A reminder to myself – perhaps you need it too?

 

Find your true north.

Stop doubting.

Step into your power.

Lead with humility.

Learn with an open heart.

Exude love.

 

Everything is possible.

 

All is well.

Belief + Trust + Challenges + Strength + Beauty = my life right now.

I am in final prep mode for the Picking Up the Pieces Retreat that begins in a week, here in Ojai. I am exhausted, excited, thrilled and honored to be doing this work. I am grateful for the incredible team that will help make this retreat a life-changing experience for all who attend.

And I still have a couple of spaces available.

Are you ready for your life to change? Do you feel like there’s something holding you back from being 100% yourself? Do you get in your own way when you “know better”? If you get quiet and listen to your heart, is there sadness there? Pain? A wound that won’t heal?

This retreat is for any woman, recovering from any kind of loss. It could be a death, the end of a relationship, the loss of a career, an identity, a childhood that never happened. If there’s an ache in your heart, I want to help you learn how to listen to it, to grow from it, to ease it.

There is someone who believes in me, and in this work, who has offered to provide one full scholarship to the retreat. If you can get yourself here, then all the costs of the retreat are covered. Because this is about grief, I’m going to keep applications private to me and I’m going to make the final decision, along with the sponsor. It will be 100% based on what you write and how we feel when we read it and will likely be one of the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make. I’m accepting applications between now and Wednesday September 21st at noon, Pacific Standard Time. The decision will be made Wednesday night and the recipient will be notified via email.

It will be a quick turnaround from finding out Wednesday night to being in Ojai on Sunday afternoon so please, before you apply, think about whether you’ll realistically be able to attend.

If you’re in, go here and fill out the form. Make sure you reference the scholarship somewhere in one of your answers. Or you can email me at alanasheeren at gmail dot com with your answers to the following questions:

1. What are you grieving?

2. How are you grieving?

3. Describe how you would like your life to change?

I look forward to hearing from you!

Saturday night I drove into Los Angeles to meet Stereo and her Mister, on holiday from the UK. Whenever I can, I take the Pacific Coast Highway along the ocean. It’s slower but it’s beautiful and the drivers are less angry. As I crested the hill where Pepperdine University lies tucked between hills and ocean, my breath caught in my throat. Their lawn, always emerald green in a drought-stricken state, was covered in row upon row of American flags. If I had to guess, I would say there was one for each person who died in the horror of 9/11. Traffic slowed. People got out of their cars to take pictures. It was stunning.

It brought back another memory. I was 14, living in France for a year with my family while my father was on sabbatical. Every school break, and there were many, we would pile into the car and travel through Europe. This particular weekend was the holiday when everyone went to visit their family’s cemetery plot (and I believe it was statistically the deadliest weekend for car accidents but I could be misremembering). I felt sick to my stomach at the gaudy displays of excess, each headstone larger and more expensive than the last. As I wandered through, reading names and dates, I turned a corner and before me lay hundreds of unmarked white crosses in perfect rows. In that moment, I tasted an understanding of the horrors of war, and the beauty and grace that come from a simple honoring of the dead.

When I drove home late Saturday night, the flags at Pepperdine were perfectly lit. There were no cars, no gawkers or picture takers. I felt the grace, deep in my bones.

Sunday afternoon I saw dolphins. It had been months, though I look for them often. We were walking the dog along the beach and mid-sentence I saw the sleek curve of a dorsal fin and stopped everything to watch. I am always mesmerized by their beauty. At one point, they were close enough for me to hear the sound of their breath. Usually when they’re close to shore they stay low in the water but this time they jumped and played. I wanted to yell at everyone on the beach who seemed too absorbed in their conversations to lift their eyes, Do you see them? Are you witnessing this grace? Stop for a moment and notice. Here, right in front of you, there is hope, there is love, there is joy.

We are days away from the 10th anniversary of 9/11 and memories of grief hang in the air, like the fog that clouds many of my mornings here at the edge of the ocean. The events of that day gave us permission to grieve, openly and communally. We grieved the lives lost at that time and I believe, we cracked the door open to any grief we’d tucked away inside. Permission was granted to cry in public, to be incredibly kind to each other, to step out of the dailiness of our lives into an altered reality – one where we were, en masse, confronted with the fragility of our existence.

In the doctor’s office yesterday I picked up the latest People Magazine with the profiles of children who were born after their fathers died.  I smiled at their stories and ached for their pain. I know several people who were born into grieving families and it impacted them deeply and in many ways beautifully. I appreciated that the 9/11 widows had all found love again and a few mentioned being happier than ever before. Some have criticized them for moving on, but that is life. The dead do not want us to stop living because they did.

One of the most beautiful rememberings of that time (and other times) is happening in Pema Teeter’s Memory to Light series. Every day from August 11 to September 11, she is writing about grief, about memory, about life. It is stunning. Her words are breathtaking and heart-opening. Every time I visit, I sit in awe of her. Join her where she is now, or start at the beginning. I promise it will be worth your time.