Thursday, September 25, 2014

Aging & limitations

Have you experienced some loss of agility, mobility or capacity as you age? If you have, and if you're like most of the rest of us, you feel a sense of loss about that.

Our hearing and eyesight decline, new aches and pains surface, we are diagnosed with one ailment or another (or perhaps several)—and sometimes, we even face serious and difficult illness. We can't move as quickly as we used to do. We awaken in the morning a little more stiff. We may even have to give up some activities we used to enjoy because our bodies just don't cooperate anymore.

While we want to take the aging process and bodily changes in stride, it's also important to take time to grieve those losses that really affect us. If you keenly feel one or more of these losses, take time to do some grief work, whatever that may look like for you. Perhaps it means some sort of ritual or talking it over with trusted friends. It may mean drawing and/or journaling about it. What will help you pay attention to your feelings and then let go? What will help you move on to embrace what you can do?

Death isn't the only loss that's worthy of grieving. Many of life's losses need attention. Certainly aging and limitations that accompany it deserve attention. Once you acknowledge the loss and grieve it, you can more easily move on to a place of hope. Then it's easier to be with what is rather than constantly living in anger, resentment, shame or fear about what was and what's ahead. What needs attention in your life today?




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