Soul Care Rhythms: Spring
by Laura E. Peluso and Judy Ko
Editor’s Note: In earlier issues, Contemplative Practices Editor Judy Ko, along with her friend Laura Peluso, have been sharing their creative contemplative project with Vita Poetica readers. In a year-long exploration, they take on new practices as a way of discovering what their souls need to thrive at this moment in their lives. They embark on this individually, checking in with each other along the way, and also share pieces of their journey with us in the Journal, in hopes that something here might inspire others. You can read their reflections from previous seasons here: A Year of Exploration, Fall, and Winter. This Spring reflection concludes their year-long series.
Laura
Of everything that has occurred in the last few months, I was least prepared for the chaos that grief would bring—both internal and external.
The family, once a unit, becomes a collection of unmoored souls grasping for whatever feels stable in the moment, always on the search for something that appears more secure.
The family, once a unit, becomes a collection of unmoored souls grasping for whatever feels stable in the moment, always on the search for something that appears more secure. Those who have faith cling to their faith. Those who find solace in family work to strengthen and deepen lifelong bonds.
Vices, too, have a role to play. Those who can be consumed by lust seek easy companionship. Those who easily find fault with others are endlessly finding faults. And those who have rigid value systems will find that they have become cemented in place, despite others’ efforts to find compromise.
It’s difficult to work together with all these overlapping needs and unbridled desires.
In January, as I held the hand of my mother—my good friend and mentor—I watched her lose her ability to walk, to move, and to speak. The helplessness and weariness that overwhelmed me was foreign in its intensity. While I was administering her morphine, I realized that I wasn’t prepared to watch anyone die, but it was too late. It was happening, and I couldn’t stop it.
Receiving soul care became especially important during my mom’s last week and the weeks that followed. I will always be grateful for the cards, care packages, and hours-long phone calls from friends. As Judy mentioned in our Winter musings, the gift of listening is precious, and I am grateful to have received it in abundance from Judy and others. In my grief, my friends have held my hand and my pain. They have prioritized me, and I am humbled by their love and faithfulness.
Yet traditional soul care during this very disruptive period of my life was almost impossible. What can you do when every interest becomes an insufficient or warped mode of expression? While sorting through my mom’s belongings, my love of beauty mutated into a near obsession with the objects she loved, elevating them to the status of talismans. The appreciation of the new also became a great temptation for me. I made an effort not to shop or browse online stores, knowing that the temporary satisfaction would end and leave me feeling foolish.
Receiving soul care became especially important during my mom’s last week and the weeks that followed.
Eating also became a challenge. While preparing meals, my love of food was replaced with the physical exhaustion of providing for myself, and I had a total lack of interest in playing with tastes and textures. What I once saw as a creative outlet was now totally devoid of joy. The only thing I wanted to do was nothing.
So I did. For two weeks after my mom’s death, I sat. when I wasn’t sitting on my bed, I was sitting on a bench near my home. And I cried. The tears kept coming, and I couldn’t stop them. “How are you?” became a question I learned to avoid from anyone who isn’t a good friend or a close family member. (“How do you think I am?” I wanted to ask the acquaintances who came to the door the same day my mom had passed.)
I also read and read and read in an attempt to understand my own feelings as well as the grief of those around me. Of all the resources that I encountered, I would like to recommend It's OK That You're Not OK by Meghan Devine. Her approach to bereavement left me feeling empowered and—this is important—normal. While I underlined much of her writing, I found this thought especially powerful: “Grief is visceral, not reasonable: the howling at the center of grief is raw and real. It is love in its most wild form.”
I love you, Mom. Wildly.
Judy
I’ve just returned from a first time trip to Japan and bring back with me daydreams of quince and cherry blossom petals fluttering down to peck my cheeks. I return with observations of another way of life and appreciation of cultural differences and similarities. I also bring back with deeper humility how travel illuminates what my body can and cannot do, and how I can so easily fail myself and those I love. Traveling forces me to be with myself in revelatory ways.
Throughout this year, Laura and I have reflected collectively and separately on soul care, spending time inward and also reaching out to each other with our heart tendrils to meet in the harbor of friendship. Last summer, I remember feeling quite intimidated by this project, thinking Gosh, how inadequate am I to be representing a contemplative practice? Well, that thought has been shattered by another intimidating thought, which is that we are all, every one of us, already doing it!
The creaturely things that are instinctually part of us, like breathing, are actually a wonderful place to begin or to build on this journey of contemplative awareness. If I trust the motions my body wants to make and allow meaning to emerge at its own pace, what is inside me will come alive and come forth to meet the practice.
A realization unfolding for me is that a contemplative practice doesn’t have to be an activity that should look a certain way, a significant adjustment to my mindset. The creaturely things that are instinctually part of us, like breathing, are actually a wonderful place to begin or to build on this journey of contemplative awareness. If I trust the motions my body wants to make and allow meaning to emerge at its own pace, what is inside me will come alive and come forth to meet the practice. It’s not so much the motions themselves but the posture with which I approach the motions. The motions give form to the intuitive spirit.
Ultimately, it is our own path toward awareness that will bring us to a way of being that rings true and stays with us.
I want to end with this pair of haikus, inspired by my recent trip, while walking through Yoyogi Park in Shibuya City, Tokyo. The act of translating a moment of emotions and experience into a structured form was a contemplative practice of reflection for me, connecting my being self with my doing self. This integrative act allowed me to honor the moment. I am curious to hear what bears resonance for you on your own contemplative path.
A branch gestures, bends.
Come, echoes lyrical leaves.
We bow. An exchange.
Walk with me, beckons
the breeze. We bump, stumble, step.
The sakuras dance.
Laura E. Peluso, a New England native and former New York City resident, pursues peace and comfort in mountains and oceans as enthusiastically as she searches for inspiration in the vitality of urban places. As she navigates each year’s unexpected challenges, she continues to seek—with great imperfection—a life filled with purpose and joy.
Contemplative Practices Editor Judy Ko is interested in the intersections of creativity, beauty, truth, and rest. She practiced graphic design in NYC before moving to the Pacific Northwest, where she is now serving children and families in the Seattle area as a play therapist, and investigating the neuroscience of minds, bodies, and relationships in transformation.
