Debra Basham

Living and Loving

Tag: Snowbird Poets

  • Saddest of Days

    This past winter has been the f-a-s-t-e-s-t in my memory. We enjoyed visitors beginning the last week of January, and continuing right up until the week before we headed north.

    Some groaned when I shared that, speaking of how difficult they found it to maintain balance with guests. I would clarify how fortunate I am we enjoyed everyone (well, maybe not everything about having brother-in-law, Jack, come down with stomach flu was altogether enjoyable).

    We found an easy schedule, and I had time while many of our guests rotated activities they did without me—like shuffleboard or Tuesday night 60 cent shrimp at The Waterfront.

    I honored my Tuesday afternoon meditation group, my Sunday morning online meditation, and my Tuesday evening Dharma Path study group. I attended my writers’ groups. I wrote my daily pages in my journal.

    We enjoyed boating with Florida neighbors, going to Karaoke, playing dominoes, and watching HGTV and Wheel of Fortune.

    I rode my bike, I enjoyed eating one meal per day, and I ORGANIZED.

    As we prepared for departure, my organization really made the difference between struggling and savoring. For example, days before we were to leave, I took everything out of the fridge, washed all the shelves and drawers, placed clean paper towels on two shelves and in one drawer, and placed all of our stuff on those. I returned the homeowner’s fridge items to the door. On departure day, all I had to do was put our stuff into the cooler and toss out the paper towel carpeting.

    Voilà!

    Maybe because my overall birth number is 2, I live Habit Number 2 of Stephen R. Covey’s book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People®.

    The morning of our departure, I rode my bike to the Snowbird Poet’s group. There was confusion about the time and I sat waiting, writing in my journal: What gift to just be.

    Workers were trimming a tree two houses down the canal. The heavy-duty equipment was VERY loud. I continued to write: What do I do with the noise? Do I story tell? Do I acquiesce? Might my peace coexist with the sounds? It has been a holy season. I’ll let my heart savor the sound, grateful I can hear.

    Then a poem came through.

    Saddest of Days

    We buried her today

    way too soon

    Nothing prepared me

    for the shock

    Then soon she rose up

    gathering all of my memories

    Reaching the depths

    of my despair

    Singing my sadness to sleep

    so our joy could dance on….

    Debra Basham 04-01-2019 (WC 40)

    My journal entry included: It is a time of releasing. Notice how easily it is here, then it is gone.

    I’m very aware we are all here and gone, too.

    You are, and you aren’t. Many of you are “gone” more while you are “here”, and will be more “here” when you are “gone”.

    Just be present. That is enough.

    You are enough.

    Tell all who know. They all know.

    Love, Holy Spirit

    Today is Day 91, writing down my soul in my journal. Today is another day to let joy dance on. The saddest day is any moment we forget that….

  • The Aftermath

    You see, I have this weird, but in my experience, validated faith that if I surrender myself to my own words, the ones that came without too much cogitation or premeditation, they will lead me to a place I didn’t know I’d be visiting; they will show me 1) What I didn’t know was on my mind when I started, and 2) What I didn’t know I knew about that particular subject.

    Sydney Lea, page 195, The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop, by Diane Lockward.

    Sitting in my Snowbird Poets group, I placed my fingers on the keyboard barely breathing and witnessed The Aftermath.

    Time is nonexistent, Dear One, non-exist-ant

    Standing barefoot
    I am aware
    of things I am too young to know

    Stripped of my innocence
    when he climbed on top of me
    in the courtyard
    beneath the Viburnum

    That snowball bush was in full bloom
    while I was not
    yet
    but soon would be

    Ten years later
    I hear from some
    deep drug-induced fog:
    “If we don’t get her awake
    she is never going to
    have this baby!”

    Then: “It’s a girl!”

    53 years later
    my twenty-year-old granddaughter
    takes off on a bicycle
    as a sinking feeling
    of fear
    flashed fast across my face

    Of course, she was right
    I would have let her brothers go—
    without so much as a second thought

    But the Viburnum will bloom
    again and again
    unlike a young girl’s innocence

    Debra Basham 03-18-2019

    See Processing.

    Pearl Bailey says there’s a period of life where we swallow a knowledge of ourselves and it becomes either good or sour inside.

    Bailey’s words sing the truth. I had come from a legacy of women who had worn the shackles of sexual shame. My mother had a first marriage she did not tell us about, and I did not learn until I was in my forties that she had discovered she had a sexually transmitted disease at the same time she found out she was pregnant for me.

    I became pregnant on New Years Eve, three weeks before I turned sweet sixteen on January 22, 1966. I got married, and I was forced to leave high school in tenth grade. (See Loved and Wanted: Listen to Your Mother.)

    My daughter, and my granddaughter have carried that legacy of sexual shame, but none of us need carry it any longer. It is time for all women to be free….

    A Course In Miracles

    LESSON 60

    God is the Love in which I forgive.

    God does not forgive because He has never condemned. The blameless cannot blame, and those who have accepted their inno­cence see nothing to forgive. Yet forgiveness is the means by which I will recognize my innocence. It is the reflection of God’s Love on earth. It will bring me near enough to Heaven that the Love of God can reach down to me and raise me up to Him.

    I do not have written permission to share these words from Each Day a New Beginning: Daily Meditations for Women by Karen Casey © 1982, 1991 by Hazelden Foundation, but the message must be shared:

    For too many of us, feelings of shame, even self-hatred, are paramount. No one of us has a fully untarnished past. Every man, every woman, even every child experiences regret over some action. We are not perfect. Perfection is not expected in the Divine plan. But we are expected to take our experiences and grow from them, to move beyond the shame of them, to celebrate what they have taught us.

    Each day offers us a fresh start at assimilating all that we have been. What has gone before enriches who we are now, and through the many experiences we’ve survived, we have been prepared to help others, to smooth the way for another woman, perhaps, who is searching for a new direction.

    We can let go of our shame and know instead that it sweetens the nuggets of the wisdom we can offer to others. We are alike. We are not without faults. Our trials help another to smoother sailing.

    I will relish the joy at hand. I can share my wisdom. All painful pasts brighten someone’s future, when openly shared.