death

books, childhood, children, death, Holidays, life, love, relationships, soul, therapy

‘Tis the Season and ‘Tis the Holidays (re-post)

Gallery | Posted on by Jill Telford

The most wonderful time of the year. But is it? I am feeling tension and unlike myself lately. I am missing loved ones who have passed. 105 people die every minute. Nearly 2 every second. Life is precious. So, so very precious.

When it comes to my feelings, I chalked some of it up to the full moon and it’s power of making waves. In fact, there has been a cataclysm of events making waves. Globally, countries are struggling with leadership and death.

Lately, I have been hanging on to hope and resiliency. I stare at a photo of 6 year old Ruby Bridges who endured and triumphed standing as a metaphor and reminder that “what doesn’t kill you does in fact make you stronger”.  At 6, Ruby Bridges showed a courage that resonates today. I had the opportunity of listening to Ruby Bridges speak in 2015 at the annual NAEYC conference. The kind of courage and poise she personifies and how it connects with us, children, families and educators.

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Holidays are hard for many. For a lot of my own life, holidays were often off for me and awkward. There are empty chairs of those we miss and love. You feel the infinite loss and ache of missing loved ones. It is easier to send a gift and/or photo of smiling faces saying Happy Holidays. It is the thought that counts but what do we do for those who feel alone? How do we help others cope during grief or a sense of loss? What gifts can you give to the broken-hearted?

Here are gifts to give:

  • Gift of Memory: Take a moment to remember and honor the memory of a loved one by a hug, card or phone call. Although there is an empty chair at the table fill it with memories and honor their memory.
  • Gift of hope: We experience both sadness and joy. It’s deeply triggered by the holidays. Show up and offer to help those you care about. From the daily routines to collaging and scrap booking memories.
  • Gift of Love: Be in the moment with those who are still living. Show them you love them. If you are the one feeling sad tell them it is hard but stay hopeful.
  • Gift of friendship: Invite and include those who feel sad even if they may cancel or decline from shopping to having dinner.
  • Gift of Surprise and Spontaneity: Encourage doing something unusual such as a road trip or a flight to visit loved ones still here. Follow through.
  • Give the gift of time: Its about time well spent with those you love so spend it wisely. Spend some time whether over coffee, a movie, a stop by visit or something special to do together
  • Give the gift of food for the soul whether baked goods or a home cooked meal to enjoy together
  • The gift of listening: remember, it’s not not knowing what to say but listening and being there.

Looking for more gift ideas? Visit Sympathy Solutions at:

http://www.sympathysolutions.com/current-newsletter/10-things-you-can-do-for-someone-lost-loved-lone.html

Most of all, ensure to reach out, don’t expect someone who feels alone to reach out to you.

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childhood, death, life

Let’s Get Out of the Way

Gallery | Posted on by Jill Telford

Photo by Leo Arslan on Pexels.com

Remember playing when you thought no one was looking? How did you feel? The freedom? The boredom? Making up unique games. The risk-taking. Facing challenges. Realizing that chanting “I think I can” works and just when you thought you couldn’t, you did it!

That’s what happens when we get out of the way of our children. In fact, we get out of the way of our own selves, too. Let them live and enjoy childhood. Let us enjoy, too! Life. Life is for living not dying. Living the adventures of it all and perhaps, that will carry us all forward into their grown up years and our grown up years continued.

art, books, death, family, libraries, love, parenting, relationships, self-help, signs, soul, therapy

The Power of Love and Healing (Deep Work=Deep Breaths)

Gallery | Posted on by Jill Telford

Photo by KawaiiArt1980 on Pexels.com

“One can only travel the long way into the heart of another: the slow work of finding common ground, the careful discernment of grounds of admiration, the disciplines of kindness, encouragement, silence, and restraint. It takes a deliberate choice, renewed regularly, to love every human being one encounters.” (Zena Hitz)

If it’s worth it, it will not be easy… something like that Bob Marley said. A monk was also quoted previously in response to this question:

“What’s the hardest part about being a monk?” He said, “Other monks”.

What’s the hardest part about life and love?

Other people.

Isn’t that funny? Other people. We do not have control. We have control only over oneself. Only of ourselves and how we respond or how we do not respond to others.

They say the highest form of flattery is gossip. If you find yourself trembling off the lips of another it’s truly none of your business. Monks do not talk much as it’s well known. There is a reason for that. Self-discipline and restraint. Choose not to judge and just respect the journey we are all walking.

Loving, guiding, whispering, petals of a flower as delicate as the work of our hands whether they are rough or smooth. Show your hands and it will show me your work.

Follow the palmar flexion creases on your hands. Your hands are your life’s and love’s work.

What you choose to do with your hands is your life’s work.

If you wreak havoc and chaos. If you choose to hit and harm, it is never, ever forgotten and permanently stored somehow, someway into the deep recesses of one’s mind. Memories are stored deep and remembered. Never forgotten. We all are patients of our own memories. Choose to love and be gentle even if someone sees it as a weakness. Because, in fact, it is strength. Gentleness is strength. If someone hurt you, you forgive them but move on. You do not have to forget. Lessons are in it. You learn what not to accept. You learn what not to do. You learn the lessons life dishes out and deals. You remember, forgive and you move on. Let it move you to dance. To sing. To read. To draw. To write. To paint. To act. To create. Scream love.

The [Heart, Mind, Brain and…] Body Keeps the Score always. A must read book is The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk M.D., found here: https://www.besselvanderkolk.com/resources/the-body-keeps-the-score

…remember while it’s a long way into someone else heart, it’s also a long way into your own heart. It is a deliberate choice to love yourself just the way you are.

culture, death, dreams, family, life, lifepurpose, moments, self-help, signs, soul, therapy, Uncategorized

Signs Everywhere, Everywhere Signs

Gallery | Posted on by Jill Telford

Hubble Serves Up a Holiday Snow Angel by NASA Goddard Photo and Video is licensed under CC-BY 2.0

A cardinal flies by. Bright ruby red. Butterflies and hummingbirds dance across the sky right before my eyes. Morning doves sing. A quarter on the ground dated 1986. Changed by so many hands. Possibly fell off of an angel’s wings in the path I was meant to stumble upon it. I stand and walk among giants as none of us is as small as we think we are. A paradox of our times. Looking out a plane window, you would think and see just how small and potentially insignificant we really aren’t. Nothing is as it seems. Littles things are big things. Just watch and study ants at work.

Looking out a plane window, you would think and see just how small and potentially insignificant we really aren’t. Nothing is as it seems. Littles things are big things. Just watch and study ants at work.

Life all around us and beyond us. Beautiful, daring and fleeting life. Life in a single blade of grass life. Life in a single fingerprint life. Life in a single sip of coffee life. Life lies even in a pesky and stubborn weed in the garden that keeps reemerging life. It hurts to tug it out of the ground. Everything wants to live. We want to live another day. Another minute.

We emerge no matter the challenge or obstacle in the words of Tupac Shakur even from concrete. We breakthrough like the stars emerging from stardust life that we innately are. Where do we go after life? That question follows me each and everywhere I turn. Where do we go? Will we see each other again?

Life is found in a single minute. One single minute matters more than you think. I stare at the sky throughout the day just to stare at it no need to have a reason. The stars. The constellations. Connecting the dots to what all of this really means. We’re all deeply connected like an infinite constellation more than anyone could possibly ever realize or conceptualize.

death, education, education, earlyed, behavior, development, children, family, help, life, moments, relationships, teaching

The Art of Saying Goodbye

Gallery | Posted on by Jill Telford

Would you give your most precious belongings to a stranger?

I’m not sure what you care about but think about it. Think about something you care a lot about and wonder whether or not you would give it away freely or with hesitation. Would you give a stranger your mother’s ring? Would you give your car? Would you give your cellphone?

Now imagine what that may feel like for a family when they arrive to a classroom or school for the first time where their child will be going. 
It’s not easy. Our families need hugs the most. During the day, when our children say they miss their loved ones we often remind our children that no matter what they are always in their hearts. I used to say no matter what they will always be back but a part of me feels like that is a lie. Because I remember when my mother didn’t come back. I remember the day my mother died.

Now I say, no matter what they are always in your heart. No matter what. It’s never really a goodbye. And, a great educator and now friend from Nigeria said, “We meet to part and part to meet.” It’s never really a goodbye. She had a finesse and way of saying goodbye without ever saying bye. In that moment, she spoke to and educated not my head but my heart and spirit. I pay that kind of thing forward. With love+light+hugs.

Lots of them.

culture, death, earlyed, education, jail, leadership, relationships

Tis the Season: the Jolly and Not So Jolly of Times

Gallery | Posted on by Jill Telford

The most wonderful time of the year. But is it? I am feeling tension and unlike myself lately. I am missing loved ones who have passed. 105 people die every minute. Nearly 2 every second. Life is precious. So very precious.

When it comes to my feelings, I chalked some of it up to the full moon and it’s power of making waves. In fact, there has been a cataclysm of events making waves. Globally countries are struggling with leadership and death.

Lately, I have been hanging on to hope and resiliency. I stare at a photo of 6 year old Ruby Bridges who endured and triumphed standing as a metaphor and reminder that “what doesn’t kill you does in fact make you stronger”.  At 6, Ruby Bridges showed a courage that resonates today. I had the opportunity of listening to Ruby Bridges speak in 2015 at the annual NAEYC conference. The kind of courage and poise she personifies and how it connects with us, children, families and educators.

img_0078

Holidays are hard for many. For a lot of my own life, holidays were often off for me and awkward. There are empty chairs of those we miss and love. You feel the infinite loss and ache of missing loved ones. It is easier to send a gift and/or photo of smiling faces saying Happy Holidays. It is the thought that counts but what do we do for those who feel alone? How do we help others cope during grief or a sense of loss? What gifts can you give to the broken-hearted?

Here are gifts to give:

  • Gift of Memory: Take a moment to remember and honor the memory of a loved one by a hug, card or phone call. Although there is an empty chair at the table fill it with memories and honor their memory.
  • Gift of hope: We experience both sadness and joy. It’s deeply triggered by the holidays. Show up and offer to help those you care about. From the daily routines to collaging and scrap booking memories.
  • Gift of Love: Be in the moment with those who are still living. Show them you love them. If you are the one feeling sad tell them it is hard but stay hopeful.
  • Gift of friendship: Invite and include those who feel sad even if they may cancel or decline from shopping to having dinner.
  • Gift of Surprise and Spontaneity: Encourage doing something unusual such as a road trip or a flight to visit loved ones still here. Follow through.
  • Give the gift of time: Its about time well spent with those you love so spend it wisely. Spend some time whether over coffee, a movie, a stop by visit or something special to do together
  • Give the gift of food for the soul whether baked goods or a home cooked meal to enjoy together
  • The gift of listening: remember, it’s not not knowing what to say but listening and being there.

Looking for more gift ideas? Visit Sympathy Solutions at:

http://www.sympathysolutions.com/current-newsletter/10-things-you-can-do-for-someone-lost-loved-lone.html

Most of all, ensure to reach out, don’t expect someone who feels alone to reach out to you.

img_0077

death, education, earlyed, behavior, development, children, family, help, life

We All Die or Do We?

Gallery | Posted on by Jill Telford

To Die or Not to Die?

That is the question.

“We all die and go to Heaven.”

“We become angels when we die.”

“No we don’t.”
“Yes we do.”
“No we don’t.”
“Yes, we do.”
“All of us die. We turn into angels. And, we go to Heaven!”
A metal pail is thrown.
“We DON’T DIE.” 
“Yes, we do!”
“My Mom said we do. We all die and go to Heaven.”
We are born and we die. 
Or do we?
Our preschool classroom has me question everything about our life and spiritual existence.
Life is death and death is life.
C’est le vie. C’est la mort.

Do we ever really die?

That is the real question.