Buddhist nun Pema Chodrin said in her book, When Things Fall Apart, "Letting there be room for not knowing is the most important thing of all. When there's a big disappointment we don't know if that's the end of the story. It may be just the beginning of a great adventure. Life is like that. We don't know anything. We call something bad, we call something good. But really we just don't know." She's giving us permission to be uncertain, because much of life is uncertain. My favorite definition of love is: "Love is creating a space for change to occur." Having to live in the certainty of what was is a recipe for boredom. Beyond that, it keeps us chained to playing small. I've always welcomed the New Year because it affords us the chance to acknowledge a past we cannot change and forge a new start. Yet oddly, "the roots of something new frequently lie in the decaying husks of something old" (Craig D. Lounsbrough). Out of our mistakes new life can grow. "When life takes unexpected turns, when the Universe shifts, we are provided with a brief moment to begin anew. These moments allow us to become fearless, and to let our perfectly created souls shine" (Cori Garrison).
Real-life stories seldom have fairy tale endings. We wind up on a different road than the one we started out on because we are ever evolving, and while we're not looking, other people have changed. We are treading on shifting sands, and in some cases, quicksand. Wanting things to stay the same is human and yet the cowardly response though there's a bit of the coward in all of us. We usually change when it hurts bad enough. What inconveniences us and pains us ironically becomes our greatest teacher. When we can't take it anymore we sever ties to old ideas of who we thought we were and take on a new identity, slightly larger and more spacious than the one we inhabited before. We embrace metamorphosis not because we welcome it, but because it is thrust upon us. Standing on the threshold of a new beginning, we instinctively fear the fall. Precipices are risky places; one misstep and you've thrown your life away. Yet the change points that push us to the end of ourselves are saviors in disguise. Like a silent undertaker, change comes knocking at our door. This is why Pema Chodrin suggests we get comfortable with not knowing...because it always comes back around.
All change is first perceived as unwelcome and intrusive. It's not until later that we look back and see what a pearl of wisdom was hidden inside it; at first all we can see is the ugly outer shell of the oyster. Were we to pry it open we'd gasp in amazement that something so ugly harbored a delicate and dazzling treasure inside. That's the way life is. It's a delicacy-a gift concealed inside horrible trapping. Life is always beautiful to the person who, despite discouragement and disappointment, decide they will welcome change rather than resist it regardless of the cruel box it comes wrapped in. Holding life loosely means surrendering our agendas for something much greater than we first imagined. The beauty of life is found in exchanging the old for the new when we create a space for change to occur.
To see all of Nina's books: http://www.amazon.com/Nina-Bingham/e/B008XEX2Z0
Saturday, December 27, 2014
Friday, December 19, 2014
Why I'm Not Afraid of the Monsters Under The Bed
To live authentically and fully I had to turn away from the shadows that were dogging me and embrace a life I felt like I didn't write and I didn't want. I had to learn to welcome the blistering, ego-shrinking, unattractive truth about who I'd become before I could reclaim my life. I'm going to give you the secret sauce to defeating fear, but it has nothing to do with being strong and everything to do with being real:
False
Evidence
Appearing
Real.
Let's consider the reality of that acronym for a minute. A lot of what we face in life looks scary, sounds scary, smells scary. Around every corner is a new and thus risky, threatening vista. If the truth be told, it is our minds that interpret circumstances and people as threatening. Most of the terror we feel is manufactured by our own terrified minds. Yet fear can be the springboard that launches us into the experience of being fully alive. Author Veronica Roth said: "Fear doesn't shut you down-fear wakes you up." Jack Canfield said: "Everything you want is on the other side of fear." It isn't until you defy fear that you realize it doesn't have any teeth. Fear is like a rat with a megaphone: it's got a big mouth but it's nothing to be afraid of. Remember being a kid and the monster under the bed? It felt real, but once you looked, there wasn't anything there to hurt you. Like the monster under the bed, when you uncover your deepest fears they lose power over you. Get to the point where something else is more important than your fear. For me, that something was my daughter.
After my teen daughter took her own life in 2013, I couldn't accept her death without making something meaningful of her memory. For me, it wasn't enough to bury her and visit her grave on holidays. When there's a suicide, you're supposed to hush it up...or like a dog, kick dirt over the spot so nobody notices the mess. And although in our last years together, she was depressed and I was running out of hope for her and we were a mess together, I loved her...more than life itself. That's why I couldn't just leave flowers and walk away. If I was going to grieve I wanted to grieve in a big way, shouting as loudly as I could: DO YOU SEE? SHE WAS BEAUTIFUL. She was also tortured; but her mental illness didn't dim her magnificence one little bit. The something more important than my fear became my daughter's untold story. She was a gorgeous, smart, vivacious girl named Moriyah, who we called Mo, who scarred and marred my heart, then set it free.
What was I so terribly afraid of, you may wonder? I was afraid to tell the truth: that I am human and therefore imperfect, and sometimes I screw up; that my life has been messy, uncertain, and just plain full of ego and sometimes, madness. The monster under the bed was myself: my own mistakes, my shortcomings and imperfections...and I wanted them to stay under the bed. I would have preferred people see the big, bad me, but it seems life had other plans. Anyone who knew Moriyah knew she would have wanted me to "keep it real," because that's the kind of down-to-earth girl she was. So I wrote a tell-all, honest-to-the-bone book about my life with her. As author Marion Crook characterized it: "Nina Bingham rips apart the façade of coping to show the devastating aftermath of a child’s suicide and how a mother, flawed but courageous, learns to live again."
When my daughter took her own life, I remember looking into the mirror and perhaps for the first time seeing what was really there instead of seeing what I wanted to see. In that clear moment, a lyric from a Michael W. Smith song came rushing back to me: "We are what we've become." It was a seering moment, a moment I'll never forget. I realized it is not our titles, our jobs, or our educations that matter; it is not our cars or houses, our social status or even our own bodies. What's most essential to creating our characters is what we consistently DO. Our behaviors dictate who we have come to be.
I had allowed myself to become a woman who was taught by my fearful and cold-shouldered lineage to hide, cover up and turn away from vulnerability, and I did it well. I'd cloaked myself in a plethora of academic degrees, yet had become so removed from my own humanity that looking back on it now, it's alarming. I thought I was super-woman and impenetrable. I'm pretty sure the Bible says: "Pride cometh before a fall." When you have a big ego, you have a long ways to fall. When she died, it felt like I fell from the Empire State Building, and the landing wasn't pretty. Since then, I've fallen many times (I have a real knack for it). Each time I scrape myself off the pavement my reaction isn't shock or justification like it used to be. Now I just smile lopsidedly and think: 'That's too much of a mess to cover up, but forgive yourself because you are a human.' I've gotten to the place where I can "own" my messes. And that's the whole point of our humanity: that we admit how un-perfect, needy and screwball we can be and ask to be loved anyway. Freedom is found in the middle of all the muck and mistakes, in our quiet forgiveness of each other.
I'm pretty sure Moriyah would be proud if she were here today. Not of the book, but of me, because I allowed my grief to make me real. I'm not blaming the monsters anymore for my fear or failures, because I discovered that I was the only monster under my bed. I guess you could say that the tragedy I endured saved me from myself. And that's the way it's supposed to be; and truly, we are the only ones who can.
Thursday, December 4, 2014
Grief and the Holidays
Holidays are, for most people, are a mixed bag of blessings. As depicted in The Griswold's Family Christmas, anything and everything can go wrong, from a squirrel infested Christmas tree to the strange, inappropriate relatives descending upon your home, to a Christmas light fiasco. But that's not really why most of us get the holidays blues. Studies show that for lonely people (those not surrounded by family and friends), those who grew up in dysfunctional families (which, studies suggest, is about 60% of America), and for those who experience family alienation, the holiday happiness may never arrive. Additionally, there is a group of people hiding in the shadows for whom holidays and anniversaries may be almost torturous: the grievers. I've been the guest of many radio shows answering questions about my grief process, and about suicide prevention. Inevitably, somebody asks about how I handle the holidays. I cringe and tell the truth: I dread them, too. I grew up in an abusive and dysfunctional home, and I also experience family alienation. Then I lost my teen daughter to suicide (the kid who was my Christmas spirit-decorating the tree and house, and who had Hallmark Christmas movies playing non-stop). Suddenly I turned into the Grinch (or maybe Ebeneezer Scrooge). So how does someone in the clutches of grief, alienated from their family or with no family, reclaim their holiday spirit?
Redefining what makes you happy, what brings you joy during the holiday and then doing it is key to being able to enjoy some holiday cheer. If you are grieving or have a difficult time like so many of us do during the holidays, cut yourself some slack. Don't be afraid to say to your family and friends, "This is a rough time of year for me," and don't feel obligated to justify your feelings. Your feelings are neither good nor bad, right nor wrong, and you have a right to them. If I learned anything in my 16 years as a Life Coach, it is that feelings should never be judged. The holiday blues are very real for grievers but they are also fleeting states that will pass once the holidays blow over.
Angie Cartwright, long-time griever and the co-host of the National Radio Show, Grief Diaries ( http://www.blogtalkradio.com/alybluemedia/2014/10/16/grief-diaries-with-guest-nina-bingham ), asked me on-air how I got through the first Christmas without my daughter. I told her about how I pushed myself to put on a happy face and attended my fiance's family holiday dinner. She gently and wisely recommended that while jumping into the festivities is great if you can, new grievers need to give themselves permission to take care of themselves instead of doing what other people expect of them. She recounted one Thanksgiving that hit right after her mother had died. Because Angie was tuned-into her feelings, she let her family know that she was sorry, but she wasn't going to be participating this year, see you next year! "I had to give myself permission to cancel Thanksgiving. I had to find the strength within to let myself be true to myself. I have lived in silent grief before and gone to Christmas parties smiling on the outside while feeling like I wanted to kill myself on the inside. I hope listeners will give themselves the permission to feel the grief, even during the holidays. It's taboo to do that, because we're supposed to "show up" at our family's celebration and our work holiday party. I don't know who "supposed to" is, but I'm not listening to that voice anymore. I need to embrace the difficult feelings I'm having and honor who I am, right where I am. This is also my way of honoring the relationship I had with the loved-one that passed. When I was willing to be honest about my feelings, I didn't feel the need to hide my grief from others anymore." I thought this straightforward approach to the holidays was very brave of Angie. She had the guts to do what her grieving heart was telling her to do; she didn't allow herself to feel obligated to participate while she was feeling overwhelmed. I admire her refreshing honesty and respect her grief recovery work immensely. Angie is advising us to listen to our inner voice of grief; to take better care of ourselves than we do of other people during the often difficult holidays.
This holiday, if you aren't able to be the twinkling bright picture-perfect family member, glowing with zest and goodwill, don't feel bad-you're not alone. Watch The Griswold's Family Christmas, and you'll be reminded anew that many of us struggle to find that holiday twinkle, even in a room packed with family and friends. If you happen to be one of the lucky ones who experience genuine holiday mirth, wonderful for you! But if you don't, give yourself permission to be real; to acknowledge and even admit your feelings, and let go of the stereotyping around the holidays that says we are all "supposed to be" deliriously happy. Maybe being honest with yourself and others is the biggest gift of all.
To see all of Nina's books: http://www.amazon.com/Nina-Bingham/e/B008XEX2Z0
Monday, December 1, 2014
Teen Suicide & Warning Signs to Look For-Charlotteview Radio Show with Nina Bingham
Click here to listen to Nina discuss losing her teen daughter to suicide, and warning signs to look for:
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