Zen Time Revelations About Grief and Happiness

Zen Time Revelations About Grief and Happiness

Do you meditate regularly? I’d been wanting to develop a meditation practice for some time. Then I learned something in my positive psychology course at udemy.com that inspired me to take action; when you want to create a new habit you need to know the when and the where as well as the why.

I got to work. I decided my “when” would be after supper, my “where” would be on the bench by the brook in our back yard.

After supper I go outside to the patio which borders the brook. First I stand on the small bridge (facing what you see in the photo) and I ground myself. Then I do a Qigong breathing exercise followed by an exercise called the moving of yin and yang. After that I simply sit on the bench.

Do I completely empty my mind? No, though I’m working on it. I allow my mind to wander as I stare at the froth at the bottom of the small waterfall. I find myself communing with nature, if not meditating. It’s my “Zen Time”. It’s a start.

And sometimes thoughts come to me that don’t feel like my thoughts.

One evening I was thinking of how much I miss my son. “You made me happy!” I whispered. “No,” he corrected, “I was only part of what made you happy. What other parts of your life make you happy?”

Of course, there are other parts of my life that make me happy. There is the part with my husband and the part with my daughter. There is the part where I live in this beautiful property we call “Serenity”, the part with my Terra Cotta Pendants family business, the healing work part, the book I am writing. There is Life, for instance. I could go on and on.

My grief had tricked me! It had drawn a cloud over all the happy parts in my life. I saw the death of Alex as the source of my sadness so I had also mistakenly credited him as the source of my happiness. Grief distorts the lens through which we look at life. We become so focused on the pain of loss that we stop seeing the parts of our lives that make us happy.

Have you ever lost someone so important to you that you believed you would never be happy again? Does meditation help you to maintain clarity and gain a good perspective on your life? What parts of your life make you happy?

Photo credit: Lori

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About The Author


I have always loved writing and community building. I’ve written a book about healing and happiness, The Happy Place, as well as a Community Building book, Sounding the Drum: Community Building in the Digital Age,both available at any Amazon store. I’ve been through life changes that I thought were the end of my world, but I’m still here. You never know what will happen next. Isn’t that what makes life interesting?