Tag: grief

Poem of the Day ~ The Shadow on the Stone

The Shadow on the Stone

Thomas Hardy

  I went by the Druid stone 
   That stands in the garden white and lone,   
And I stopped and looked at the shifting shadows   
   That at some moments there are thrown
   From the tree hard by with a rhythmic swing,   
   And they shaped in my imagining
To the shade that a well-known head and shoulders   
   Threw there when she was gardening.

      I thought her behind my back,
   Yea, her I long had learned to lack,
And I said: “I am sure you are standing behind me,   
   Though how do you get into this old track?”
   And there was no sound but the fall of a leaf   
   As a sad response; and to keep down grief
I would not turn my head to discover
   That there was nothing in my belief.

      Yet I wanted to look and see
   That nobody stood at the back of me;
But I thought once more: “Nay, I’ll not unvision   
   A shape which, somehow, there may be.”
   So I went on softly from the glade,
   And left her behind me throwing her shade,   
As she were indeed an apparition—
   My head unturned lest my dream should fade.

Source

Poem for Today ~Tasting the Earth

Tasting the Earth

James Oppenheim

In a dark hour, tasting the Earth. /

As I lay on my couch in the muffled night, and the rain lashed at my window, /  And my forsaken heart would give me no rest, no pause and no peace, /  Though I turned my face far from the wailing of my bereavement… / Then I said: I will eat of this sorrow to its last shred, / I will take it unto me utterly, / I will see if I be not strong enough to contain it… / What do I fear? Discomfort? / How can it hurt me, this bitterness?

The miracle, then! / Turning toward it, and giving up to it, / I found it deeper than my own self… / O dark great mother-globe so close beneath me… / It was she with her inexhaustible grief, / Ages of blood-drenched jungles, and the smoking of craters, and the roar of tempests, / And moan of the forsaken seas, / It was she with the hills beginning / to walk in the shapes of the dark-hearted animals, / It was she risen, dashing away tears and praying to dumb skies, in the pomp-crumbling tragedy of man… / It was she, / container of all griefs, and the buried dust of broken hearts, / Cry of the christs and the lovers and the child-stripped mothers, / And ambition gone down to defeat, and the battle overborne, / And the dreams that have no waking…

My heart became her ancient heart: / On the food of the strong I fed, on dark strange life itself: / Wisdom-giving and sombre with the unremitting love of ages…

There was dank soil in my mouth, / And bitter sea on my lips, / In a dark hour, tasting the Earth.

Take A Chance – Jump

Doing Something For the First Time Is Scary.
Especially for those who grieve.
A short video to help you take that first jump.
Based on Dancing Alone: Learning to Live Again

Good Things Are Coming Your Way

Dr. Ray Calabrese offers encouragement to a reader who feels as if she is stuck on a treadmill.

Life is Tough ~ But You’re Tougher

Dr. Ray Calabrese, author or Dancing Alone: Learning to Live Again, answers a reader’s question related to her inability to move on after the death of her husband. Ray offers encouragement and a way for the reader to summon her strength and resilience to move on.

Loneliness Won’t Last

In this short video I answer a reader’s question about loneliness and grieving. I offer the reader encouragement and a way to shed the burden of loneliness and move on with his life.

I Measure Every Grief I Meet ~ Emily Dickinson

I Measure every Grief I meet 

I measure every Grief I meet
With narrow, probing, Eyes–
I wonder if It weighs like Mine–
Or has an Easier size.

I wonder if They bore it long–
Or did it just begin–
I could not tell the Date of Mine–
It feels so old a pain–

I wonder if it hurts to live–
And if They have to try–
And whether–could They choose between–
It would not be–to die–

I note that Some–gone patient long–
At length, renew their smile–
An imitation of a Light
That has so little Oil–

I wonder if when Years have piled–
Some Thousands–on the Harm–
That hurt them early–such a lapse
Could give them any Balm–

Or would they go on aching still
Through Centuries of Nerve–
Enlightened to a larger Pain–
In Contrast with the Love–

The Grieved–are many–I am told–
There is the various Cause–
Death–is but one–and comes but once–
And only nails the eyes–

There’s Grief of Want–and grief of Cold–
A sort they call “Despair”–
There’s Banishment from native Eyes–
In Sight of Native Air–

And though I may not guess the kind–
Correctly–yet to me
A piercing Comfort it affords
In passing Calvary–

To note the fashions–of the Cross–
And how they’re mostly worn–
Still fascinated to presume
That Some–are like My Own–

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