Personal Reflections

My friend Boon once told me that if you were to cut people they would bleed stories. That is especially true as they get older. It becomes important that we are known for who we are, all that we are, both the good and the bad. One of the ways we do that is to recount our stories, especially the ones we hold on to, the ones that define us. In addition, sometimes our stories help us deal with loss in our life. I began long ago writing down my thoughts about my life experiences and found that they helped me deal with them. Now they don’t always turn onto a story, but they always help me make sense of the process.

I believe a person’s history of how they deal loss can be a predictor of how they approach their own mortality. Much of life has to do with loss, or at least how you deal with it. As you get older, things get taken from you, but often you don’t realize this until they’re gone. And then what do you do? People who are not successful in dealing with loss don’t necessarily suffer more losses than people who are able to deal with loss effectively. One of the things that helped me to deal with loss was to get to the point where I made a choice. I was either going to continue to grieve for what I lost, or didn’t have, or focus on what I still had. There is no set time limit for grieving. It may be short or long, and it is not tied to how much you loved and who, what, or how much you lost.

The purpose of this section is to allow people to share some of their own life experiences and how they dealt with them with the hope that it will help someone else. If you see something on here you like, feel free to use it in your own life and share it with anyone you wish. And send in your own stories. You never know when your experience may help someone else. And if you feel like you are just not able to express your feelings well enough to share them with others, at least write them down for yourself, or for other family members to see. I encourage people to keep a regular journal. You’ll be surprised how it will help you, and who knows, one day your family members might even thank you. Even if you don’t think it’s helping right away, it might later on, and even if it doesn’t help you, it might help a family member after you’re gone. Don’t deprive them of that gift.