Welcoming anniversaries with an open heart
Dear community,
As the second, youngest child and only daughter, one of the roles I naturally assumed in my FOO was to help make special occasions celebratory. My Celebrator has been with me most of my life. As a child I’d spend hours at our dining room table outlining foot-tall, block letters on white poster board with a pencil, pink block eraser, and wooden ruler. My contribution was making banners to hang from our carport facing Sahuaro Drive, the street I grew up on in southeastern Arizona. I’d cut out and color each letter from a rainbow selection of fat Crayola markers that smelled like their color: raspberry, blueberry, orange, cherry, lemon, grape, even licorice. My bright (and fragrant!) greeting welcomed the guest of honor as soon as they pulled into the driveway.
WELCOME HOME, DAD! HAPPY BIRTHDAY, RICK! WE LOVE YOU, M&D! CONGRATULATIONS!
Nothing fancy but it served its purpose. And hey, who hand cuts and colors 6+ foot long banners anymore?!
In your Family of Origin (FOO), what role did you play in the celebration of special occasions? or not?
Does that part still occupy that same role or has it transformed into something else?
For decades I innocently assumed that anniversaries represented joyful celebrations. Life gradually taught me otherwise. I learned that anniversaries appear in all shapes and forms. They aren’t always happy or beg for a colorful banner strung across your driveway. Anniversaries generate a range of emotion—from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows. Our relationship to an event and our experience of it depends on numerous factors that ebb and flow from year to year, season to season, month to month. The most significant anniversaries seem to generate the widest range of emotions.
How do you mark, honor or remember anniversaries that represent tragedy, loss, heartbreak, divorce, death, illness, injury, trauma?
Or are they marked by not remembering?
No right or wrong, just noticing.
Tracking how my system relates to anniversaries over the years has become a fascinating and unpredictable study. My Managers anticipate months ahead by highlighting important dates on calendars to try and protect each event with the time and energy each deserves. I do my best to tune into what my system may need or want, but I never know what form the honoring will take until the day arrives. (And this level of spontaneity can create some challenges and disappointment, but that’s another reflection!)
For the past 13 years, anticipating the month of June has consumed the bulk of my anniversary energy and emotion, since it holds the date of my traumatic brain injury from a freak cycling accident. This date stirs up an unpredictable continuum of emotion--from dread and grief, to gratitude and empowerment, and all the parts in between.
Expanding on last week’s Pause about caring for our young ones inside, one of my biggest lessons post-injury is how to be my injured parts’ reliable, consistent caretaker. I’ve learned how to be gentle and compassionate with the parts of me that have limitations. I’ve learned to be the loving, patient parent they long for. I’m especially committed to honoring them on the date they were traumatized and injured. They come first and get to choose however they want to spend their day, our day (to the best of my ability).
I never know what they’ll need until the day arrives. Some years I’ve planned a social celebration or a healing ceremony with close friends. Other years they seek rigorous physical activity—usually a bike ride to validate our resilience and physical health. Some years I plan nothing. This year, since much of my injury grief relates to social isolation, registering for a grief retreat in community on that exact date felt like the perfect way to support my parts.
How do you prepare your heart and your schedule for an significant anniversary?
OR
What keeps you from interacting with that date more directly and beginning to befriend it?
This year’s anniversary offered me one surprise after another. For the first time in 13 years, instead of blocking out the date on the calendar months ahead, I completely overlooked June 12 as national holiday status until just a few weeks beforehand. This oversight gave me a clear marker of healing progress. Forgetting a date that has preoccupied me for so many years was a gift of encouragement and victory.
I knew I had to advocate for my parts and reschedule some appointments to free up the day. This opened the door for me to register for my second grief retreat after experiencing a transformational one a year ago led by my IFS Therapist, Ann Sinko.
The traumatic experience of the TBI has also given me immeasurable gifts. I’ve learned to befriend flexibility and an openness to trusting the unknown in a much deeper way. My mind doesn’t know what I need, but my heart and spirit do if I can open up the internal space and prepare to receive. Our ongoing work is to seek a balance of advocating for our parts while holding the reins of control loosely. I prepare for the anniversary by creating the space to receive the nourishing flow of divine spirit.
The sweet surprises this June emerged out of navigating this balance: be pro-active and speak up for your parts and release and trust in the flow of the infinite, the benevolent Universe. All things come to me with ease and grace
Listen to Heather Houston sing "I Trust" so beautifully
This nourishment comes in many forms, from many sacred sources.
What source(s) help sustain you?
Confession: I’ve been working on this for longer than I will admit, and there are more yummy morsels I hoped to include today. I wanted to share this in completion, but it’s too important to rush and this is long enough already. My body and brain say, "This is enough. We want to get outside and ride our bike! Send this now and you can continue the reflection another Sunday." And one of the big lessons from my heailng journey is to know when good enough is good enough. Here's the video clip some of you have asked for on that :)
I hope you’ll return for Part 2, which includes healing serendipities days before the anniversary. They were so transformative that I found myself referring to June 12 as my birthday—a day of rebirth. Huh? I’m very attached to my October birthday, so this is a huge shift and a testimony to embodied healing! We’ll chat more another time about:
Our recent visit to a very special location on Whidbey Island (in the Puget Sound of WA) with Erik where I rested and recovered for weeks post injury by the ocean, beneath the eagles
Getting unanimous consent from my parts to be the client in a powerful, healing demo on June 9 with Frank Anderson for an IFS & Medical Trauma Class with Lissa Rankin and a host of loving witnesses.
A celebratory mountain bike ride with loved ones and pup the eve of the anniversary without fear or a chin bar on the descent. I had fun, was strong and relaxed and that’s a victory!
Not needing or wanting to attend a grief retreat afterall on the anniversary of injury. Imagine that?!
Leading my local, beloved women’s group the day after the birthday—I mean anniversary-- honoring our Resilience! These goddesses helped nurse me back to participating in a group again, which was too hard for my brain for years. Infinite thanks to them! Hear Rising Appalachia’s song here
Here's a victory leap from the Olympic Coast. I had to see if I still have it, and I guess I do! Hooray for healing, for health and for a community to witness it!
Thanks for pausing with me. Thanks for your role in my healing journey. One of the deepest sources of grief from this injury came from social isolation. Sharing my experience with you, allowing you to witness it and respond is part of my healing. We can’t do this alone.
Much love and gratitude, always.
Laura