Tag: Meditation

Encouragement, Faith, Family, Strength, Stress

When Stress Gets To You

Mona Alvarado Frazier
Depression, weariness, exhaustion
Gettyimages.com

If I could choose 10 days to give back to time, I’d choose the last ten.

Between my usual six month cancer checkup (to see if I’m still in remission or not),  a relationship ending, and my brother in critical care and suffering from ICU Delirium, the stresses of my life cut through any desire to do much, including writing more than a few words.

What do you do when life rides so heavy on you that you don’t want to get out of bed?

I jotted down bits and pieces of words in my bedside journal. Sometimes it was a curse word, other days I don’t remember what I wrote until I looked back.

This is what my journal said one day:

I think we’re on the brink of change, like a jeep tottering over a cliff in an action movie. Will it fall or won’t it. Will we be saved or crash and burn? I pray and pray. I show up in life. I try to write, read, concentrate, but all I want to do is cry. 

On that day I prayed continuously for my brother to progress. And then I rested and cried.

Another day my journal reminded me to take time out, be grateful, meditate, pray, take it easy. And I tried to do that.

I’m well acquainted with the valleys of life, but for the last few days it’s been particularly hard. Perhaps, it’s because I feel I’ve been hit on three sides; too many whammies at once.

It’s getting the gumption, the ganas as we say in Spanish, to move forward that eluded me.

But, I know things will get better, and I thank God I am still in remission and my brother is slowing progressing. It really is one hour at a time, then one day at a time, for a while.

Today, while returning home from the hospital, I opened my Bible scriptures app (yes, there’s an app for that):

Come to me all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest…-Matthew 11:28

I smiled at that. And then I put in my earbuds and listened to meditation music on my cell phone, while my sister drove us home. Among the soothing music a gentle voice said:

Put away the ghosts of the past, the worry about the future, and stay in the here and now. Stay in the present moment. Surrender.

Again, I felt comforted. I am encouraged.

These small acts have made a big difference. In my heart, I feel the ganas returning.

Thank you for listening.

AROHO, Art

Art as Meditation

Mona Alvarado Frazier
Abiqui Mountain-Ghost Ranch, NM-alvaradofrazier.com
Abiqui Mountain-Ghost Ranch, NM-alvaradofrazier.com

I yearn to return to New Mexico. My body is here in California but my eyes, and mind, are on the sandstone mountains of Abiqui, searching the expansive deep blue sky.

Five months ago I was privileged to join a group of 100 women writers, poets, artists for a week at Ghost Ranch in Abiqui, NM. We were there to participate in A Room of Her Own (AROHO) writer’s retreat.

A part of me stayed at Ghost Ranch, perhaps in a bluff, tucked into a crevice. The longing is so strong that I am returning in April, for the Gathering of Nations Pow-Wow in Albuquerque.

While at Ghost Ranch I met a warm, personable young woman, Karina Puente, an artist. As AROHO’s 2013 Artist-in-Residence, Karina facilitated daily watercolor classes. In the evening she set up her easel and drew writers’  portraits on a single piece of paper.

“My current muse is a brave woman, unafraid of challenge and patient with process. She is an ancestor…made of black charcoal and salt water.” Karina Puente

 

Her final piece, Women Who Sit, is a morphing wonder. She shares, “For the AROHO Writers Retreat Project, I drew 15 writers’ portraits on a single piece of paper and used stop-motion animation to document the drawing as it changed, resulting in only one woman’s face with many stories beneath it.” 

We are like that aren’t we? One face with many stories beneath the surface.

On Karina’s website the writer says,

“When the world seems dismal, Karina can discover –through her paintings- hope, confidence, and imagination. Drawing becomes a meditation.”

 

I like that quote: hope through art, drawing becomes a meditation.

This is the video: Women Who Sit.

Now take some paper and pen/crayons/watercolors/pencils and go meditate.