Grief's Gift

I met Cory on a recent trip to Scandinavia and was moved by her unshakable faith in God. Her faith  carried her through two near death experiences and a number of serious surgeries. None of these caused her to lose faith tin fact it strengthened it.  I know some people would find these loses and experiences soul destroying but Cory and her husband just seem to accept all is as it is meant to be.

“The Heart That Breaks Open Can Contain The Whole Universe.” Joanna Macy Shauna Janz says, “Grief Speaks: My grief is your grief is our grief.” “To feel grief is to be deeply connected, and to be deeply connected is to remain tethered to an open heart, to love, to vulnerability and to fierce compassion. I believe these attributes are necessary medicine for the healing and repair so needed in our world.  The tumultuous and painful experiences that crack us open into the wild terrain of our hearts, also opens us to the wild terrain of the world. Whether our grief is personal, collective and/or ancestral, it is a form of intimacy which allows our hearts to stay open and responsive to our own needs and to the needs of our wider community. I see grief as one gateway to personal, cultural, and spiritual healing if tended to with care and dignity”. Sound Production by Dan Nave, Executive Director of The Lab Studios,  whose ongoing generosity continues to make these podcasts possible.    

Camille Fox was born in Alexandria in Egypt and left during the Suez Canal Crisis at the age of 6. After migrating to Australia she attended school and eventually studied painting and illustration at the National Art School. After a trip with her English husband to crossing the Sinai desert by coach from jerusalem she returned to the land of her birth and the memories of her early childhood started to flood her. On her return she asked her parents to tell her about life in Egypt and began pouring over family photos and books, joined groups and soon began painting scene in Egypt of yesteryear. Life carries us into experiences impossible to imagine and the greatest loss of her life occurred ten years ago. our talk begins with her childhood and takes us into parts of her life  that she continues to navigate and overcome with grit and grace. Camille Fox Art Email: [email protected] Mobile: +61 403946463 Sound Production by Dan Nave, Executive Director of The Lab Studios,  whose ongoing generosity continues to make these podcasts possible.

The paradox of grief is depends on one irrefutable truth. Nothing stays the same.  Over the years I have worked with the most courageous people imaginable. People who have experienced profound traumas and crushing life experiences. People who have lost everything through fire, flood, illness and war. Some emerged stronger. Some chose to end the pain in a conscious act. Some used their experiences to inspire and help others and some chose a life where every small thing was a gift to be quietly and yet deeply appreciated. Every one of us is born with the gift of free will. Every next-action is a choice. There are no right or wrong choices. There are only choices and the consequent outcomes of those choices. This podcast share a few of my own choices during challenging times in my life. Sound Production by Dan Nave, Executive Director of The Lab Studios,  whose ongoing generosity continues to make these podcasts possible.

In the York Daily Record beneath the photo of Makaya and his mother Elizabeth Revell it says, “Makaya Revell has had two mothers – one who saved his life, the other who saved his soul. The two women never met one another, and on the face of it, seemed to come from different worlds. But there’s more that has connected them than hasn’t, starting with the boy they would both call son. His is a story that centers on love and family, and while it could have happened anywhere, it started in a village across the Atlantic Ocean and leads all the way to Pennsylvania. It was a journey he started by mistake. He made a decision in a moment of panic that changed his life, maybe even saved his life, and now, 19 years later, his focus is on saving others.” Here in Makya’s own words is the next part of his story Sound Production by Dan Nave, Executive Director of The Lab Studios,  whose ongoing generosity continues to make these podcasts possible.

Life can drag you into tomorrow. BUT if you are willing to let go, and let  Life  guide you, it will open the door to in a world, more wonderful than you ever imagined. When I met Makaya Revell he was a very young and traumatised young man who was so anxious about his safety that he slept every night sitting up in a chair. Over the years his story has been told many times, but I never tire of hearing it. Makaya is the epitome of determination and he is an inspiration to so many people. This is a short story I wrote after our first meeting over 15 years ago. Sound Production by Dan Nave, Executive Director of The Lab Studios,  whose ongoing generosity continues to make these podcasts possible.

It was a wild and quick paced interview with writer Helena Ameisen. Her story of love and loss will leave you breathless. She has had so many experiences prior to and following the untimely passing of her Egyptian husband but her passion and inner fire swirls you around and takes you on her extraordinary journey. Helena Ameisen comes from a culturally and linguistically diverse background. She was born in Kraków, Poland and immigrated to Australia with her family in 1960 to escape the resurgence of anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe. I On a one year, round-the-world trip in 1981, she met her future husband – a much older Muslim businessman from Egypt. A tumultuous love affair ensued which changed the trajectory of her life. She married and moved to Egypt where she lived from 1985-2002. After her husband’s untimely death in January 2002, she returned to Sydney with her two children. Her memoir, ‘Maktoub – It is Written’ covers her love interest’s pursuit across the globe and their nine rendezvous culminating in marriage which results in a rift with her father who refuses to attend the wedding, then disowns and disinherits her.   Sound Production by Dan Nave, Executive Director of The Lab Studios,  whose ongoing generosity continues to make these podcasts possible.

It was such a joy to interview Makaya Revell. Long before I met him,  Dr. Elizabeth Revel, and I met through the internet. She was the editor of the AAGT( American Association of Gestalt Therapy) Journal. And I was the editor or the GANZ ( Gestalt Australia and New Zealand) Newsletter. We became life -long friends years before we ever met face to face. This is a story of a young 16 year old boy from the Democratic Republic of Congo who found himself by ‘accident’ as a refugee in America. Of course there really are no accidents. Destiny always has a way of overriding our plans if She chooses. This is Makaya’s story. But it is also Elizabeth and the late and great Alvin Revell’s story. It is a story that has touched every member of my family too and thousands of people who have been inspired by this extraordinary man. It is a story that changed the lives of Makaya’s amazingly resilient brothers whose work in the Congo through the Marie Mambu Makaya Foundation makes a difference to many DRC orphan children. This is part one. Part two will follow in a couple of weeks. http://www.makayafoundation.org  

Whenever I get to be with Juliet Martine, our conversation takes on a life and rhythm of its own. We dive deeply and swim together through ideas and experiences, coming up for air only to dive back down and relish sharing and being together. And so it was when we met recently to discuss Grief and how the shifts and changes we experience through grief leave us with countless choices and opportunities to grow and flourish as well as how important it is to allow and accept the pain of these times. In this conversation healer, mentor, coach and author Juliet Martine speaks about letting go and how that process brought her and her family to a place she could not have expected. Sound Production by Dan Nave, Executive Director of The Lab Studios,  whose ongoing generosity continues to make these podcasts possible.

Time is the one dimension that we have as yet not fully understood. We still refer to time as if it’s is something we can hold. We still say we don’t have enough time, or time is running out, or we apologize and say there is no time, as if we were referring to something material. Time is not matter. It is a dimension. A dimension of Being. Space is also a dimension. According to theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli, in his book The Order of Time, time is an illusion. He says that in reality time is just a complex network of events onto which we project sequences of past, present and future. In Rovelli’s second book “A World Without Time” he says that an event is just a word for a given time and location at which something might happen.  The task of physics is to describe the relationships between those events: as Rovelli notes, “A storm is not a thing, it’s a collection of occurrences.”  And that is what occurs when we are born and when we die. So in actual fact when we talk about timing we are not really talking about time at all. We are talking about an event that occurred within the dimension of time and space. And that takes events such a birth and death, loss and grief into a different realm completely. The timing of our birth and our death is for many very significant.  For so many of us we hold great meaning to the time we were born. But it is how and when a loved one dies that calls us to do what we humans, of all cultures find almost irresistible. We try to make some meaning out of it. Such is the case of synchronicity sometimes defined as the occurrence of meaningful coincidences that seem to have no cause, that is acausal. I however, do not believe in coincidences, at all. Nothing is without significance and from a spiritual perspective synchronicities ask us to release the control we have with our personality and allow the possibility that spirit is guiding us.  Synchronicities leave us touched and curious to the degree we now feel called to pay attention.