Spark of Life "Living Forward" #3

Numbering my "Spark of Life" notes allows me to share in depth the wonderful concepts I learned on this valuable, intense weekend!  I am not sharing *everything* with you, just the highlights that were significant to me.  #3 will focus on my "loss timeline".   All loss happens within the context of other losses.  To isolate the 'major' loss from all the others, and from our life story, could short circuit recovery.  I have already seen the truth of this through my counseling work, but had never mapped out a loss story before - it was extremely revealing.

The timeline allowed me to see how I learned very early in life that girls don't play nice together.  I've been burned many times on my loss timeline by different close girlfriends ... and this distrust of close women friendships still hinders me to this day.  I identified the loss of our fabulous church in Virginia when we moved home in 2000, something that is still lacking for me as well.  And then Max's death in 2010 and quite honestly, the death of my full and complete trust in God's plan for my life (which I am working on re-building!)


The timeline also opened my eyes to something else that was very helpful.  I've had TWELVE losses in the last two years, including Max.  TWELVE.  Not all "major", but they all layer and weave together.   Since I closed "The Clutter Cutter" to take care of myself and "just grieve", I have been feeling like my progress is painfully slow.  But the mapping of loss helped me see that it was NO WONDER with so much loss piled in to a short amount of time, including a major loss, that it was taking me some serious time to figure out life!  Todd says "2010 should be stricken from the record" it was so full of loss.  This exercise helped me give myself a BREAK!

In case you are wondering, much of the content taught on the weekend comes from "The Grief Recovery Handbook" by John W. James and Russell Friedman.  Stay tuned ... I will share a bit of each piece of the puzzle from "Spark of Life" with you all week long so you can get a glimpse into the healing that is truly out there.   Remember, I am just giving you the "overview".  Want to check it out for yourself, see the website - http://www.sparkoflife.org/.