For the first time I’m sharing my soul in a very deep and intimate way on video.
I hope it will bring you inspiration.
If you’ve lost someone important than you might know how difficult it is to find joy again.
I hope this brings you insight into how you might find your way out of this process, or find more meaning in the life that you have, even if it is difficult.
In this video I share the lessons of this very important time in my personal life, reaching the first death anniversary of my father.
Watch below:
- You can also watch on YouTube by clicking here:
One Year After Losing Someone Important
To Those People who have been in my community:
Thank you for being on this journey with me as I have been recovering from the death of my father, who my sole parent and key family member.
It really has been one of the most challenging and heart-breaking years in my adult life.
It was especially intense as many of my old traumas were dragged up as I share in the video…
But I think I’ve made the most of it, and I don’t ever want to forget what I have learned.
Thanks for taking the time to watch it.
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VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
For a long time I have been a writer, a creator, looking for meaning in this world.
You could read my words in a book or an article, on my blog or on the page. But now for the first time I’m beginning to add video, visual images to my thoughts and stories
My life in video – title screen
This first episode is about Surrendering a piece of my identity. What does the girl who makes meaning do when something awful without meaning happens?
It’s now been over a year since my dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and shortly after passed away.
This is the story of what I learned over 35 years on the planet, losing people and one year since I lost him, someone really important to me.
But the story starts many years ago when my passed away which was when I was three.
But unfortunately that unhappy placement in my life timeline means that it began a part of my identity for a long time. It constantly came up in conversation when I was meeting people, and it changed my life completely in ways I can’t even count.
But I found ways to adapt. I mostly tried to push down those negative feelings that were left from all of these changes, and try to focus on not to making any mistakes, not being negative, or causing negative feelings in any other person. Ever. Which was very difficult and a form of perfectionism that ultimately was not possible. The attempt of this, which I did get rather good at, did turn into rather a high strung person.
By the time I was 34 and I lost my dad, I wan’t a complete newbie to this whole path… it was like the final blow to a casket, an end who I couldn’t be anymore.
And not that I won’t learn these lessons many times over, this video is really a monument to this moment in time so I never forget how important this really is.
The strategies I adopted as a kid didn’t last as an adult. Because it wasn’t functional, functionally possible to try to do things like I use to do them.
They couldn’t hold me anymore, or rather, I wasn’t going to let them hold me anymore because they created difficulties I simply could not tolerate being in my life anymore. I have had enough.
This lie that I had to prove myself and be perfect. And reach some sort of end when everything would be ok, when I could know it was safe from something outside of me, that I created for myself. I thought I had to do all these things, to control.
And maybe subconsciously, to try and control whether the people in my life live or die.
People live or die and it has nothing to do with me. I mourn the energy I spent trying to have this false sense of control but I forgive it and I forgive all the lessons I had to learn and the lack of understanding that came with it, because like everyone else, I am always doing my best. And that has to be enough. For me, it is.
Because I am deciding to let go of my identity as needing to perfect in order to be ok.
I released the lies and illusions that kept me put. That I need to be producing all the time, I need to be writing all the time, or providing something to another person or being any kind of way…to be ok. I just am.
And releasing all of those comes with it’s own sacrifices.
I was so addicted to my work for such a long time. That’s how I thought I had to be to survive. And now I still care but I’m not as consumed by my creative potential and my work and my journey on this planet as a creator.
I wanna be like a healthy artist and show up and be like, hey yes we exist. And don’t you darn forget it.
The patience with myself that fuels everything. It is still going be here even if this leads no where, even if this video goes no where, even if everything I do goes no where and is just a one off experiment? In being a human and trying to put it into some kind of art form, some kind of expression.
I am grieving. I am not totally ok. And I’m tired of waiting to be okay before I can do anything. Because the reason I am not ok is because I deeply love someone who had to leave me too soon and there is nothing wrong with that.
I have to reclaim all the energy from the part of me that has judged it through my life.
This tender, soft and painful area in my heart that has been bared open again by losing another person. It’s here. And I just want to grieve and make it okay to be a person grieving.
It is ok to do what is natural in a world where we need people to care about people more not less. to make it a strength to feel something. To make it okay to be part of the world as feeling people.
I’m still who I am. I’m still showing up.
Just like it’s going to be okay to show up on the days when I am having a good day, and everything feels open to me.
I’m saying it not just for me but for other people too
Not everything gets solved with a pill. In my life, many things get solved by art and creativity and writing.. Other forms of creativity can transform our sorrows and challenges and turn them into something else. Something of beauty, of value. Of excellent. Something with some substance. Something enduring that no body can take away from because it will still have been experienced.
But to have that release of the confines of a cage you spent your whole life in.
Despite being hassled by other people, the biggest jailer has only ever been myself. So I’m not going to put a lid on it or pretend to be someone I’m not so that I’m perfect.
I believe honesty and creativity will set me free and I’m sharing the magic to you by doing it for myself. From being just real and that is a beautiful thing.
This last year has been a big change and I’m my dad’s death was a lot for me to handle.
I left myself go to absolute pieces emotionally so I could pick myself up and come back together again with a few pieces left behind.
Not all of who I was before made the cut, and not all of my former life did either. I am now the one that decides what combination of pieces will make my life the most beautiful thing that it can be to my eyes.
I don’t decide if others live or die. I don’t control the big picture. I just what I can to reach in and find the seed of something that can possibly be good in crap.
I lost my main person. It was hard… And there is no meaning to be made out of it. I’m seeing whatever the reality is and I don’t have to put a smily face on it.
I can be angry. I can cry.
Whatever fairy tale I’ve been born into I am going to write the ending to it. And I’m not going to wait until happily ever after because forget that. I will grab the pen today and I will write my own ending and have it be that.
I choose happiness, safety, openness, and ease
The best part of being a writer and why I want every one to write is that you can change your story and you are the author.
So I have chosen to surrender to it: personality change, releasing my old priorities and choosing new ones, even if it means the death of who I used to be.
But self love is is conceptual, hard to grasp, and inactionable when its spoken about it in generalities. It can only be something you can step towards when you know yourself.
So when my own anxieties come up I can’t necessarily change it, but I can be aware of it. I can be present. And with my acceptance, I can find one more thing that I can do about it. And find some wonder as a strange little plucky traveler on a bendy road to who knows where.
So in the end if I have to choose one thing to make my life about. I choose me. It’s my life and I’m going to live it.
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