The Ripple Effect

Photo by Izzy Gibson on Unsplash

I am back to it now. It had been six weeks off my bike and maybe six months of slipping back into my sugar addiction. Caught up in a vicious cycle of feeling sluggish due to some minor health interruptions, seeking comfort in the form of morning buns from the new bakery down the street, I was in a familiar predicament. Between extremes. I talked to myself indulgently, Sal, go ahead and rest, have some comfort food, you’re extra tired, it’s alright. Or alternatively chastising myself wondering, how did you allow yourself to fall into this trap again? The good news is that with a long history of falling off, I know how to get “back on the beam.” I’ve got to tell my inner critic to take a hike, be as compassionate with myself as I would be with my clients, and remember that Nike was right, I’ve just got to do it.

There have been lots of times, when my depression or anxiety has gotten the best of me, and I haven’t been able to “just do it.” Without being able to take the necessary actions, the pendulum swings toward hibernation and self-indulgence. In early grief, I subscribe to this indulgence. I just visited with a friend this morning whose son also died. She has just hit the one-year mark of missing her precious son who was a beloved friend of Chris’s, and I was brought back to what that felt like. I tried to tell her just what I’d needed to hear, “Please give yourself grace right now and in the year ahead. There is justifiable reason to take comfort wherever you can find it. It is still very early on this journey.” I recall when I didn’t have the energy to do anything but grieve and still needed to show up for work and for my living children, my worries over them deepened by the trauma of losing their brother. My body was weak, I wasn’t thinking straight, couldn’t power up.

On the flip side, I think it was grief that eventually taught me that (when I was ready) I needed to do all the things and more to take care of myself. I’m not someone who can take short-cuts. The basic prescription for good health works; get sleep, exercise regularly, eat healthy, connect to other people, ask for help and learn to allow yourself to receive it. I’m still working on that last one, but those actions, along with my faith, form a foundation to keep me going.

When I was probably fourteen and off at summer camp, my friend Robin and I were given the task of coming up with the theme for our final banquet. We walked together from the harbor, across the wooden bridge out to our cabins. We stopped at the crest of the bridge to brainstorm when I decided to take a pebble at a time from my pocket and to try skipping it across the lake. Robin grabbed my arm, “I’ve got it Sal, look at what happens to the surface of the lake when the pebble skips, there are circles inside of circles, let’s call the Banquet, circles of friendship.” I took my final pebble out, flattened and round and flicked it beyond a clump of lily pads. We stood looking at the shallow mirror beneath us, studying the rings and droplets of water the pebble left behind. A ripple effect.

This ripple effect took on new meaning after Chris died. As I sought evidence his spirit was near, not being able to see him or hear him, I began to feel him. Especially in the presence of his friends since his friends were everything to him. In loving them, I learned that love lives on. Each expression of love for my son overflowed into circles of love for his friends, who showed up to share their love of Christopher with us creating circles of love for their partners and for their children. I know Chris is celebrating their every milestone and continuing to love them through me. Christopher’s spirit, so alive in my heart, ripples outward touching not just his friends, and all his many family members, but people who never even knew him. Chris has sent me a memo from Heaven to channel him and seize every chance I get to give love wherever I can. The best thing I can do to take care of myself, once my foundation is secure and I am fueled, is to be a pebble.