I am still grieving the loss of my sister. It is all too fresh in my mind. After all, it is less than a week ago we interned her ashes beside my mother/father/brothers’ graves in the Qu’Appelle Valley on the prairies.
My kind neighbor came over to talk to me yesterday. She knows how angry I still am at how my sister was left to suffer needlessly and die after the care facility where she lived ignored her basic health needs. It goes without saying that the anguish I feel is causing my considerable stress and is putting my fragile health at risk.
Marg came to help me get past this. She listened to what I was doing to cope with my feelings. She shared some of her life experiences and in doing this she cautioned me to not getting into a negative trap which makes me constantly relive my pain. Marg explained that she believes in my capacity to be positive and to excel to beat life’s challenges. This wonderful lady is a great mentor because she has had similar health challenges and she has turned things around to help so many other people.
Anyway, I am lucky to have this caring friend who freely shares her love and wisdom. Yesterday she gave me something to think about and some encouragement about how to turn “lemons into lemonade”. Wise words from a wise woman! Probably I would get to this at some stage, but when you have lupus you have to try to get out of the negative as soon as possible.
She invited me to find my spark so I can leave my mark in this world. She encouraged me to think about what is important to me. Knowing what space I am in, she brought up the point about thinking how I would want to be remembered when I leave this world.
A little later, Marg came back with a book she had just finished reading. She brought “The Spark – a mother’s story of Nurturing Genius” written by Kristine Barnett for me to read. It was so enjoyable I devoured it in hours. This story is truly remarkable and totally inspirational. It is about how she found the spark in her autistic son who “the experts” said would never be able to even tie his shoes. This devoted mother (with lupus may I add) relied on her own intuition and found the way to unlock her son’s brilliant mind. Her son, Jacob, has a higher IQ than Albert Einstein and he has learned to relate to people and use his great gift to make advances in the fields of science and mathematics even though he is still a child. This mother not only touched her son but she reached out to the whole community of families dealing with autism in Indiana.
So exactly how did this amazing woman help her son live well with autism? You really need to read the book to find that out. One clue though is she focused on the positives and worked with what interested him. She encouraged him to play and experience nature. And she never gave up on him and believed the low expectations the “experts” had of him.
I found some of the passages of her book particularly illuminating for me. She believes that we need to experience life through our senses. She talked about how she coached a stressed- out parent to heal his spirit by following her recipe to calm his nerves one night, He was to fill his house with the aroma of rosemary and sage roasting in a chicken, wrap himself with a soft, warm blanket (heated in the dryer), listen to music he loved and sit for an hour quietly looking at a family photo album.
She writes:
“indulging the senses isn’t a luxury, but a necessity. We have to walk barefoot in the grass. We have to eat clean snow. We have to let warm sand run though our fingers. We have to lie on our backs and feel the sun on our faces.”
On a personal level, what does this book say to me? Well, it opens me up to the idea that exploring my senses will make my life more fulfilling and less stressful. It makes me think I can emulate her and not let anything (including lupus) hold me back. I, too, can identify my “spark” and ignite it. And I can strive to let my light shine by working with what I have and building on it. Yes, my life matters!
