Spiral Dragonfly Coaching
Mary's Magical Musings
Grief and Loss
3/18/2009
I recently returned from Colorado where I assisted in arranging my mother’s memorial service. She died on February 14th after many years of dementia. Dementia is a difficult disease because you lose the person you love gradually. They go through stages that are not well defined and don’t happen in any particular order. Each person’s journey through dementia is unique. As is each loved one’s experience as they witness the journey. This is to explain that I have been experiencing the loss of my mother for several years and it is a relief in many ways to finally say that she is dead. I miss her.
My coaching clientele is primarily made up of women who are going through life transitions. The definition of transition is: movement, passage, or change from one position, state, stage, subject, concept, etc., to another; change. By definition, transition involves loss of one kind or another. Nothing in life is constant EXCEPT change. We are all transitioning, redefining ourselves from one day to the next, from one transition to the next. As women, we start life as daughters, sometimes sisters. Many of us move from being daughters into being wives, possibly mothers. As our children grow and leave home, we redefine what it means to be a mother and hopefully have the opportunity to be grandmothers. All of these transitions involve loss. As we move into our next phase or definition we must let go of the previous role.
Some of the transitions we experience are joyful such as the birth of a child. Some of them are more painful such as divorce but all of them require reexamining who we are and how we want to live our lives. As I acknowledge that I am now the matriarch of my family, I have to look at what that means to me and the others around me.
As a Certified Dream Coach, I assist my clients in identifying a dream that will move them forward and recapture the magic of everyday life. Sometimes the magic becomes buried by the necessity of getting through each day and accomplishing the tasks required to finalize a divorce or find a new job. We forget HOW to dream. How to locate the next dream that can help us move out of the drudgery and into joy. But magic is always lurking around the next bend in the path if we are willing to open our eyes and hearts.
Spiral Dragonfly is MY dream! It has moved me forward over the last year as I lost my job and watched my mother continue her journey. Please join me in celebrating the joy! If you want to send me your comments, please do so at mary@spiraldragonfly.com.
Next week we will look at how dreams are different from fantasies.
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