Test 4
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Holidays Past & Present
This fourth Christmas has hit me harder, for multiple reasons.
Healing energies are slowly overtaking the dark ones I am told by my friend who is psychic, and from recent astrological information. Things seem to be turning on a dime for many of us. Recently my changes have been rapid.
It’s difficult for me to stand outside myself and see how far I have come since Don left us three plus years ago. Now, with my readiness to initiate many things, the gap between my current life and the life I lived with Don is widening.
While positive, this is also sad for me.
The messages I have received the last few days from the Grandmothers and other guides have reinforced and encouraged my growth.
One message said “Coming back to myself”. I have been doing this, reconnecting with me ever since Don’s transition. Now over time and with deep processing my relationship with myself is growing.
The second message was a powerful one: “I am in my place” the spirits told me. Soon after receiving this I made the link between it and the messages the Grandmothers gave me through Sharon in the Spring of 2021. They said that Don, our daughter and myself were in exactly the right place for our evolution.
On some level I always sensed that this was our path but it hasn’t made my life any easier. Now I am able to understand in a knowing way that I am doing well, my progress has been substantial over the last years despite my continuing grief.
Moving to a new home was an enormous step, disconcerting. I lost my safe place, cradled within our beautiful home of thirty years. Now, after six months my new place with its friendly community and view of Gibsons harbour and North Shore mountains is beginning to be home.
I feel I am at a turning point and my time away in a warm place in the new year will enhance this sense of moving forward.
I wish all of you a heartwarming holiday season.
Love & Light
Ellen
Copyright 2023 Ellen Besso
Ellen Besso is a retired Life Coach, Counsellor & an energy worker. She is the author of An Indian Sojourn: One woman’s spiritual experience of travel & volunteering, and Surviving Eldercare: Where their needs end & yours begin, both available through Amazon. Ellen is currently working on a book about her partner’s illnesses, his transition to spirit, & the many forms of contact they have had since Don left this planet.
Tears are Healing
“Grief is good. “It deepens you and makes you one with the earth”.
The Grandmothers Speak, A Call to Power.
For many years my intention has been to empty myself of what is no longer needed. This intention and the energy work and self examination that went with it has helped me develop. However I seldom cried as I was not permitted to. “Don’t cry or I’ll give you something to cry about” my harsh father taught me at a young age. So I didn’t.
That changed when my soulmate Don transitioned to spirit three years ago. After Don left I was in shock for many months, too numb even to cry. Then the profuse crying began, despite the antidepressant I took for the first time in my life. These drugs may buffer the releasing, I’m not sure. Crying is seemingly my main route to healing now.
In our society we are taught to control our emotions, to lead with our brain, but the body never lies. We know it but we deny it…deny our physical feelings, then our intuitions and emotions. “…the way you feel in your heart, in your guts, is the truth” says Miguel Ruiz.
Our Net of Light retreat ended on October 1st and I am still processing it. The depth of the work we did has meant that chiropractic and acupuncture sessions received afterwards went to a new level, a different place within me. Cataract surgery three weeks later was very successful, but took it out of me in many ways.
My crying is my body releasing grief and old material from a cellular level. From my current soulmate loss, previous trauma in this lifetime and from past lifetimes.
We all follow our own path in healing. Many people experience body grief, (unexplained physical, emotional and physiological effects of deep loss). I am very somatic, (feel things in my body), so my body grief may be greater than that of some folks.
Our bodies hold the memory of everything. Memories, including personality traits, can be stored in individual cells or organs, not just in the brain. Heart transplant studies have shown changes in the personality of heart transplant receivers, favouring the personality of the donor. “As the brain has a memory, the heart also does” says A. Hashim et al in their book Heart Memory & Feelings.
Will I ever empty myself and become a tabula rasa?…a clean slate in the sense of a free creative spirit? Perhaps not, however once begun the process continues. My seeking is changing me, bringing me to new places inside myself and new opportunities in the outside world.
EIGHT BENEFITS OF CRYING from medicalnewstoday.com
- Lowers BP
- Oxytocin & endorphins released may ease physical & emotional pain
- Parasympathetic Nervous System is activated & helps relaxation
- Crying may rally social support (although not big in our society)
- Enhances mood
- Releases toxins
- Aids falling asleep
- Fights bacteria by releasing lysozyme, a powerful antimicrobial
- Improves vision by release of basal tears that have a cleaning effect
** Note: It could be depression if no reason & crying is uncontrollable **
BOOKS:
- The Body Keeps the Score – Bessel Van Der Kolk
- The Body Remembers – Babette Rothschild
Love & Light
Ellen
Copyright 2023 Ellen Besso
Ellen Besso is a retired Life Coach, Counsellor & an energy worker. She is the author of An Indian Sojourn: One woman’s spiritual experience of travel & volunteering, and Surviving Eldercare: Where their needs end & yours begin, both available through Amazon. Ellen is currently working on a book about her partner’s illnesses, his transition to spirit, & the many forms of contact they have had since Don left this planet.
My Soulmate Died – Excerpt from WIP
PROLOGUE
In late 2018 signs began to appear that all was not as it should be. Don began to have short fainting spells, usually after craning his neck or bending up and down. These dissipated after our family doctor told him to drink water first thing in the morning to stabilize his blood pressure, something I had always emphasized after overnight dehydration, not aware of the blood pressure link. Don had spoken of short term memory issues for some time, however he was able to engage with people in his usual upbeat way.
On an unconscious level I knew something was wrong, that something was “coming down the pipe.” And I’m sure Don did also.
We had a year’s reprieve, during that time we celebrated our joint 70th birthdays with close friends on a warm May afternoon, the actual day of my birthday and seven months after Don’s. A month later we took a very special trip to Toronto, our birthplace, Don’s last visit. I hadn’t been there for 19 years myself and we revelled in seeing friends and family, and for me, staying in the neighbourhood my parents grew up in in, called The Annex.
The reason for the trip at this time, and the highlight of it, was visiting our closest Tibetan friends, Doctors of Tibetan medicine, and their three children, in Downtown Toronto. The Mom and kids had arrived from India only 10 days before, after the Dad spent three years settling in and waiting for his family.
Less than six months after this trip the bad news began. An Alzheimers diagnosis that should have come a year earlier, late due to medical neglect and our distraction, confirmed Don’s worry about his failing short term memory in November of 2019.
After our usual large Christmas gathering with friends from five different countries we went to Mexico for five weeks, our last trip together and Don’s last Christmas. The trip was different from our usual ones, stressful because of a couple of odd health issues on Don’s part and my determination to maintain Don’s Alzheimer’s program, meant to maintain his equilibrium.
Two and a half months after our return in mid February of 2020 we received Don’s cancer diagnosis, several masses in his abdomen and metastasis in his liver. Don was terminally ill. Our daughter, myself, other family members and friends were in a daze as things went rapidly downhill from there. Don left us ten weeks later.
He began to contact me almost immediately. “I had to leave”, [my body], he told me when he appeared to me at our bedroom door two days after his physical death. I “saw him” dressed in his blue India travelling pants and his new Mexican shirt. Since that time he has contacted me in almost every way possible for spirits to connect.
Now our connection is more subtle usually, except on special days. Don was very present during the recent Net of Light retreat in New Mexico. Both my friend and I were aware of his tall presence in the session room.
“You’re living on a different plane now”, Sharon McErlane from Net of Light told me after Don’s physical death. My chiropractor and friend, a wise Parsi woman said virtually the same thing: “Your marriage is in a new dimension”.
I have continued to slowly heal and rebuild my life in many ways over the past three plus years, digging deeper into myself, seeking grounding and spiritual support.
Love & Light
Ellen
Copyright 2023 Ellen Besso
Ellen Besso is a retired Life Coach, Counsellor & an energy worker. She is the author of An Indian Sojourn: One woman’s spiritual experience of travel & volunteering, and Surviving Eldercare: Where their needs end & yours begin, both available through Amazon. Ellen is currently working on a book about her partner’s illnesses, his transition to spirit, & the many forms of contact they have had since Don left this planet.
Saying “Yes” to My New Life – Retreat Part 2
Something fell away during the Net of Light retreat at Ghost Ranch, and something entered. My newly strengthened relationship with Spirit, specifically the Grandmothers of the Net of Light, has brought me to a place of hope for the first time since I lost my soulmate three years ago.
Before Don transitioned I knew on an intuitive soul level I would be okay, that I would not sit in my rocking chair, I would travel and enjoy new experiences. It’s been a challenge to hold onto this internal “knowing”…a long process and much pain to reach the point I’m at now. Although I did “all the right things”, I spent my days going through the motions of life, and despite that clear intuitive message, have not been able to clearly envision a future unfolding before me until now.
After close to two weeks at home revelling in what I called “empty time”, not vacuous at all, rather deep processing, I felt a movement within to begin writing and purging my new home of excess belongings. “Yes, I’m ready to move forward, the Grandmothers are helping me as I knew they would when the time came” I said to myself.
Both the writing and the purging are signs of creativity within, of movement. They are part of the newness.
“Pain and illness occur where new energy meets the old” the Grandmothers told Sharon McErlane in her first book, A Call to Power. My spiritual change has not been without both emotional and physical discomfort. For many weeks before the retreat, as the Grandmothers prepared us for the gathering, congestion was building in my pelvis, the Tan Tien my Dr. of Traditional Chinese Medicine refers to it as.
I had pushed the envelope too far. “Your physical body has not caught up to where you are spiritually” a naturopath told me several years ago, referring to my diet among other things. My body has forced me to forego my daily glass of wine, limit sugar intake and focus more on vegetables and salads.
My spirit is guiding me to a greater extent now, through my thoughts and my motivations. On October 15th, two weeks after the retreat, the word “Yes” was given to me as I journalled. I say yes to hope, to life, to forward movement, both internal and external, to possibilities, to change. “It is time to say yes”, the Grandmothers told me. “We are helping you.”
I continue to listen to my internal guidance and the guidance of the Grandmothers. They are my friends, my mentors, along with our beautiful leader, Sharon.
Love & Light
Ellen
Copyright 2023 Ellen Besso
Ellen Besso is a retired Life Coach, Counsellor & an energy worker. She is the author of An Indian Sojourn: One woman’s spiritual experience of travel & volunteering, and Surviving Eldercare: Where their needs end & yours begin, both available through Amazon. Ellen is currently working on a book about her partner’s illnesses, his transition to spirit, & the many forms of contact they have had since Don left this planet.
After the Net of Light Ghost Ranch Retreat
I’ve kept a low profile since returning from the life changing Net of Light gathering in New Mexico. It was my second one; Don and I attended one at Joshua Tree Retreat Centre, California in April of 2018. This one was smaller, 60 folks instead of 100, and much deeper.
The attendees were able and ready to work deeply, and the gatherings held in Germany, then Belgium immediately before ours coalesced the energies for our retreat.
It is almost two weeks since I returned from the five day turnaround trip to Ghost Ranch north of Santa Fe, but it feels longer. Minor virus and ear congestion upon my return was followed by dear Don’s 4th birthday anniversary since he departed from us, on October 8th.
My daughter and I skipped a celebration at the home of our dear sponsored Tibetan family from Northeast India in favour of a quiet day together, celebrating both Don’s and Bronwen’s birthday two days after his. This is our lifelong ritual, and we need to maintain it even though he is no longer with us physically.
Now, a week later, I continue to spend most of my time alone, integrating the changes the gathering has wrought upon me. A dog walking gig for 10 days, although demanding, got me outside regularly into the (mostly) sunny and dry West Coast fall.
I sensed that this second retreat would be formative for me, so did my daughter and other friends. It was four days of pure love, as we sang Net of Light/Grandmother songs, danced and connected deeply with the desert and its fore bearers, also the indigenous tribes where we were born and where we live now.
The energy built and we did ancestor work the third day, tapping into both our matriarchal and patriarchal lineages. Many indigenous groups have historically held broader definitions of consciousness and after our ancestor work I am open to receive more.
As two women supported me in my ritual, one on my matriarchal side, one patriarchal, I received a sudden impression of fire, then a third eye “knowing” that some of my celtic Welsh ancestors were burnt as witches.
This experience of travelling back through time has helped me to a greater understanding of Sharon’s shaman travel training, described in her early books.
The biggest gift from the retreat is that the depth of the experience has allowed me to trust the spiritual guidance of the Grandmothers more, to stop the questioning and allow myself to be led.
This town and its people, my spiritual home for over 30 years, has comforted and succoured me over the past three years since I lost my soulmate. I am beginning to get the sense that I no longer need to limit myself, that I will be expanding and visiting more places, using this new home as a jumping off point, a “placeholder”, as the Grandmothers referred to it recently.
As I walked around the neighbourhood one recent afternoon, I met several neighbours from the family house. “Oh, they’re still here” I thought in surprise, as I spoke with Kathy as she weeded her property, and with Michele when she stopped her car in the middle of the street to visit. I hadn’t seen them for weeks, and now that my living experience has change, the town and the neighbourhood seem like a different place. It is time to branch out into my new life.
Now I am beginning to feel hope for my future, something that has been lost to me over the past three years. “It will get better and better” Sharon told me at the end of the retreat. Part of me felt she was saying that to buck me up in the moment…but the woman is a shaman after all, so I believe she was speaking her truth.
Love & Light
Ellen
Copyright 2023 Ellen Besso
Ellen Besso is a retired Life Coach, Counsellor & an energy worker. She is the author of An Indian Sojourn: One woman’s spiritual experience of travel & volunteering, and Surviving Eldercare: Where their needs end & yours begin, both available through Amazon. Ellen is currently working on a book about her partner’s illnesses, his transition to spirit, & the many forms of contact they have had since Don left this planet.
Retraining Our Brains
“During periods of grief the human brain undergoes a process known as neuroplasticity, in which the brain rewires itself in response to emotional trauma” Widows Empowerment Trust
Moving one block away from our home has been surprisingly disorienting for me. Although I can walk the same routes on the streets I’ve walked on for 30+ years, the neighbourhood seems different.
Across the road from Marina Place is the beautiful forest trail of living breathing trees as well as the fallen nurse tree skeletons. I go there daily, it’s short but healing, bringing me out onto Harmony Lane not far from our home. I occasionally walk by our family home, either at the front or on the back lane, conditioning myself to the new reality.
A couple of days ago I picked up a book from “Gramma’s Wee library”, a birdhouse shaped library on a nearby street. This book was a rare find…it was bound backwards. All the pages were there but the reader was forced to read from back to front, similar to Japanese books.
My 🧠 brain did not know how to do it, once I even found myself attempting to read a page from bottom to top, I was so confused! By half way through the book I had adjusted fairly well.
How does this fit with grief and its accompanying brain changes? Grief is like a cerebral accident and upsets our brain chemicals and hormones, affecting every part of us, from muscles to organs. Our brains are rewired, resulting in mood changes, brain fog, extreme tiredness, forgetfullness and so on. “The emotional trauma of loss results in serious changes in brain function” says Lisa Shulman.
Our brains create neural maps to keep track of our relationships, Deborah L. Davis tells us in a Psychology Today article. When our partner dies, our brain must redraw it’s neural maps, making new connections. Very Slowly new maps are drawn.
This mammoth job can take years to complete. We’re triggered often because our brain is stuck in old modes. In my case the depth of my grief at losing my soulmate of many lifetimes has brought up other unfinished business, pain that was buffered by our loving, supportive relationship. This has resulted in depression of my vital energy and grief bursts over the past three years.
I read recently that the authors of a survey found 38% of the Americans surveyed were still grieving intensely after three years, especially with partner or child loss.
My grief bursts have not stopped me from moving forward with my major move and with new and refreshed projects over the past few months, however they are interfering with my life in the sense that they are exhausting and affect my sense of self…my confidence.
This week I chose to re-start Prozac, a small dose in a liquid form that can be adjusted frequently (30% of the “average” dose). Looking back, I think the grief crying bursts began again when I eliminated the Prozac completely, after decreasing it for one year.
My philosophy towards the medication is different this time. I do not see taking it as a failure to cope, a stigma or a breach of my holistic philosophy, rather as another tool, along with many others, to help my brain as it rewires itself and I “grow around my grief”, as Tonkins says, building a new, satisfying life.
Love & Light
Ellen
Copyright 2023 Ellen Besso
Ellen Besso is a retired Life Coach, Counsellor & an energy worker. She is the author of An Indian Sojourn: One woman’s spiritual experience of travel & volunteering, and Surviving Eldercare: Where their needs end & yours begin, both available through Amazon. Ellen is currently working on a book about her partner’s illnesses, his transition & the myriad contact they have had since Don left this planet.
Widowhood Year 4 – What Now?
There is no going back, I can only shift forward. The move from our family home was an enormous one on all levels. It took up the entire third year. The final decision was made early in the first month of the third year. My friend Judy, who lives nearby, tuned into my decision by walking past the back of the property on our lane.
Purging began in December, the fourth month, before the pause for Christmas preparations, and early January saw me thoroughly engaged in this practical, extremely emotional task. My friend Wendy took three loads of excess belongings to the Community Services thrift shop for me and I began tossing junk outside, preparing for the first of two big dump runs, the last one the very day before the house went on the market in late March.
The move and this fourth year flying solo without Don has brought a fresh onslaught of grief, the two events indistinguishable from each other. “Moving is a distraction” said my counsellor Heidi. I agreed. The move over and the physical settling in done, space opened for more grief to be processed.
“I just want it to stop” I said to my acupuncturist a month ago. She suggested I go back on a low dose of antidepressant, but I said no as it took me a year to detox from the liquid Prozac. So she researched & found a Spirit Tonic for me, to help with the emotions and the deeper exhaustion. Over a very few days it helped move me along, physically releasing and emptying more grief from my body, then it tipped me over into grief bursts, (sudden crying spells).
There are many grief models and they don’t all agree. The best model is a self developed, personal plan…what each grieving woman or man has found through their experience to be their grief process.
There is no order to the stages of grief, we flip back and forth between them. I found a good article about the depression stage, the longest and hardest time. I fit some of the criteria, however I am high functioning, I do not isolate or stay in bed. Many people are depressed and high functioning, my daughter reminded me.
People who know me well are fooled by my positive presentation and starting/re-starting of projects. They see me moving forward, seemingly upbeat when we meet. I even fool myself! Until I spiral into sadness, blunted emotions; loss of meaning and crying.
The bright light at the end of the tunnel is acceptance of our loss, something that seems distant and ephemeral. I am working on acceptance of Don’s physical departure, it is slow and I am making good progress. I have come a long way in the past month or so.
Mary Francis, Sisterhood of Widows recently posted a blog that segues nicely with this one. https://sisterhoodofwidows.com/2023/08/07/you-are-not-alone/
Please Note: Photo is used by permission of Simon Matzinger
Ellen Besso is a retired life coach/counsellor, published author, energy worker and practitioner of yoga and Deepak Chopra meditation.
Ellen’s books, An Indian Sojourn: One woman’s spiritual experience of travel and volunteering and Surviving Eldercare: Where their needs end and yours begin, can be purchased through Amazon. She is currently working on a Grief Memoir about the loss of her long time soulmate, Don, incorporating the story of her partner’s physical downturn and their soul connection since his physical departure.
Ellen
Copyright 2023
Third Year Anniversary – A Different Celebration
It took me many weeks to decide how to spend the third anniversary of my dear soulmate Don’s transition. The days immediately after Don’s passing were marked by healing Tibetan Buddhist prayers on our deck, followed 10 days later, the day of our 43rd anniversary, by a small garden celebration, sharing remembrances and breaking bread together, after strewing Don’s ashes on the Pacific Ocean. Several weeks later we gathered some of the same people and added a few more folks for a Divine Love prayer gathering on Al and Jeanne’s front lawn. (We were originally planning a large outdoor staggered arrival drop-in celebration, but August 2020 was covid days and it didn’t feel right. It really wasn’t Don’s style anyway, to be feted in that way. The first and second anniversaries celebrated and honoured Don and surrounded our daughter and myself with love at our home.
At last I settled on a simple Divine Love prayer in my new home. It is now the third year, so no remembrances of Don this time. The medium could not attend as he was away and another member of the original “Gibsons Home Group” was returning from the US the day before and he needed down time afterwards.
Seven women, including our daughter, met in my living room on a lovely afternoon, several arriving with flowers from their garden. We began by each of us acknowledging the pain of the planet and the suffering of our many relatives, friends and acquaintances. A woman who is quite sensitive to spirit, to Don especially seemingly, felt his jokey energy, and suggested we set a chair in the circle for him.
The entire time we prayed and received the healing energies Don stood tall and powerfully beside me on my right, appearing as he had in body, supporting and helping me receive the energies. The other woman “saw” him too. His energy presentation was stronger than ever, very grounded, a most serious energy this time, one of his many forms of animation. He reminded me of the ring I wear, the stone a gift from Don, Hanuman the Monkey God, fierce protector.
We closed the afternoon by visiting and sharing snacks, before parting.
Love & Light
Ellen
Copyright 2023 Ellen Besso
Eclectic Spirituality 