I find daily life that is made of anything but meaning, pointless. Books that deal with drama, uninteresting. Gatherings that have superficial conversations, waste of time. And at this juncture I always add, especially for those of us who have endured loss. The time we spend in the nothingness of routine can actually put us in depression. Maybe one of the reasons the holiday season is hard for us is because of the meaningless hours we spend sitting together with people who choose to interact superficially. Avoiding eye contact. Feelings. But stay in discussions on politics, celebrity gossip, things that have no life in them. And there you are, across the room, with heart full of meaning and emotion listening to them, wanting to scream and run out the door. It may feel as if everyone is asleep while you have no choice but to be awake. It can feel as if language is made of constant noise. And this is why I will not say have a happy Thanksgiving. I will though say have a meaningful one. Seek a real conversation with someone today. Whether it’s on text. In person. At dinner. With your pet. With a character on television. An imaginary one. With yourself. (Click Here to Tweet!) Write about what matters to you in a journal if you are alone. Watch a movie that moves you. Shut down anything that is out of alignment. Just give thanks to the moments that are made of truth. Even if it is truth that hurts. Meaningless noise doesn’t remove pain, it adds to it. An invitation to a Thanksgiving dinner made of small talk can break you. Instead just say thanks to anyone who looks you in the eyes today. Even if it is a stranger at the coffee shop. Another person sitting in the car next to yours. You see, you are not alone in your quest for meaning today, millions of people feel more alone today than any other day. Let’s change that, together. With hope, Christina PS. 27 days until Where Did You Go is in all of our lives. AMAZON LINK: https://www.amazon.com/Where-Did-You-Go-Life-Changing/dp/0062689622/
Read MoreForgive me for lately, I have been seeking the unseekable. The unseen. The very hard to find. Seeking the answers to the bigger questions. Sometimes I get mad with the world. How dare we not ask these questions. How dare we close our eyes and go to sleep without wanting to know. Why are we made this way? Who made us? Where were we before we were here? And where the heck are we going after? Why do we think the same darn thoughts every morning? Where do we go when we are asleep? What is the energy that surrounds us? Why is earth hanging in the middle of darkness, infinite darkness? Why is it that people can remember past lives? Why do people who come back after they have died talk about joy, bliss, and knowing. Where is that place? What happens after we are gone from here? Why do we spend our lives gossiping about silly things in the news instead of seeking to find ourselves? Did you know there is evidence to suggest that our world is a projection from a different reality. And as I am writing this, I am thinking about you, my beloved reader. Will you dismiss this? Will you not bother reading the rest of the letter? But this is the chance I have to take. What if death is not real in the other dimensions that exist beyond this one? And don’t ever think that this is the only dimension. It isn’t. Everything you are, think, believe, understand is connected to a reality you can’t see. When unexplained things happen, it is not that we can’t explain them. We just can’t explain them within the parameters of this reality. (Click Here to Tweet!) But they can be explained if we look at our experience from the holographic model. It implies that what we see around us is an illusion, a projection coming to us from a different place. Where is that place? You see, when we find our way to that place, there will be more understanding. It is possible that objective reality is a creation of the human brain. The brain analyzes the frequency and energy we are surrounded by, giving us a simple projection from that analysis. Why am I talking about this? Isn’t one reality enough for us to get through. Aren’t we broken enough, hurt enough from just this? Why even go there, and ask these questions. But what if what lies beyond this, makes everything less heartbreaking? What if the reality we cannot see has in it everyone we lost? That we are never without them. With footsteps on the edge of life, Christina PS. Order Where Did You Go: https://www.amazon.com/Where-Did-You-Go-Life-Changing/dp/0062689622
Read MoreMaybe I will stay inside the ups and downs. The highs and lows. After all, the roller coaster makes you a good writer. Did you know? It makes you brave. It makes your hair look crazy too. :) Your heart beats as if there are two hearts inside of you. You don’t have time for any kind of small talk. And you hold on tight. No drama. Just lots of back and forth between low and high. Between grief and love. Yes and no. Risk and safety. But that is when so many people leave the roller coaster. They are done with it all. The highs are not worth the lows. Love is not worth the grief. Having two heartbeats instead of one takes its toll. But for those of us who stay, find themselves in the most beautiful skies. Flying in and out of clouds. Breathing in the crisp air. And yes finding ourselves inside the very low places too. When there, we check in with our soul. Learn. Process. Feel. And write. Oh the writing from the lows is magnificent. I am writing you from there today. Just experienced rejection back to back. Basically double low. Low. Low. Loss. Loss. Rejection. Rejection. When the roller coaster stays down low for longer than normal the heartbeats also slow down, almost as if they are gone. You find yourself inside the low but also inside the silence. And when there is only one low and not a double one, the silence doesn’t have time to arrive. Inside the silence you have a chance to find yourself. You see, you can’t find yourself inside the highs. It’s too wild. Your mind is too busy thinking about the greatness of the high. Everyone is cheering you. And you may even forget your humility. Your mortality. And your high risk of loss. Who would I ever be without my roller coaster? Certainly not a writer. Not a helper. I think I would have good hair though. :) And I would fit in. Fitting in is not part of our life after loss. Tragedy makes us stand out, whether we like it or not. (Click Here to Tweet!) With love to all of my roller coaster riders, Christina P.S. Order the Where Did You Go? book here: https://www.amazon.com/Where-Did-You-Go-Life-Changing/dp/0062689622
Read MoreI have been writing to you for 4 years and I have never written about what to do with the anniversaries of loss. A wonderful woman reached out to me yesterday and asked me if I would write about this. So here it goes. Anniversaries of loss feel like a big train approaching the platform. Heavy, noisy. Old. Loud. And you can hear it coming for a while. You know it’s arriving at a specific time, on schedule. And you are supposed to get on it. Ride that train for the day. Ride its heaviness. This train is slow. It takes forever to get to the destination of tomorrow. But you feel there is no other way to get to the next day but ride the train of the anniversary of your loss. It is not a birthday. It is simply a death day. I am so very sorry to call it with its own name. I remember riding that train during the first few anniversaries. Honestly I was nauseous. Everything came back. The ICU. The last tragic days. The oxygen masks. My little girls saying goodbye to their dad. I mean.. talk about torture. Bring out the knives. That anniversary train was not fun. It was all about the death day. And not about the man I was in love with away from the hospital beds, the morphine and the pain. It had nothing to do with honoring him. Nothing at all. I was honoring death every time I took the anniversary train. So 2 anniversaries later the train was approaching…my date is July 21st. And I am standing at the platform. I can hear it arriving. Heavy, loud. Slow. And all the death memories were flashing before my eyes even before my boarding. I had to ask myself is this what I have to go through every single year and is this remembering him? The answer was a big loud NO.Louder than the train. I left the platform and ran. Ran away from the anniversary train. Where did I go instead? I went to the beach. I went to the places we visited. I talked about him to people who never knew him. I smiled when I said his name. Yes it is sad. Yes there are tears. Yes it sucks. I am sorry there is no way around this. Your heart will fill heavy. But don’t get on the death day train. Run away and find the sky, the moon, the sea. The memories. The journey. The celebration. On his birthday we would go and sing to his grave. We would bring breakfast and sit there and sing, and the girls would dance. They would say. Are you 1, are you 2, are you 3 are you 4…. All the way to his new age. In a few days he would have been 43, and then in a few days after that he would be gone for 8 years. The train does not visit me anymore. There is nobody waiting on the platform. From where I am standing those anniversaries are excuses to celebrate the life of the man who is the father of my kids. The man who taught me how to be a warrior through his 4 year battle with the beastpeople call cancer. The man who showed me how much he loved life and how much he did not want to say goodbye to his kids. Yes its sad, and unfair and not what happens to most 35 year olds but that stream of thought takes me back to the train. And that is not where he would want me to be. He said to me once. “Christina look at the big picture. The first couple of years will be tough but after that you have to make sure you get to live.” If he knew about the anniversary train, he would smile and shake his head and say it is not where I live. It is not where my legacy is. My legacy is inside of you. And in the lives of my girls. Go. Go. Go. Remember me, but don’t get on that train. I am going to ask you the same. Don’t get on that train, it doesn’t really go anywhere and: Healing only lives in celebrating the lives of the ones we have lost, not how they died. (Click to Tweet!) With love, Christina P.S. Make sure you have a copy of my new book Where Did You Go?
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