How Spirituality Can Help Stress

@amberpep I understand my friend! I am praying that your new apartment will become your next "safe haven." Teresa

@amberpep @hopeful33250 We really should be getting our house on the market, it's way too big for the two of us, particularly when you consider the upkeep and that we are not young. The task of clearing things out is daunting though, plus I know it will be very sad for me to give this house up, this is where most of my memories with my son and daughter are and since neither lives close by it makes it even more difficult. I still consider this to be their home.
JK

Spirituality is something difficult to share and speak about for me, yet sometimes as disconnected and unable to know who I am as I get, spirituality brings a slice of hope and ease to the sadness. One "helper" that I've used to connect with myself would not be what many might call spiritual. It is a guided meditation app for phone, etc. Its name is HEADSPACE and it is simply lovely to use for coaxing me through meditation...drawing out the connection to a path of peace.

@4loss I appreciate this new perspective and idea. Could you share more about this guided meditation? Teresa

I wanted to send my respect to you for your great task ahead. My husband and I just cleaned out his family house which we were living in for 3 years which also included all of our stacked up home goods, his parent's complete life, and the memories of our son who is constantly moving in the military and never home.
It was definitely a journey of many months. Dismantling a home that has so much of all of you, and the family history in it takes time to pare down and time to feel ready to let go. I actually hired an organizer consultant who was very gentle with me about how to begin and gave us so many referrals for different steps that needed to be taken. Taking pictures of things that needed to go helped tremendously. I do not have a lot of money, so a few visits from her just got me going and I had a clearer picture of how to categorize what I "must" keep and the majority that had to "move on". What kept me most honest with myself was knowing that I did not want to leave "things" for my son that he would someday not care about yet have to clean out himself. Many tears of loss were shed and when our children have left, the grief and sadness takes time to process in your journey through it.
Now being on the other side in an apartment, it is such a relief and such a weight is off from all the things that once seemed so important. I feel relieved that my son will not be burdened by "stuff". We did keep things that we treasure and it feels like enough.
In our new place, our son visits and we talk of memories now. Everything that might seem gone is always in my heart. Still, as a mother, the transition to my son being away except for stolen weekends is grief and sadness that I work with day by day.
I hope I did not say too much. When you wrote the above, it brought to my mind the many parts of my own transition.
I wish you comfort in your memories and strength to keep pushing through it. There is an end. (I love the beauty of my own new place.)

Sure...I realize that my path could be somewhat different than others.
Many years of religious searching has given me many questions. Being that my relationship between myself, others, God and nature seems to point towards my inner self, I keep attempting to stay there.
Experiencing my particular type of bipolar, my mind races constantly- I do not say this lightly. Sleep hardly brings me peace and days are frought with fear of everything, anxiety, sadness, and loneliness. Maybe this dissipates for me for a time- sometimes a morning or a day, but not more. If I am happy- it is a searing joy about something- I call it an exquisite experience of God- and that passes within a few hours at most- so quickly back to before. I feel like I somehow almost "pay for it". Though I know that's the bipolar talking.
I explain the above to illustrate the difficulty I have in maintaining a consistent pattern for a spiritual path.
Spirituality, for me, is a part of the mental gymnastics that I try, desperately, to make sense of for my own existence.
How do I access the spiritual part of me that in past years was very different than it is now?
I listen to the HEADSPACE app, and grudgingly let go, with the thoughts swirling in my head, and hold myself there for 10, 15, or maybe 20 minutes.
When I finish the meditative time, the process somewhat harnesses my thoughts and I become peaceful inside, appreciating my life, in all the colors it shows me. There, I find the spiritual gift I so long for.

When I first left my husband, we had a 9 room 2 story house in the woods. We'd been there for 30 years .... I never really missed it, or anything about it except for the screened porch in the back - I used to love to sit out there at night, listen to the birds "talk" while they went to bed, watch the bats come out, and hear our one lone owl begin his call. Otherwise, I left and never looked back. Then I lived in the upstairs of a girlfriends house for 2 years - same thing ... no connection. I think the reason this was so hard leaving and selling my condo was because it was the first place, ever in my life, that I felt safe, comfortable, taken care of because there were friends all around, and just the ability to decide things for myself. That was wonderful. I had been there for 12 years.
abby

Hi all ..... if I may, I'm going to "switch horses" here .... I would like some input from anyone that has any insight into this. I've had depression and anxiety since I was an early teen and finally at age 45, I went to my doctor. She sent me to a Psychiatrist who put me on Zoloft. That was many, many, moons ago and I have a different Psychiatrist and now take meds. for Depression/Anxiety and Cyclothymia. I sleep great every night (my adult kids tell me I could sleep standing up!!!), but every morning, as soon as my feet hit the floor I feel this overwhelming anxiety and I don't know why. I slept well, was it dreams? I don't know what causes this, but I come right to the kitchen, take my meds. and within 45 min. it's gone. I just don't get why I wake up that way .... it doesn't make any sense to me. Input from anyone?
abby

I totally understand. It is a huge challenge after many years. You accumulate stuff that when you go back and find it you wonder, "what in the world did I keep this for?" And then there's all those things our kids made when they were young and in school .... they're the toughest. This time (and I say this time because I didn't do it before!) I made a list of what I was going to do and the order in which to do them....i.e. 1-linens, 2-sit arounds, etc. Another thing that really helped me this time is a book called "The Moving Experience - A practical guide to psychlogical survival." The whole first part of it is very, very, thought provoking, and the last half is the nuts and bolts of a move. I think you would feel better reading something like this ...... it helped me know that I was not the only one going through this, and that I was not going crazy! Take care of yourself.
abby

4loss - your note reminded me of something I'd long forgotten. When I was young ... maybe 12 and under .... I would have these extremely brief periods of time when I would feel such joy I thought I'd burst. It only lasted maybe 10 sec. at the most and then it was gone. But it was wonderful. It makes me wonder why I no longer have them. Do I live "in my head" too much, do I have too much else to think about to be open to those light-hearted, joyous moments, or is it just the fact of maturation. Somehow I don't want to believe the latter .... I would dearly love to still be like that, but alas it seems to be gone.