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Dear MollyPie71 Your poem is a beautiful dedication to your niece. Thank you I know your sorrow, my family recognises your family's trauma, the questions my brother left behind in 2001 stayed unanswered and as your poem knows, that is how they remained. Grief like this is a long pilgrimage and for some it is without end. Not all aspects of grief is suffering, grief also carries wisdom, grief allows and makes us grow. Because somewhere traversing forgiveness, acceptance, compassion, love & letting go grief holds within it a sacred gift. A divine energy that brings those who have no choice when to honour their loved ones, those who can't delay the agonising farewell, a healing beyond grief's veils seeds of loving kindness that harvests an even greater capacity to love themselves and adds further depths to their hearts resources that yields a surplus of inner compassion which in its essence nurtures them and those they touch for all of time. I hope this is the right link but came across a reflection given by Tara Brach that really resonated with this issue for me https://www.tarabrach.com/?powerpress_pinw=3103-podcast

Sammy Jo, I would like to be right with you virtually as we we may not be able to face one another and see into each others eyes. But we can be present. I know your pain pretty much. As you described the same thing happened to me almost 1 year ago on 1st April. Forgiveness may and will come, but there is an order of things that must be attended to first. What you have experienced has been trauma. I offer my time to you to listen and be a resource for you to draw strength from this connection as suits your needs. Everyone the first thing to give anyone who has experienced trauma is the resources of loving kindness, lots of it for as long as they need. Trauma overwhelms us and it takes time to reintegrate and feel whole. But Sammyjo I am hear and will listen if you wish. Of course you do whatever feels like it is enriching the aliveness in you. But forgiveness after trauma is not the first step. Healing comes first. Self compassion, self love. It is so so painful what you have been presented with. It cuts like a knife in our emotions and thoughts. You can explore these feelings safely with us it is important that this happens so that you can let these feelings go with acceptance again this is deep self compassion. You are perfect just as you are, you have done nothing wrong this is how it is and you will get through this there is the other side beyond this. You will thrive I promise you.

It seems that the course is so well timed with what’s going on in my life. This last week or so (I’m moving through the course slowly) has been filled with challenging interactions and a gratefulness for the resources. I mentioned at the beginning not liking being told what to do and having somewhat of an aversion to guided meditations, but I actually enjoyed them this week. I did the lake one first and was so happy to be told to lie down for the practice. The imagery of nature is something I related to the most so I appreciated the guidance and appreciated that there was only guidance for half the mediation and there was quiet space to observe at the end. I was a little disappointed to not be given the option to lie down for the mountain meditation but it made sense considering the nature of the meditation. I especially found it helpful when my sister called to vent about her frustrating experience with Centrelink (our welfare system in Australia). Even though I had suggestions it would have been pointless to any anything until she had finished because she needed to be heard and to have the chance to let everything out, so I listened and told her I could hear and understand how frustrated she was and when she had finished totalling I made 1 suggestion which she thought made sense. While I was listening I was imaging the mountain with passing seasons and just watching them and I really did observe my sister go from frustration to exhaustion and then a kind of calm in having been heard. I find one on one conversations easier than group conversations as everyone seems so quick to throw in their opinion or knowledge and I never seem to find the right space to enter the conversation. Sometimes I retreat that as I think that I could have shared something useful and other times I just sit back and save my energy and realise that it’s not that important. Focusing on communication has been a good practice this week to observe my reactions and responses internally rather than acting out external responses. The focus on what is being said has also helped me to hear what is underneath what people are actually saying

I am really struggling with sitting meditation. I love the body scan and feel like I am really making progress. Last week, I did the sitting meditation and dreaded having to do it again. There is only one guided sitting meditation. Can anyone recommend another one that I might connect better with. For the body scan, there were 4 resources and I definitely connected with one better than the others. Any advise is welcome. Thanks, Temple

Hello again, one how caught a summer cold and the idea of resting wi5 a body scan has been wonderful except that I’ve promptly fallen asleep each time I’ve tried. I’m happy with that though because the body obviously needs rest. My teacher always said that when an animal is sick it just lies down and rests. It doesn’t worry about food or anything else but rests to allow the body to heal so I’ve been practising that these last few days. Not going out these last few days I have noticed feelings of loneliness come up. This is also because I’ve just moved back to my home state of Tasmania and don’t have a network of friends here or transport so with the cold it all seemed a bit bleak. Remembering from one of the videos, ‘What you practice grows’ I decided that instead of feeling down about it I should change the CD and start looking for volunteer work and hiking groups that car share. I’m now volunteering for an event for the local rotary club and have joined a local hiking group (so far only online) and feel more positive. Thanks for the great resources

Hello everyone, I’ve just begun this course and one of the things I hope to be more comfortable with is aversion to being given instructions! For that reason I don’t enjoy guided meditations or body scans much and prefer to do my own, but I will challenge myself with some of the resources for which I’m grateful are available. in the meantime, my experience of body scans are like each part of the body receiving a surge of energy as I take my attention there. I can stay awake when I do my own, but have trouble staying awake when listening to someone else. I guess it’s because I’ve given myself permission to be quite and relax, so I really do ive just watched many of the videos and am going to try the practice of saying good morning to myself each morning. It seems like a much better thing to Lae in the mind and heart than waking u thinking of how i didn’t sleep well or what I need to do. I will get back to you all on how it goes. thank you very much for this space :j

Yes this is normal. Try 'Life After Loss' with Louise Creswick on Facebook. She is well-ualified and runs a grief and loss community (closed so that it is private) with free resources, activities, personal messaging and an opportunity for one to one support when these dreams offset you. I think dreams are a natural part of trying to work out what has happened. There is not end point to grief - it can appear absent and then be triggered off (which is what these dreams appear to be doing). It is good to reflect on them - see if they seem to be helping to learn anything. It may also be worth looking at if there are are common themes which keep coming up - as these could be the gates through which you may be able to resolve some of the haunting that you feel. Be kind to yourself x

I can suggest a resource on Facebook - Life After Loss with Louise Creswick. She supports people who are trying to come to terms with grief and other forms of loss. They have a closed community with free resources, healing activities and any time you are really struggling; you can contact her for a one to one.

Hello! I don't know you or your life at all, but based on what you've written I think it might be best to ask yourself if you're truly being compassionate towards others or if you're just giving your energy away to them without regard for how much you should keep for yourself. In order to develop the ability to feel unconditional love for your fellow humans it's imperative that you learn to love yourself unconditionally first—perhaps even MORE than you love others, because you need a solid foundation of love to start from before you try to build on top of it. Take care of yourself. Forgive yourself. Treat your body and mind with the same kind of love that you'd like to give to others. As far as how to transform fear into love, I'm afraid (no pun intended) that I don't know. I'm still looking for the answer to that as well, but if I find any interesting resources I'll be sure to post them here. <3

I hear you, Kalila :) I think social anxiety comes from deeply routed fears of being judged or rejected by others, which for some has been the case their whole lives, including in their family situations. In these instances, it's easy to say to someone "just change your mindset and your life will change", but no one really knows how absolutely difficult that is to do for the person dealing with this issue (except probably that person). For many people, the world is a very scary place because that's all that they've been exposed to, and it takes a LOT of work, resources and patience to let go of such fears. And this is not available to everyone.

In our community, we planted about 100 trees two years ago. The trees were already several years old and almost 2m high on average. It was both a huge financial and labour intensive endeavour. Besides planting a tree, it also needs to be taken care of if the environment isn't perfect. In our case, this would have meant regular watering, mulching, water management until the roots are deep enough to reach the sparse water resources. Most trees in the end died. What I am trying to say is "yes! Plant trees!" and yes, think of taking care of them as they take care of us and yes, use alternatives like hemp too. It's one huge problem that calls for many many different solutions.

NICABM Provides excellent resources on healing and preventing PTSD. Also the book “the body keeps the score” is an excellent Review of the key people in development processes in this regard