I have discovered that grieving healthily is a process we can learn. It involves strategies to keep us moving forward while listening to the lessons that life is presenting us.

Like everyone else I have faced grief on a regular basis throughout my life, and at 55 there have been some of the biggies – divorce, estrangement from family that I didn’t choose, the loss of community and lifestyle in my town of Kinglake in the Black Saturday fires, the loss of both parents, and most recently the diagnosis of a rare blood cancer called Waldenstrom's Macroglobulinemia, which currently is considered as incurable.

Learning that I can grieve healthily and fully has been the key to knowing real joy and peace, inside the turmoil, understanding that our journey takes us down the path to discovering who we really are and finding our place in the universe.

My strategies include practicing daily self-love and forgiveness, as well as love and forgiveness for others. They include time out, meditation and contemplation. I practice reaching out to find the beauty in everyone and everything and expressing this through art. My art involves writing, and part of that writing involves poetry.

In poetry, like in life, I have learned to see the beauty of the space in-between. The things that are not said, the rhythm that is left open, the rhyme that is not stated.

It feels to me a bit like our general scientific understanding of the atom. Until recently we thought of the atom as being made up of electrons, surrounding a nucleus of protons and neutrons. Now we are discovering that there are spaces in between the spaces. Amazing.

Life is just like the atom, there is always more to explore and discover, and a poem can express this mystery. It’s not just what is written in the lines, or in the spaces in-between the lines, but what is revealed in the spaces in-between the spaces. There is healing there if we open our hearts to receive it.

The following poem is my expression of living through grief and choosing life.

Descend Or Rise

By Merelyn Carter

Eyes wide open
Leaking
Spirit oozing from my soul
Staining once rose coloured cheeks
Bleeding out for the lost

I see I hear I smell
Falling to my knees
Head bowed
I break

Slowly, reluctantly I venture forward
Tragedy, mercy, despair, grace
Mingle

I experience soot coloured faces
Staring blankly, dreams suspended
Choking in ashes
And I break again

For a while I linger there
Shocked, shattered
Understanding torn away
Even on the gentlest breeze

There I rest

In time, quivering thoughts begin to ascend
To usher in change
Through chance, circumstance, determination
I seek to give and find comfort
In the delicate tendrils of empathy
But I fall painfully short
And fall to my knees again
Down in the earth I remember anew
The callus rending of hearts
Teetering on the chasm’s edge
Fear and doubt running through outstretched fingers
Like sand caught by the twirling wind
Cast up and over rocks
Scattered far and wide

Then I call out a question
What gain is the bleeding if impotence remains?

With heavy steps I start to recall my truth and I begin
Embracing the darkness
Embracing the light
Holding them within

Then letting go

I invoke the light to transcend
Remembering faith
Remembering hope
Remembering life

Yet in my remembering the beautiful and the monstrous
Glare at each other in stark outline

Choice scrambles upward
Innocence and romance no longer apply
There is no choice but to capitulate
Sink or swim
Fly or fall
Descend or rise

Heart in hand I choose to rise
Remembering faith
Remembering hope
Remembering life

Slowly I being to walk again
I run
I fly
I soar

I remember


Be Happy
Merelyn Carter

Merelyn’s writing is supported in part by the sale of her books. Autobiography - ‘The Deepest Part of Me’.  ‘Inspire’ – inspirational reflections for your life’s journey.  ‘Stories behind the Songs’ and her first children’s picture book ‘To The Moon and Back - Grandma’s Rocket Ship Adventure’. To find out more about her work and to support her through the purchase of her writings and music, please go to www.carterandcarter.com.au