Shifting Shadow Stories

When I was two

A few weeks ago I was struggling with negative thoughts about my website designer. I say struggling because a) they were making me feel powerless and victimized and b) I was afraid these thoughts might be contributing to the problem. I believe in the power of intention — that thoughts have energy and can actually create reality. But you don’t have to be a believer to appreciate the impact that negative thoughts can have on your life.

Negative thoughts and the shadow stories that fuel them, create a lens through which we filter our experience of the world. Take for example, the story of the neglected child. It is one of my childhood stories and very likely it was feeding my negative thoughts about my website designer. The neglected child is about not getting enough love, attention and support. I call it a shadow story, because it blocks the light, and leads to dark thoughts. Many of us have this particular story, as it is hard for parents to get child rearing right. Either they are neglectful or too over-bearing. Since I grew up with five other siblings, I fell on the neglect side of the continuum.

A shadow story like the neglected child becomes a problem when it colors our perception of what is happening, when it infuses a situation with more anguish or anger than is warranted by the situation and robs us of objectivity and peace.

At my mom’s memorial service, my sister Susi put up poster sized blow-ups of family photos taken by my mother –an exceptional portrait photographer. I searched through the crowded rooms of the funeral home before and after the service, but could find no photo of myself. Feeling raw at the loss of my mother and somewhat estranged from my siblings because of living on the opposite coast, my neglected child was activated. Beside myself with grief and loss, I confronted my sister about her oversight, the following day. “Why was there no photo of me?” I asked in a voice both accusatory and wounded. “But there was one of you,” she countered with justifiable indignation. “One of you and your new partner (now my husband).” It was one of the last photos she took! Because of my story, I had failed to see it. I had expected to be neglected and this blinded my eyes.

Sad stories often cause us to take actions that maintain them, as was the case with my friend Marianne, another neglected child. Marianne often complained that because she was so competent, others failed to see her need for support. One of the benefits and sometimes curses of being a neglected child is that you develop many skills of self-sufficiency. It’s a matter of survival. What Marianne did not recognize was how her own attachment to self-sufficiency prevented her from receiving the support she craved.

In her final months of life, as a pernicious cancer took over her body, there were many emergency trips to the hospital. Never once did she call on me, one of her best friends, to drive her. She had this notion about not using anyone up. She carefully selected whom she would call based on when she had last asked them for help. Sometimes she would just call a cab. She could not believe that I (and many of her other friends) would willingly drop everything to rush to her aid. I can recall several times when my husband George persisted against her protestations of being fine and drove all the way to Sausalito to make her dinner. In the end, she came a long way in expanding her capacity to receive and I was grateful to be a player in her journey. It taught me a lot about giving and receiving — both of which can be challenges for the neglected child.

Our sad stories can also cause us to select or attract people and situations that confirm it. When my friend Sara had a mild bout of food poisoning she telephoned the woman she was scheduled to meet for lunch and asked if she could instead drive her to the hospital. The woman declined her request saying she had something better to do. Did Sara call anyone else? Of course not! Who would want to risk more rejection? Certainly not the neglected child! When I queried her about this friend who had callously declined her plea for aid, Sara admitted that the woman was exactly the sort of self-centered person who would turn down a sick friend. We often choose the very person who will fulfill our expectations thus validating our story.

We become used to our shadow stories and could easily spend our whole life nurturing and confirming the wounds of our past. Life, however, has a way of pushing our story issues in our face and upping the ante until we finally get the lesson or die trying to learn.

It is time to change your story if it is making you miserable or interfering with getting what you want. You may truly believe it because of the other guy, which to some extent it might be, but it’s also your story.

Clearly I needed to change my story about my website designer. It was almost six months and the site was still not finished.

How do you shift a shadow story? First you need to recognize the story for what it is–just a story. That is harder than it sounds. Shadow stories come with an emotional charge which can be difficult to shift–like a stubborn child holding on to hurt feelings or anger.

Sometimes physical movement or exercise can dispel that emotional grip. Meditation can also work. But when the negative thoughts persist, it might be necessary to give the angry child some space to rant. My Sufi teacher calls it, “Giving the dog a bone.” Writing it all down is a very effective method. It gives the thoughts expression thereby releases them from the mind. Eventually the child runs out of steam and we can move into a more detached stance regarding the story.

I do not recommend sharing your inner child’s rants with others (unless the other is your coach or counselor) because we tend to confirm each other’s misery and this can add fuel to the flames of emotion rather then dissipate them.

Once the emotions have been released, we are in a better position to examine the situation dispassionately. We might ask ourselves if our story is really true? Do we know for sure that it is true? (A question from Byron Katie’s work.) Did my website designer, for example, really take more time than was reasonable? Is there another viewpoint? Can I look at the situation from the other person’s perspective? For example: my designer might counter that the site was complicated and her staff spent gobs more time on it than she wanted or felt paid to do. Another question — how might I have contributed to the problem? Could my hypercritical stance regarding my designer’s work have soured our relationship and created communication problems. Did my secret fears about the website being too esoteric and self-disclosing of the wild and mystical me unintentionally delay the process? Finally, do I recognize a familiar pattern here? Have I had difficulties with other contracted professional? Might I, like my friend Marianne, be too attached to my self-sufficiency?

This kind of self-investigation can be very rich and informing. It may be that like Marianne, I need to change my behavior and attitudes around receiving help. Or maybe I simply need to change my designer. Or maybe there is no problem at all and the website has being launched in perfect timing. Ultimately, I get to choose, not from an emotionally charged disempowered place, but from a place of clarity and knowledge. I get to decide what serves me best. The shadow story loses its grip
Does this mean that my childhood story of neglect is forever vanquished? No . . . but I will be able to recognize it a lot sooner the next time it shows up.

Meanwhile . . . my website is up at www.secretsoflifeanddeath.com and I am full of gratitude. It’s still being tweaked. Comments  are appreciated.

This blog site will soon be discontinued.  You will find the blog continued on my new website at www.secretsoflifeanddeath.com/category/blog/.

How's Your Life?

Doing a life review is one of the items on the list of actions for dying well. It seems reasonable that you would want to take stock of things as the end nears.  Create a personal "life report card." How did I do over all? What makes me proud? What did I learn? Do I have any regrets? Unfinished business? Goals not achieved? A life review is a way of wrapping things up into one complete and, hopefully, compelling story.

My mother did not do a life review, at least not with me during my very last visit. I did manage to extract a brief description of her most favorite memory, but that is all. Perhaps, she felt no need to reminisce because she kept such an amazing photo record of her family. She created a whole library of photographic books, one for each year and one for each family member. She was, however, the principle photographer and often there was no one photographing the photographer.  I wish there had been more. Which is the other side of a life review, the story it provides for those left behind.

My mother died in the midst of her life. Maybe that is true for all of us. She had cancer and knew her time was running out, so she focused on finishing up projects. This was the help she asked of me when I came to see her that very last time. I remember sitting in her studio going through a pile of photocopies for one of her toy concepts. (She was toy designer, when not raising six children.) There were many versions of the same set of images. Some larger, some smaller, some with different subsets, none of them quite the same. I was trying to create some order out of the chaos and I asked if she needed a particular set of drawings. Trash basket was at my knee. "Oh," she said, her voice plaintive and low, "I guess I'll never get to that." Her words pierced me to the core. In that instant I got the sorrow of her dying. There wasn't going to be enough time.

Is there ever enough time? Probably not. But we forget about this truth and go on with our lives as though we live forever. Until that fateful day when we discover that the sands have drained from the hourglass and what we have is what we've got.

Since we never know when that hour will chime, it makes good sense to take stock of our lives along the way. This way we can course-correct in mid-flight and possibly end up with the life we really wanted. New Year's Day and major birthdays provide ideal opportunities for such self-reflection. But there are also opportunities that arises spontaneously. The other day (two months ago actually) my husband and I watched the film, Across the Universe, a musical that used Beatles songs to tell a story of the 60's. Both of us, familiar with these years,  found the songs and visuals stimulating of our own memories. In the night, the music filled out dreams and in the morning, a Saturday, we hung in bed sharing stories of our pasts. My husband spoke of the summer he spent at Bread and Puppet Theater. I spoke of Sufi camp and traveling with my teacher, Adnan Sarhan. It was a valuable exercise. We got to know each others' histories a little deeper, and to have a glimpse of who we are in the continuum of our lives. It added meaning and direction to the road ahead.

One of the main messages in the film was to go after the things you love. To live fully and passionately. "All You Need is Love. . ." Among the list of 5 top regrets of the dying are: 1) Not living life true to oneself and 2) Not having the courage to express feelings.
My mother must have known this to be true because she was an awesome role model for following one's heart.

How's your life?

Conversations on Death and the End Game

Recently, my in-laws came to visit. Both parents are in their mid-eighties. My mother-in-law has just been diagnosed with breast cancer. It has been on my mind for a while now to get them to discuss their end-of-life plans. This latest news made it seem all the more imperative.

AARP Magazine just had a story about a family whose elderly mother had an unexpected fall and broke her pelvis thus ending years of independent living. It was a sobering story of the trials of finding a placement that would not crush her spirit. Neither my husband nor my sisters-in-law have a clear idea about what their folks want regarding this issue. I thought I might be able to get the ball rolling. Death and caring for the dying are, after all, the subjects of my film series, Secrets of Life and Death and numerous workshops, classes and trainings I have given around them.  The family visit offered an ideal opportunity to finally bring up the subject. Both parents, one sister and  brother all in the same place. What could be more perfect? Except, it never happened!

I discovered that it a lot harder to "start the conversation" with my own family then with perfect strangers. There's an emotional component that figures in. My mother-in-law was already showing discomfort with my initial query about her cancer treatment. Her short worded answers and insistence that she doesn't think about it because, "What can you do?" indicated to me that she was struggling to keep herself together. I certainly didn't want to distress her further. Years of socialization around avoiding unpleasant subjects and not hurting feelings stepped in. Asking her to think about being so sick she could no longer care for herself was not something I relished bringing up. Not when she was already having to think about having cancer. And weren't we having such a nice visit? Well, I just couldn't do it. But really, the truth is, the conversation needs to happen. So this morning I mailed her the AARP article on caring for parents and a note suggesting we have a discussion. Shortly after, I was told about her latest doctor visit and the likelihood of cancer in her kidney as well as her breast. Bad timing or good? We will see.

After the deaths of my own parents in 1998, I launched into making a film on facing death. I found very few people willing to discuss the subject while my parents were dying, so I made it my quest to help people lose their fears about dying by providing them with an opportunity to talk about their concerns and share their stories. Things are always less scary when you stop resisting them. The film I began in 1998 blossomed into the three-part series, Secrets of Life and Death. My film making efforts predate Bill Moyer's series, On Our Own Terms, by two years, although he finished his way before I did. Recently, I discovered, that someone else had also beat me to the punch. A very amazing woman named Ganga Stone wrote a book called,  Start the Conversation, which shares the courageous steps she took to help people, many of them with  HIV, face and embrace death fearlessly.

"Listen," she says in the first pages of her book, "Death is a transition. We all survive. Of this I am absolutely sure."

"Wow!" I thought, "she believes what I believe about surviving death, only she's not afraid to say it."

Well, actually I had been sharing similar ideas during many of my community film screening/workshops. People who come to my workshops tended to self-select. Until, that is, I began doing workshops for cancer patients. They come for different reasons. They come because death has left it's calling card. During one of these workshops, a young woman announced. "I have inoperable cancer , I don't believe in an afterlife and I am mad as hell. . ."  It was almost as though she was challenging me to tell her something different. I deflected by asking others in the workshop to share their thoughts. What could I say? I'd be mad as hell too if I thought everything stopped the moment I died. But I could not hope to convince her otherwise in the short time of our workshop. And who was I to even try? Instead, I acknowledged her right to be angry and kept my thoughts on the matter of an afterlife to myself. I spoke, instead, of the elasticity of time and the possibility of living a full life in whatever time remained. I told her that none of us really know when we will die, even her. Any of us could get hit by a bus on our way home, tonight. No offense to the San Francisco transportation authority intended. I did not bring up the subject of life after death. Was my choice correct -- not to challenge her beliefs? Ganga's book had me rethinking my response. Was I helping her with my silence?" Was this person looking to me for something more? Is that why she came to my workshop?

Ganga's book is fresh and sassy and tells the truth with no apologies or equivocations.

Body Lease: one body, brand new, for temporary use only, may lose functionality over time.
Terms: expires at any time anywhere, at manufacturer's discretion, with or without warning.

That's the contract we're born with. But we all think the contract says "Body will function optimally throughout term of lease and expire during sleep at the ripe old age of 99." And don't we feel a little cheated when things work out differently, as though we were sold a defective car and nobody is honoring the warrantee!

After shocking us out of our delusion about a long happy life, Ganga goes on to reassure us that unlike the body, the spirit, the being we really are, does not cease at death. Read her book and you might change the way you feel about dying. That's her promise. Since I already agree with her, I can not confirm this for the non-believers out there. It certainly provides some interesting proof.
As evidence, she points to the experiences of over eight million near-death survivors, from all walks of life, religion, race, social and educational level. Not only are there stunning similarities in all their stories, but more importantly everyone of them now lives without fear of death. The smoking gun, however, the incontrovertible proof that we are not our bodies is the the story of the sneaker on the ledge. Briefly, it's the story of a woman, who, during a temporary departure from her body while clinically dead, sees a sneaker on a ledge three stories above the operating room where doctors struggle to restart her heart. The existence of the sneaker is confirmed by an impartial witness shortly after she returns to life. There is no way she could have seen that sneaker from outside the hospital, from above or below. No way to know it was there, unless, she really did separate from her body. Interestingly, I had the story personally verified by a friend who interviewed the witness in the tale -- the nurse, who confirmed the existence of the sneaker on the ledge.

There is much more to Ganga's book then near death experience stories, compelling as they are. It is a whole program for changing the way you think, the way western medicine and the scientific community encourage you to think, about life and death. She is vehement in her crusade to change us. Our annihilation theory of death causes too much suffering, too much fear and grief to let it stand unchallenged, she insists. Time for change. And with the publishing of this book she takes her work to another level.

You might have noticed there is more than one conversation here. There is that ever so engaging discussion about whether we continue to exist after we die, complete with divine light and cosmic consciousness. Then there's the nitty gritty of getting there -- the medical treatments, the indignities of institutional living, the awful food and long hours of incapacity.  It was this second conversation that I found difficulty starting. But don't kid yourself, the other one lurks just below the surface. With the latest news about my mother-in-law's kidneys, we were all wondering whether this is, in fact, the end game.

After some reflection I decided I did the right thing with the woman at my workshop.  I am not Ganga. I have my own more modest vision when it come to starting the conversation. It is enough for me to provide the space for people to discuss their beliefs, fears and experiences around death. It's good for each of us to come to our own conclusions.

Meaning of Life

Eddie, an 83 year old war veteran and a very sweet guy, discovers his life's purpose only after he dies, in the film, Five People You Meet in Heaven. Eddie, played wonderfully by John Voight, begins his tale at the end, shortly after he dies. We follow him into the afterlife where he meets five people, one by one, who help him review his life and discover things he did not know. In a series of flashbacks that jump back and forth in time, we piece together the story of a difficult childhood, a promising future, a traumatic war event and the consequent loss of a life dream. The story is neither predicable nor formulaic. It is a complicated examination of a human psyche, with many unexpected twists and turns. Except for the heavenly music which might be off putting for some, the film is definitely worth a look.

In contrast to the hero in Ikiru (the film discussed in my last post), Eddie believes most of his adult life that he has failed to live up to his potential. He discovers, however, that life is not always about what we think it is. Both films examine what it means to have lived well. Interestingly, they come to a similar conclusion -- it is by helping others that we find our deepest satisfaction. In Eddie's case, as the maintenance man of Ruby Amusement Park, it is about the special kindness he showed to the children who visit the park. It is the close attention he gave to the rides to make sure they were safe. And ultimately, it is about his final act of selflessness to save a child from a broken ride. The sacrificial rescue is completely in character. It is who Eddie is -- the big guy who helps the small and the weak. His story is also about forgiveness, but you'll have to see the film for the details.

Both films, Ikiru and Five People You Meet in Heaven, asks us to consider the meaning of our own lives, how well and fully we are living and whether, given a sudden and unexpected death, we would measure up. It is about living heartfully and courageously though not necessarily in a big or flamboyant way. This subject is very dear to my own heart. It is one of the reason for making and sharing my film series, Secrets of Life and Death. They are films about preparing for death, yes, but also about what death can teach us about how we live our lives, about life's impermanence and unpredictability and what is truly important.

Like Eddie, we do not always know the impact of our actions. His story reminds me of another story told by Rachel Naomi Ramen in her book, My Grandfather's Blessings. It's about a business man, George, who thought his life had been a waste. He had two ex-wives and five children whom he knew nothing about because he spent his life building a business and making money. Diagnosed with lung cancer, he now lamented his choice. Rachel, his counselor, knew that he was the inventor of a medical device that enabled people with a chronic disease to live an almost normal life. One of her patients, Stephanie, was a grateful user of this device. Rachel asked Stephanie if she would be willing to write an anonymous note to the man explaining what a difference his invention had made in her life. Stephanie went one better and asked Rachel to invite him to her house for dinner. George agreed, but when he arrived he was met, not by just Stephanie and her husband but by her whole family -- parents, aunts and uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins, her husband's parents and many friend and neighbors, the whole community that had sustained Stephanie in the years she was an invalid. They had come to share their stories, the part they had played, basically the story of Stephanie's life from its many angles. At the end of the sharing, more than three hours, Stephanie told George, "This is really a story about you." Later, back at her office, Rachel asked George how many devices he manufactured every year. "Close to ten thousand," he answered softly. Then he said, "I knew the numbers, Rachel, I had no idea what they meant."

Share your story. Who has been a blessing to you? Whom have you blessed? What can you do for someone today?

A Time to Fight or a Time to Die? Part I

When my friend, Marianne, had a recurrence of a particularly nasty cancer, she fought it for all she was worth. She was only 53 and not ready to die. Her oncologist told her it was time to sign up with hospice, instead she plopped down $4,000, crossed the Mexican boarder and returned with a bag load of experimental drugs. Unfortunately, she never could take them. She was already too sick. The doctor who facilitated this venture from his practice in San Diego failed to alert her to this fact. Such "experimental" or "alternative" doctors abound at the end of the line, exchanging hope for a pocketful of money.

She had cyber knife surgery to reduce one of her tumors and give her some additional time. It blew out both her kidneys and increased her chances of renal failure. The surgery may well have been palliative as the tumor was causing considerable discomfort. Whether it actually gave her extra time or reduced it, is anyone's guess. Over the next month, she entertained each of her three sisters and her brother in her tiny home and got to say goodbye.

Toward the end, her body kept swelling from lymphedema and she could barely walk. Yet she continued to hobble to work up until the day she checked into the hospital for the last time. Semi-coherent from an infusion of pain-killing drugs, she blurted out to a group of us that she still thought she might make it. She was finally moved to a hospice facility, mostly unconscious, three days before she died.

Three days is not much time for hospice to do its job. Hospice is about helping us die. And a lot of hospices are very good at this. A whole team of professionals come by your home to ease your suffering--nurses, social worker, chaplain, volunteer, home health aid. They work with pain of the mind and spirit as well as the body. There is no need for pain as there are many effective drugs, many effective strategies.

Dying can be a powerful time for healing and personal growth. See my film, Facing Death . . . with open eyes or read Ira Byock's book, Dying Well, for some wonderful stories about this process. Ira identifies four things people need to complete in order to "die well": forgiving others, asking forgiveness, expressing love and gratitude and saying goodby. Not too hard a list to remember, but not always easy to accomplish, especially if you choose to fight death until the bitter end. So many people do choose to fight, a little too long, until, like Marianne, they are no longer conscious. The average stay in hospice continues to be about two weeks even though a qualified person is entitled to up to six months. Medicare pays for it all if you're over 65 and many health insurance policies cover it for the younger crowd. It's a shame to lose out on this highly beneficial service.

In part two, I look at heroic measures to sustain life and the hidden costs of delaying death. Please share your thoughts and opinions about how we might best prepare for death.

Green Funeral Fair

After a month of speaker events on death, Grace North Church of Berkeley culminated their ground-breaking (pun intended) program with a Green Funeral Fair.

I shared a booth at the fair with the volunteer coordinator, Merry, from Sutter VNA & Hospice where I am a volunteer. She was pushing advanced care directives and telling people about hospice volunteering. I brought a laptop with my film trailers and some DVDs. Didn't manage to sell any DVDs, but met a lot of nice people.

Vendor booths were all upstairs in a large room. On display: eco-caskets, funeral shrouds, home-based funerals, memory markers, high end art object urns, obituary writing help, books on death, caregiving and organizing, and more. I'll be sharing more information on these booth in subsequent blogs. As a tease, I've given you a couple of links. Stay tuned.

In addition to the upstairs room with all the vendors, the church sanctuary below had a full day of events and activities including: mask making, coffin painting, sugar scull decorating, wheat weaving, paper-flower constructing, live music, a sing-a-long with the Threshold Choir and a funeral hat parade and contest which I participated in, but unfortunately didn't win. Too bad. It was a $150 prize. The woman in the black veil won. There was a prize for the men too. With only three male entries, a much easier competition.

I had a great time meeting all the vendors. You can see my photos on my facebook site for Secrets of Life and Death (I hope the link works, if not, just search for Secrets of Life and Death in Facebook).

Congratulations to Grace North Church on trying something very different. Hope they do it again next year.

Life Post-Mortem

I just finished reading Carolyn North's piece on life-after-death. While researching for her book, "The Experience of a Life Time: Living Fully, Dying Consciously" she came across a number of channeled accounts about the after-life, from different countries and decades apart, with startlingly similar information. She combined the different reports into an imagined chat between her and these emissaries from the other side. Among her informers were TE Lawrence (known as Lawrence of Arabia) and Arthur Conan Doyle (author of the Sherlock Holmes series). It is a fascinating read which dovetails with several other descriptions of the after-life including the movie "What Dreams May Come" featuring Robin Williams and James Redfield's book, "The Tenth Insight." At the same time, it allows for a Tibetan or Buddhist vision of death. It is a sobering idea to think we have come into this world to accomplish certain things that will have an impact not only in this life but in the next. Check it out: Life Post-Mortem.