Release from Transition Perth: The Sustainability Project - 7th Generation Initiative
Together, Let's Talk Resilience on September 26th at the Perth Legion!

Resilience is our ability to respond constructively to changes and challenges in our world. Imagine everyone being secure, even if oil becomes too expensive to use excessively or if economic



uncertainty affects us on a larger scale.
  • Imagine everyone being healthy, even if the cost of food continues to increase or changes in our climate become more pronounced. 
  • Imagine everyone being happy, even in light of current downsizing trends or some forms of employment becoming more scarce. 
Potentially we could create local sources for energy, food security, transportation, and meaningful employment. We could choose to respond constructively to many of these changes and challenges, and celebrate together how our community adapted! Each of us hold parts of the knowledge, skills, vision, and enthusiasm to secure the future of our community.  Everyone is invited to participate in this engaging and interactive evening.  Let's share some food, exchange ideas, and explore some potential action plans toward building resilience in Perth and area.
What can individuals do?

Enjoy Yourself

  • The first, and most effective thing that anyone can do is to enjoy what life offers. Finding satisfaction within ourselves creates a foundation for a sustainable world. Turn off the TV; make friends; sing; dance; play music, sports and games; write letters, books, poetry, music; create; cook; sew; knit; paint; draw; sculpt; learn; love; laugh; talk with your kids, your neighbours, your friends; reach out to those less fortunate; pray; make love and appreciate nature. When one enjoys one's self, one is less likely to be influenced by the half trillion dollar annual advertising budget, which aims to convince us that we are inadequate and cannot be happy unless we buy the resource consuming products being sold. Read more...

Educate Yourself

Rivers sustain us

  • Read about the challenge and the goal: (i.e. Life, Money & Illusion, The Growth  llusion, Small is Beautiful, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, For the Common Good, The Long Emergency, Manufacturing Consent.)
  • View movies that speak to the issue (An Inconvenient Truth, The End of Suburbia, Who Killed the Electric Car & The High Cost of Low Cost, www.storyofstuff.comThe Century of the Self, "Crash Course" (in contemporary economics) www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse etc.)
  • Attend classes on sustainability in any of its many forms.
  • Fast track your personal growth work so that you are ready to handle the emotional challenges that would come with a monetary crisis, health pandemic, climate chaos or extensions of the rich/poor divide.
  • Search out meaning and purpose in your life; empower yourself by nurturing your  nnate greatness; integrate mind, body and spirit - learn to trust your intuition, listen to your body and keep fit.
  • Distinguish between needs and wants and consider carefully which desires fulfilled today will undermine the well-being of (our) children and grandchildren.
  • Boat traffic
  • Learn how to build sustainably; conserve; plant trees; grow organically; compost. Full cycle nutrient management is a key element of a sustainable future. Building up the soil in our home areas is essential to being able to feed ourselves, our families and our communities in a post fossil-fuel world.


For more information on the event, e-mail us at contact@transitionperth.ca.
For more information on the worldwide Transition movement, click here.
For more background information, click here.

Check out this video about what is Transition explained by a member of Transition Troy, NY.

Troy, NY, a Transition Town from Olivier Asselin on Vimeo.