Wildflowers As Glimmers In The Caregiving Journey

Part two of an IT Live Session where I explore how noticing and cultivating glimmers (tiny, incidental moments of joy) within the challenges of caregiving is a beautiful way to sustain and support ourselves as we remain connected to the person we are caring for. In this session, I begin with a beautiful chant from the Ceile De tradition ( shared with permission) which invites us to 'Listen To My Heart, Listen To Your Heart'. I share a meditation on glimmers as wild flowers and then five ways we, as caregivers, can cultivate our capacity to notice the glimmers which will bring us more calm and joy, even in those most challenging days of caregiving. I thank artist Gillian Rule for the beautiful image.

Transcript

Hey,

A big welcome in to this quiet space,

An inside timer.

But I want to thank the Kelly Day community.

It's a living Celtic spirituality community who released these wonderful,

Simple chance.

And I was doing a bit of work today on an in-person retreat I'm giving very soon,

And I was using this music.

And I thought,

How perfect for our little space where we as carers gather.

A.

S.

H.

Lemacree A.

S.

H.

Led the Cree.

Listen to my heart.

Listen to your heart.

I took a bit of a risk.

It's almost five minutes long,

But,

You know,

That's the idea of a chant.

It kind of it brings us in.

It sounds strange.

Then we realize it's quite simple.

Then we might even begin to find ourselves chanting.

And it's it brings us into that moment of calm.

So why am I here to welcome you here?

Because some time ago now,

I really had this strong urge to create a space that is for carers.

I'm no expert on caring.

I am a carer in personal life to my beloved,

Who's in late stage dementia.

So that is the that is the sum total of my experience.

It's personal.

But I wanted to create a space for carers,

Really,

For us as human beings,

Because I'm part of a lot of support groups and I support a lot of groups of carers where we're learning to upskill.

We're learning to cope with the challenges of caring.

We're learning to do caring well in our particular set of circumstances.

This space is not about that.

My urging.

My calling,

My desire is to create a space for carers that just is for us as human beings,

Not in our role as carers.

So it's that bit different.

I suppose I have a strong urge to shine a light on the internal world of caring.

You know,

The unseen,

The often unspoken.

Really,

I suppose my desire is to honor the carer.

And so I opened this inside timer space and I did this live earlier today,

And I was so surprised at how nervous and unskilled and unschooled I feel,

Probably because my caring experience is so deeply personal.

And I know a lot of the time I haven't a clue.

So it feels kind of strange for me to.

To offer the space rather than turn up in somebody else's space.

But,

You know,

I want to remind us.

In this space.

Every carer that is here,

Whatever your set of circumstances,

I want to remind us that even in the business,

Even in the middle of all the feelings,

The exhaustion,

The loss,

The loneliness.

We can actually.

Also regulate our nervous system.

Now,

I know as a carer,

When I'm invited to care for myself,

Do you must look after yourself?

Sometimes it jars so much with me because in the in the midst of the caring,

I don't even know how to.

But I suppose I'm inviting us just to remember ourselves as human beings.

And in that remembering.

That we are human beings.

We can skillfully.

Regulate our own nervous systems rather than burning out.

We can be OK,

I'm living proof.

We can essentially remain ourselves.

I suppose that's the hope.

You know,

John Kabat-Zinn.

One of the people who brought the second wave of mindfulness from the Eastern wisdom traditions into our Western in his time to the medical community.

You know,

He talks all the time about mindfulness is about being here now,

Noticing what's here.

And so I suppose in this space,

I'm inviting us to notice as carers.

How are we?

What's here now?

What's turning up for us?

The invitation today is also to look at.

The joy in caregiving.

And as I did this session earlier today,

Again,

This where a lot of my nervousness came,

I thought,

Well,

Maybe nobody in the room feels any joy in the caregiving.

Do you?

What are you?

What are you pushing people towards?

But I want to do it in the spirit of John Kabat-Zinn.

If we can notice the tiny moments of joy,

The glimmers,

I can't be stressed.

I can't be running on empty.

I can't be in full overwhelm while I'm in that moment of the glimmer.

So allowing ourselves to notice glimmers of joy and then to cultivate our capacity to notice glimmers of joy might be a great way to nourish ourselves as we live in and move through the caring.

I wonder,

Does that make any sense at all?

This is my offering.

This is my invitation.

This is also my experience.

That even in the hard things and there are hard things.

Yeah,

Glimmers,

Pockets of joy coexist.

Not only is it OK to notice them,

It's really life giving for us.

It brings us into that possibility of equanimity,

Of finding our own inner calm,

Of being balanced,

Of essentially being ourselves.

My name.

Is D.

Hennessy,

And I'm coming to you from Ireland.

And when I'm doing my lives here on inside timer,

On things like burnout.

Specifically,

The blossom to burnout continuum and how we can support ourselves to be on the blossoming end or on procrastination,

Moving through procrastination with compassion.

I'm kind of in my comfort zone here in the world of gathering as human beings who happen to be carers.

Not so much.

But I'm also really happy to be here.

And so in this session,

What I want to offer is a short practice on noticing the glimmers.

A little bit of journaling on same and then opening up the space for the magic that happens in these inside timer spaces.

I know very well that the real magic happens in the chat.

It's already happening here in this chat.

Whereas human beings,

We hear.

Support and heal each other.

And the word I use for that is Anam Cara comes from my own Celtic spirituality is very ancient practice in Ireland of spiritual companioning.

But really,

It's probably found in every ancient wisdom tradition.

And really,

It's just acknowledging that as human beings,

We are social animals.

We need and we thrive on the community of other humans.

And that's the beautiful thing that happens here on inside timer.

So I invite Anam Cara into this space,

Which simply means like has already happened.

We share our experience.

We feel free to speak our truth.

It's OK to be exactly as we are.

It's a safe,

Supportive space I can unmask.

And that includes I can be silent and I can choose to do these practice or not,

Or to do her journaling prompt or not.

So it's a place of really,

I suppose,

The heart of this carer space is.

Rather than where we spend a lot of our time as carers focusing on the other.

This is a space where we turn that light of compassion back towards ourselves.

How am I right now?

What would I like to do right now?

What's helpful for me in this space right now?

And really leaning into the freedom to do just that.

So big welcome to all here.

Yeah,

So I'd written a little thing here about why the glimmers.

We want to be here now.

We want to ground ourselves a little more.

We want to experience.

You know.

All of the caregiving journey.

We want to cultivate our capacity for equanimity,

For that great Buddhist quality of balance,

Of being able to be grounded and rooted and calm and present no matter what's happening around us.

We want to essentially cultivate our capacity to be as kind to ourselves as we are to the person we care for.

So let's move into our practice,

Which in this session is really supporting us to notice the glimmers.

So you might like to do this practice with me.

You might not be in a position to do that.

You might like to do this practice in your imagination as your mind and body might be somewhat occupied in something else.

Or you might like to sit around the edges as we do this practice.

So inviting you now.

In whatever way works for you.

To find a quiet place.

Within and around you.

Just signaling through the body to the brain.

Ah.

We're having a wee pause.

So take a minute to figure out what that is for you right now.

A quiet place.

Within and around you.

Allowing your shoulders to soften.

And your jaw to unclench.

Let your breath arrive now like a gentle tide.

The wave on the seashore.

The wave coming in.

And the wave going out.

Breath coming in.

The breath going out.

In Celtic tradition,

The veil between the seen and the unseen is thin.

The land speaks.

And the soul listens.

So as we begin this meditation.

Inviting a simple invocation.

May this moment be a soft space.

May joy find me even now.

May I be nourished by the sacredness of the small.

May this moment be a soft space.

May joy find me even now.

May I be nourished by the sacredness of the small.

Begin now to imagine yourself sitting or standing on a soft green hillside.

The air is fresh with the scent of damp earth and springtime bloom.

Sitting or standing here,

Breathe in the life of this land.

And on each out-breath,

Release,

Let go,

Even a little.

Of that which you don't want.

Breathing in the life of the land.

On the out-breath,

Releasing,

Letting go,

Even a little of what is not serving you.

With each breath now,

Imagine that the earth itself is breathing with you.

A deep,

Steady rhythm.

You are not separate.

You belong.

Now bring your awareness to your own heart.

Just noticing the heart space.

That part of you that loves,

That grieves,

That longs.

And let your breath now wrap around your heart.

Just like a warm shawl.

In your mind's eye now,

Begin to walk along this hillside.

The grasses bend in the breeze.

And scattered everywhere,

Your eyes are drawn to wild flowers.

They are small,

Some tiny,

Bright,

Delicate,

Yellow,

Blue,

White,

Purple.

Each tiny,

Wild flower,

Almost hidden in the grass.

Yet each one a moment of joy that the earth has given to you.

As you walk now,

Let each flower you see represent a joy that you have known.

Some recent,

Some long past.

Laughter with your loved one.

The soft look in their eyes.

The way light filters through the window.

The song of a blackbird in the morning.

With each flower you notice,

Pause and hold it in your heart.

This,

Too,

Was joy.

This,

Too,

Was real.

Let yourself gather a bouquet now,

Not in your hands,

But in your spirit.

A soul bouquet of moments of joy.

That remind you that you are alive.

That you are loving.

That you are loved.

The bouquet made up of tiny memories,

Moments of joy.

Your bouquet reminding you that you are alive,

You are loving,

You are loved.

Even in hardship,

Joy blooms.

Now you find a place to sit down in the grass.

The wildflowers around you sway as if in gratitude and prayer.

Imagine now a soft presence approaching.

Perhaps Bridget,

The Celtic goddess of healing and of hearth.

Or maybe an ancestor.

Or simply the land itself.

This soft presence approaching.

They offer you a blessing,

Spoken or unspoken.

You are not forgotten.

Your tenderness is a light in the darkness.

The way you care is sacred.

And joy still wants to find you.

You are not forgotten.

Your tenderness is a light in the darkness.

The way you care is sacred.

And joy still wants to find you.

Let this blessing soak now into your bones,

Into your very being.

Let it remind you that you are held.

Begin to return now to the breath.

Noticing breath like the waves on the seashore.

The breath coming in.

The breath going out.

Return now to your body.

In contact with whatever is supporting it.

Return to this moment.

When you are ready,

Beginning to wiggle fingers and toes.

And if your eyes have been closed,

Softly opening them.

Maybe taking a minute to let the eyes roam around the space you're sitting in.

And carrying this truth with you now.

Joy is not the opposite of pain.

It is the wildflower growing in its midst.

Let it surprise you.

Let it bless you.

So as we slowly come back to this gorgeous shared space here on Inside Timer.

As I often do,

Inviting you to stay in your own heart for just the next moment or two.

Noticing how you are.

What's here for you.

Remembering that there's no shoulds,

There's no judgment,

There's no preferred way to be.

Just allowing yourself to notice what's in your heart right now.

How are you?

How are you?

And so as we nurture ourselves as human beings,

Who are also caring.

This noticing is really important.

How am I?

What's here for me right now?

And then responding to that noticing with some kindness and compassion to myself.

So inviting that little movement in you right now.

What's here right now?

How would I be kind myself in this moment just right here right now?

So we're in the quiet.

And I'm going to invite those who would like to to journal for just the next five minutes.

I'll mind the time.

And the journaling prompt is inviting us.

To notice the joy in our caregiving.

So you might notice a glimmer,

A moment of joy.

Maybe from recent days.

And the beauty of journaling is that we just need the pen and the page.

And we don't need to be at all concerned about constructing something sensible.

We just let the heart flow through the pen onto the page.

So I'm inviting that freedom.

Journaling is for you.

It's allowing your heart to speak and it's inviting you to notice glimmers.

So let's do that.

Listen to my heart.

Listen to your heart.

So just letting the journaling pause for now.

And I suppose really wondering if in this room.

There are any glimmers.

So it may be that as you are journaling,

You did remember something.

You did reconnect with a moment of joy,

Even in.

Some challenging caregiving.

Perhaps it's a personal experience that is not for sharing here.

But it would be lovely to get a sense of in the room.

Is there any evidence that it is possible to have glimmers?

Experience of.

Joy.

In the midst of what can be a challenging experience,

That of caregiving.

I know I did this session earlier today,

About 12 hours ago.

And when I was doing the journaling myself,

It was really interesting for me.

For the first few minutes,

It was me and the white page,

No words there on.

It just took a little while for the flow to come.

But then it did come.

And I remembered.

I think something that I wrote from this morning was,

You know,

A simple.

And my beloved opening his eyes and meeting my eyes.

I don't think he quite I'm quite sure he did not know who I was.

But there was a kind of a connection.

And once I got that on the page,

I remembered other things.

So I'm wondering,

Did that happen for anybody else in this room here right now?

Or where are you now in relation to.

The possibility,

The reality.

That we can have moments of joy.

Even in.

Extreme challenge in caregiving.

What happened for me after this session this morning,

As I was out in the garden,

That's a whole other story.

But as I was in the garden working hard.

It was like the meditation continued.

I remembered other glimmers.

One gorgeous glimmer that happened just yesterday that didn't come to my mind this morning.

And it was I was with my beloved yesterday and he was not eating.

I was there for lunch and for supper.

And I had brought a satsuma and we have a whole history around satsumas.

He loves them.

Me,

Not so much.

So always been a kind of a jokey thing between us.

But yesterday,

For some reason.

There was little talk.

But for some reason,

I put the satsuma under his nose and it was quite fragrant and he smelt it.

And then I peeled it quite close to him.

And there was no plate.

We had no tissue.

We were poorly provisioned yesterday.

And I just sectioned the satsuma,

Removed all the pith and what not.

And laid the sections on the palm of my hand.

And put that kind of on his chest,

Under his mouth,

Close enough to him.

Kind of reminded me of.

Years ago,

We would be on the patio outside having breakfast and he would feed the birds from the palm of his big hand.

So I was leaving the satsuma there.

No word spoken.

Didn't say anything.

And after a while,

He took a piece.

Came back and took another piece.

And he wolfed the whole thing down without even asking me had I a mouth on me.

And I smiled a deep smile of joy.

And that was beautiful yesterday.

But I completely forgot about it.

But it came to me this afternoon.

After I did a little journaling this morning on this.

And it gave me such joy.

And it was like I.

I feasted on that little memory.

So that's one example.

And I wrote a little more about that now when I was journaling there now.

All the richness in that.

I mean,

Simplicity for the beloved.

He ate something that at some level he recognized and liked.

They shared history,

Maybe it was more on my side.

But it was a glimmer.

So that's what a glimmer is.

And that kind of practice,

Which is intentional,

Which is cultivated,

Which builds one glimmer on another.

It's a beautiful way to sustain ourselves and to remember that it is not only OK,

But it is actually so that joy.

Happiness.

Coexists.

With pain and turmoil and challenge.

And we do ourselves no favor when we are so caught up in the caring that we edit that out.

Now,

I can speak to that because I know in my life.

My tendency.

When I'm in overwhelm,

I'm in overstretch.

I'm full of emotion that I absolutely will edit out the glimmers.

Unless I have some way of supporting myself to remember.

And even if this is not landing right now,

You know,

Maybe.

Maybe even a curiosity around in whatever is your challenge day to day.

Maybe a slight openness.

To the possibility of glimmers and a curiosity about how a glimmer,

How a moment of joy might show up in a maybe a challenging day.

So I wanted to finish by sharing.

You know,

I've been writing a bit around this for myself and for sharing about in the role of caregiving.

Now,

You may know that in my role of caregiving,

It's I'm caregiving for a beloved who's in late stage dementia.

So there's there's nothing pretty going on.

It's hard going,

Strange,

Foreign territory.

It's deep grieving,

All that stuff.

So my experience is very particular.

Your experience of caregiving may be in a completely different context.

I know sometimes people come into the room who have been a caregiver and are at the other side and recovering and readjusting and reconnecting with themselves.

Or sometimes we have in the room professional caregivers who have so much skill and so much to share about that journey.

So I'm just speaking from my perspective,

But I don't mean to limit you.

I just share from my perspective so that you can connect with yours.

So I want you to share kind of five ways that I can support myself to notice glimmers more,

To invite them in,

To allow them,

To celebrate them,

To feel good about them,

To let the glimmers build one and another so that I can live in a place of equanimity where I might have,

You know,

Exquisite pain of not being recognized,

Of not being able to help very much.

And also the joy of the love that is there.

So my five offerings around how might I support myself to notice,

Allow,

Build on the glimmers?

You know,

We're in the territory of the Beider-Meinhof principle where attention goes,

Energy flows.

It's the same as gratitude practice.

If I notice tiny moments of joy,

I kind of open up to noticing more and more.

And they sustain me and they help me to regulate my nervous system,

To be calm in the midst of chaos and essentially to remain myself,

Even when I'm in strange foreign territory.

Number one,

Treasure wordless connection.

Beloved and I were quite an intellectual pair.

Words are important,

But they're gone now.

So even when names and stories are lost,

Presence remains.

A held gaze.

A shared breath.

A gentle hand resting on another.

There's a kind of a joy in these wordless exchanges,

A kind of a sacred knowing that bypasses memory.

And I know in this suggestion to treasure wordless connections,

I'm leaning in again to the Celtic tradition where we think about the soul communicating beyond language.

Presence.

Trust that connection.

Let silence become presence.

A doorway to shared moments of joy.

That's number one.

Treasuring wordless connection,

Leaning in.

Being present to let the day be enough.

So I'm talking the dementia world here and dementia invites us into a world where the clock and the calendar fade.

So learning to lean into the rhythm of the day.

The light through the curtains.

The feel of a warm mug.

The sound of birdsong outside.

The rhythm of the day.

Inviting me into a moment of joy.

These are the simple joys of the present.

No need for backstory,

No need for big context.

Just noticing the moment.

Offered like a gift.

Joy lives in the sacred and the small now.

Number three,

Bring beauty to the ordinary.

So this is like ritual.

Ritual is a habit.

Which we infuse with meaning.

So in the caregiving,

How can I cultivate moments of joy?

By bringing beauty to the ordinary.

Maybe it's.

Laying a colorful cloth on a table.

Playing soft music.

As there's some personal care happening.

Bringing some beauty.

To the mundane and the ordinary tasks.

So a little intentionality about bringing.

Artistry,

Grace and a touch of reverence.

To just the ordinary tasks and routines of the day.

Beauty heals where memory cannot.

So in that intentional bringing beauty to the ordinary.

There is great potential for joy.

Number four.

Letting familiar sounds awaken the heart.

Maybe.

A favorite melody from years ago.

Up until recently,

I'm smiling now,

I'm having a glimmer.

The beloved and I would sing Molly Malone.

Never in the whole of his health,

But in the early stages of dementia.

And it came from childhood.

Maybe a bird called they once loved.

Or the lilt of an old language.

Again,

My beloved has begun speaking.

Not that he speaks very much,

But now the phrases are in Gaelic.

A language I didn't know he knew so much.

Familiar sounds bypass memory and go straight to the soul.

So we can.

Use our imagination.

To connect with familiar sounds.

To awaken those glimmers.

In the cared for and in us.

Sometimes joy returns,

Not in recognition,

But in the soft light that lifts their face for a moment.

Even when they don't know the song,

They may still know the feeling.

Like my Satsuma story of yesterday.

I'm quite sure my beloved didn't remember.

Satsumas.

But somehow he did.

Number five.

Let the earth hold you.

And the person you care for.

Go outside if possible.

Sit by a tree.

Listen to the wind brush your skin.

Going outside.

With the person you care for is impossible.

You can bring nature in.

A leaf,

A stone.

A pot of soil.

We are all.

Of the earth and connection with the earth.

Always brings us to a place of calm and peace and joy and comfort.

So even in confusion,

The natural world can bring peace and joy.

So we can.

Creatively let the earth hold us and remind us of joy and bring us to moments of glimmers.

So those are my five offerings in this session of what might.

What might cultivate,

What might support my capacity for glimmers.

For moments of joy.

Even in the messiness and the challenge and sometimes the deep overwhelm,

Grief,

Frustration,

Whatever strong emotion you like yourself of caregiving.

So as we finish,

My question to you is.

What might.

Support you.

To notice and cultivate glimmers.

Really coming back to,

You know,

The principle where energy goes,

Where attention goes,

Energy flows.

If we can notice some glimmers.

We'll notice more glimmers.

It will be OK.

It will be wonderful to have moments or times of joy.

With the beloved we're caring for.

Or in memory of earlier times.

And it is not possible to be in deep distress and to be in a moment of glimmer at the same time.

Or coming back to Jon Kabat-Zinn.

Be here now.

I can't be present in this moment.

And be stressing in my wearing head at the same time.

So it is with glimmers.

With glimmers.