Debra Basham

Living and Loving

Tag: pain

  • It’s ALL Better En Masse

    Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

    So here we are it’s Christmas,
    The most wonderful time of year,
    When our minds turn to our loved ones,
    And those we hold most dear,
    May the memories and traditions,
    That have always played a part,
    Make this season special,
    Bringing joy into your heart.

    I had intended to post this on Facebook, in fact, I thought I had, but we were navigating lengthy internet outages on Sunday and Monday morning. I just now found the unpublished post, so it will launch today’s Merry Christmas and Happy New Year message.

    Yesterday a precious Jewish friend sent an email wishing me a Merry Christmas. When I asked Google to search, “What is Christmas to non-Christians?” this was the response: For many, it’s an opportunity to connect with family and friends, enjoy festive traditions, and embrace the warm atmosphere of the season. The appeal of decorations, music, and shared meals transcends religious boundaries, making Christmas a celebration of human connection.

    The days leading up to Christmas this year are filled with more raw emotion than any I recall. On Sunday Jane Foster surprised me with a telephone call after her major complications following a 12-hour ileostomy surgery in late September. She has been hospitalized for weeks now. When she was not able to talk on the phone we figured out I could send brief text messages recorded with Voice Memos.

    Our beloved Florida friends are still in Canada as they continue to navigate her having been diagnosed in June with glioblastoma, one of the deadliest forms of brain cancer.

    Yesterday, Stacey’s dear friends made one of life’s toughest decisions and removed life-support for their wife and mother following a severe stroke this past weekend. She passed 8 hours later.

    Also, yesterday, John’s cousin posted on Facebook that his beloved wife passed the previous evening.

    Tonight, on Christmas Eve 2025, John and I have tickets to attend the 7:45 pm showing of the film Wicked For Good. When I selected our seats online late last evening, we were the only seats purchased for this time and date. My only other “private” showing at a cinema was for Lion King in 1994. It is bittersweet because last year we were with our grand children when we saw Wicked in Smyrna, Tennessee, and then met the rest of the family (including our great-grandson Jackson) for Mexican food afterwards.

    Zan Henigan Lombardo is a beloved artist friend here on Pine Island I have mentioned many times over the years because she paints amazingly significant ginormous (30-foot!) water color paintings. She hosted a Flash Mob Art event for her current project “Swimming Towards the Light” this past Saturday. I would have loved to attend but we were going to the magical musical launch for Bonnie Makepeace with Rochelle Morris that day. This morning I saw a video of Zan’s group and this is what I replied: This looks like a visual-version of a group meditation or a concert by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir — the good stuff is all better en masse!

    As all are wished a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, my heart holds the pleasant and the unpleasant life events happening simultaneously. Perhaps the simplest truth may be the same for everyone: It’s ALL better en masse….

  • Dear Former Me

    When I saw my primary on Monday she said I needed Zoloft or a therapist, maybe both. I had been overwhelmed with the stress of everything John has been going through, complicated mightily by the situation with Joel. For those new to YBR, Joel has been my co-author for over twenty years. He has developed dementia, and after being hospitalized in March for a medical issue, deemed unable to return to his home. He is now in a memory care facility near his son in Tennessee. On Wednesday his voice sounded raspy, and on Thursday morning a staff member swabbed his nose while we were on FaceTime with another friend. He has not answered text or a FaceTime call since.

    It is said one can handle work stress or home stress but not both at the same time.

    The story is more complex than appropriate to share in a single blog (would likely make a best-selling book), but what is important for this post is to recognize there is a distinction between pain and suffering.

    I have a lot of pain about Joel’s son not answering my email asking about his dad. It is almost incomprehensible the seeming lack of compassion the son has for those of us who have been with his dad. Several of us have been supporting him, caring for him, assisting him in meeting his stated desire to live out his life in his own home. Suffering comes when I go into resistance and blame about the choices the son is making. Suffering rides in on the shame that I participated in Joel’s current conditions by getting the paperwork in place that gave the son the legal right to make decisions for his dad. Shame also arises when I face how little compassion there has been for how difficult it is to supervise someone’s care from out of state.

    Yesterday’s news of yet another school shooting. Incomprehensible. At least 19 children and two teachers were killed yesterday when a gunman opened fire in a Texas elementary school. Incomprehensible. Many on social media speak of the heart-wrenching pain of this horrendous violence to innocent children. I was touched profoundly by one sharing that added wisdom to the mix.

    When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news my mother would say to me, “LOOK FOR THE HELPERS. YOU WILL ALWAYS FIND PEOPLE WHO ARE HELPING.” To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother’s words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers, so many caring people in the world. ~ Mr. Rogers

    Yesterday I had an EMDR session with a very special colleague. I am grateful she was available to assist my finding some equanimity. I have been suffering. There was A LOT OF pain released with the emotion. As follow up to our time together, she suggested I write a letter to the former me.

    May 24, 2022

    Dear Former Me,

    I knew you would appreciate the special paper. You were such a loving creature and your heart wanted to do the right thing. You could not see all that was involved. It was not just about that time and place. It was as much about this time and place. That now and this now are one and the same, just as “you” and “I” are one and the same.

    You have done everything within your power. This is true for me, too. Fortunately for both of us, there is a higher power.

    We have neither had a childhood. It is time for us to have that chance. Children deserve to wake up in the morning and feel excited for their day. They do not thrive in the fields of constant vigilance.

    Do you remember the joy you felt in the gardens? You remembered it at the aviary at the zoo in Battle Creek. Your entire being was bliss. That is what you remember when I listen to the mockingbirds in Florida. We don’t have birds singing to us every moment but we have an experience of “ALL IS WELL” in our sweet bodies.

    I want you to do something for us. I want you to let go of your part. Let go of the feeling responsible for Joel. Let go of doing something wrong that hurt him.

    I’ll let go of my part, too.

    While neither of us carries all of the emotions, we both have carried the imprint – and the imprint has created a distortion.

    Can you see how the words on the page are now gradually going uphill? Things are looking up for us. Joel lives. I live. You live on, too. All endings are really new beginnings. May is going to be memorable for us. Our new beginning.

    I love you. Thank you. Please forgive me. I forgive you.

  • Hip Hip Hooray!

    “Just because we are afraid doesn’t mean anything is wrong.
    Doesn’t mean a mistake is being made.
    Doesn’t even mean, necessarily, we’re in danger.”

    ~ Adyashanti, “Letting Go of Fear”
    from In the Face of the Infinite

    It is 6:21 am and I am sitting with an ice pack on my left hip writing this post.

    My relationship with this left hip has been long standing, pun intended.

    My left hip was dislocated at the pelvis August 12, 1962, in an auto accident.

    An auto accident which resulted in my having an out-of-body experience.

    There, I have said it.

    I distinctly recall floating above my physical body watching the scrambled flesh on my forehead being sutured.

    I was watching from a “space” of no pain, no fear, no sense of myself as a separate being.

    The summer of 2021 has been a time of revisiting this experience. I have connected with dozens of others who had similar altered states of being. Many shared much more extreme experiences, including those who were clinically dead for some time, but everyone identified ways that experience shaped the rest of their lives.

    Possibly EVERYONE knows someone who has had some type of experience.

    Profound gratitude for each person who has spoken out loud. (The International Association for Near-Death Studies is a non-profit organization based in Durham, North Carolina in the United States, associated with the academic field of near-death studies.)

    It is likely not an accident that I was immersed with this community, nor a co-incidence my hip would flare up as I process that experience I had when I was twelve years old.

    I will give a talk at St. Johns UCC in New Buffalo, Michigan titled, “Time Change.” Notes from that draft:

      Now is not a moment moving through time. Now has no duration. There is no time through which we move.

      Time is imagined to be real only when we have forgotten our true nature of ever-present awareness.

      We imagined ourselves instead to be limited, located entities. Time and space are born with that thought, but there is no present moment.

      This ever-present now is eternity.

      Time is thought superimposed upon eternity, and eternity is just another name for our true nature of awareness.

      ~ Rupert Spira, “Time and Death”

    Louise Hay, in You Can Heal Your Life, shares a probable mental cause related to hip problems: Carries the body in perfect balance. Major thrust in moving forward. Fear of going forward in major decisions. Nothing to move forward to.

    Oh, my….

    While the night is still dark, before I have welcomed relief from discomfort, even as you seem to be there and I seem to be here and we seem to not yet know what we moving forward to, truth embraces and erases each of these distortions.

    In 1988 I was told I needed to have a hip replacement. I was only 38 years old, considered to be too young. They only got about ten years from an artificial hip at that time. The same hip could only be replaced twice due to the formation of scar tissue. The doctor said, “Replacing this hip now would leave you with no options. You just have to face it, you will never have quality of life.”

    I tell the entire story in Freedom from Pain.

    Yesterday morning I cried when I saw my doctor, Dr. Leanne Mancini, DO, at Family Physicians of Sanit Joseph. “Does this mean I have to give up on this hip?”

    “No,” she gently reassured me, “it simply means we have to treat it.”

    Thus the ice, and the ibruprofen, and the rest.

    And, of course, the affirmations by Louise Hay:

    Hip. Hip. Hooray — there is joy in every day.

    I am balanced and free.

    I am in perfect balance.

    I move forward in life with ease and with joy at every age.

  • Retha’s Visit

    Sacred Stories

    It had been an intense retreat. She was grieving so many recent losses…

    Her best friend had passed with ALS. Her brother passed suddenly of a heart attack while climbing the stairs to visit their mother. Then her mother passed from the coronavirus — a virus that prevented her from being able to attend her mother’s funeral.

    And now, she was navigating this estrangement from her siblings.

    She had been sitting all week, doing Vipassana, being with the pain while wanting freedom from the suffering.

    She saw a small plastic picture frame, face-down on the chair. Picking it up, turning it over, she saw it was a drawing of a fish. A hand-made thank you card from a friend. The words read: Gratitude for all your compassionate support.



    The card was signed, “Vipassana love, Retha.”

    Carefully lettered up the right side of the card, “Emerald Isle 2019.” They had both attended the Emerald Isle retreat last year. Seeing Retha’s card was such a powerful gift!

    Retha’s visit was especially welcome as Retha had also passed….

    “Whatever has the nature to arise, has the nature to cease, and is not me nor mine.”

  • Carpe Diem!

    Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
    Old Time is still a-flying;
    And this same flower that smiles today
    Tomorrow will be dying.
    The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
    The higher he’s a-getting,
    The sooner will his race be run,
    And nearer he’s to setting.
    ~ Robert Herrick

    My fingers have been missing in action from the keyboard as I have enjoyed spending time with a precious friend. We played dominoes, went sightseeing, dined with decadence, and shared about dealing with pain.

    Today I am catching up.

    This is the beginning of the February 6, 2019 daily thought of David J. Bloyd:

    “Memories— the one thing that can never be taken away from us. Make lots of them! “

    —Catherine Pulsifer, Canadian author; age not provided

    wiseoldsayings.com (website)

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    But be careful…very careful…because it’s just as easy to form a bad memory as it is a good one. I recall a story I read many years ago. A family was on a trip in their car, carefully planned regarding timing and distances, and on-target to fulfill those plans. Their little boy was in the back in his car seat playing with his favorite stuffed toy. His window was open to give him fresh air. Suddenly he cried out that his toy was gone. The father asked where it went. “Out the window”, the boy replied. Now the father had three choices: Chew the little boy out and keep driving; just keep driving and let the little boy suffer the loss; stop, turn around, and go back to look for the toy. He chose the last option.

    Later, when with friends, the wife told the story. One of the friends asked the man “Why? Why did you ruin your schedule over an inexpensive teddy bear?”

    The father smiled and said “Because the toy was his favorite.”

    Now why is that important?

    Because whatever choice he took, it would have created a memory for the little boy—either a sad one or a marvelous one. We have future memories in our control. Whatever we do today we’ll re-live tomorrow.

    Reliving pleasant things is very pleasant. I have been doing some of that around my last week. Reliving unpleasant things can be even more unpleasant than the experience itself.

    My friend, Sheilana Massey, wrote Peace Has No Space for Memories. The book encourages us to live in the moment of right now, without dragging in the past or living in the future. She says we can live with Love for what is, not for what was or what will be. From this space our planet will move into Peace, Love and Joy for all Creation.

    The Buddha taught that we cannot prevent pain, but we do not have to suffer. “In life, we cannot always control the first arrow. However, the second arrow is our reaction to the first. And with this second arrow comes the possibility of choice.” (A search for ‘the second arrow’ will yield lots of pages, or check out How the Buddhist metaphor of ‘the second arrow’ can help you to be nicer to yourself.)

    This is often summarized as, “Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.”

    My friend is enduring a lot of pain.

    Amidst the pain, however, she is ecstatic about her new life with her new husband. She eats with enthusiasm. She loves music. She laughs a lot.

    Whatever we do today we’ll re-live tomorrow.

    Gather ye rosebuds while ye may… Cease the day!

  • Seesaw and Ups and Downs

    I just spoke with a dear friend. She is my sister from another mister. We are soul mates, and we have such sweet sincere respect and love for one another. We were sharing about the privilege of lifting one another up, and being confident we always get our turn. The metaphor that popped into my mind is that of a seesaw.

    Seesaws (also known as a teeter-totter) were commonplace on the playgrounds where we grew up.

    The seesaw is supported by a single pivot point. As one end goes up, the other goes down.

    My heart is filled with compassion for so many in our world. Irma has left many homeless, even if some only temporarily. It will be a long while before things settle to a new normal.

    A friend here in Michigan fell and is now in the hospital in horrific pain made worse by his blindness. He has lost his sister and his brother and now lives alone.

    What is an appropriate response? The following email message came from my teacher/friend, Barbara Brodsky, and her teacher/friend, Aaron. I have not asked permission to share it with you, but I know they will be glad to have you take it to heart and to share it with others.

    Dear friends,

    I have been watching the news and weather through the weekend with sadness, as I know is true for many of you. Harvey caused (and continues to cause) so much suffering as people lost homes, livelihoods and even lives. Irma will continue such suffering. Deep Spring Center is a national/ international sangha. In the past weeks and this week, I have spoken to friends in Texas and now in Florida, who have lost homes, have had to evacuate, and have felt bewildered and afraid. Such pain is a natural consequence of such uncertainty. We cannot fix it for ourselves or others, only hold it all in love.

    My first tendency was to think, “I offer you love,” whether it be to a person, place or situation. Aaron reminded me that to offer love is a subtle act of separation. It’s better than nothing, and does help, but it is also me, separate from you, trying to give you something to help your pain. It is a statement that it is your situation and pain though, and I need not experience it directly.

    He asked me to substitute, “I hold you in my heart,” with the recognition that we are one. “Your pain and my pain are one; your loss and my loss are one.” As in that beautiful chant with the lines, “because I am in you, and you are in me.”

    The natural human tendency is to want to separate ourselves from pain, from chaos and from helplessness, and to feel safe and in control. But life is often not that way. Acknowledging this truth, can we allow ourselves to be truly vulnerable and be touched by our pain?

    Please join me opening your hearts to our brothers and sisters, our mothers and fathers, our children, ourselves, in Houston, the Caribbean, Florida, and also in Mexico that has just suffered a strong earthquake, in places where there is war, and in the parts of the world where people go to bed hungry and sick. Please join me with the loving thought, “I hold you in my heart. Your pain and my pain are one.” In this way, the true energy of Love becomes available to all. We are not helpless; this is something real, to open our hearts to our own and the world’s suffering. We are bigger and stronger than we think.

    May all beings everywhere be free of suffering.
    May all beings dwell in the Heart of Love.
    May all beings everywhere find freedom and perfect peace.

    With love,
    Barbara and Aaron

    Some days we are up physically and down emotionally. Other days we are up emotionally but down physically. Whether the storms of life have you at the top of the seesaw where it is high and dry or the bottom where it is flooded with pain, we are able to know the truth of the ups and downs. As Barbara and Aaron expressed, “May all beings everywhere be free of suffering.” We are bigger and stronger than we think.