November Theme: Shadows

November's theme is shadows. Literal. Figurative. They seem to envelope us after the death of our children. We have shadow children-those parallel living children born around the same time as our own children died or were due. And shadows that haunt our otherwise sunny days.

Community Poem
For this month's community poem, each contributor is asked to explore both a literal and figurative shadow in two lines. So, use a shadow imagery to describe something figuratively shadowed in your life. For example, my lines are:

Cast off the small metal urn, the darkness grows,
Covering the small neighbor boy, the same age as my grief.

Community Poem is going to be published on November 7th, so all lines must be in by noon on November 6th.


Photo Sunday

Taking the theme further for Photo Sunday, please take a photograph either representative or literal about shadows in your life. All photos must be in by November 13th.

Mid-Month Challenge

Mid-month challenge is explore this theme in art, music, poetry or craft. All work must be in by November 20th.

Ten Questions

Ten Questions will be posted on the day of the Community Poem.

Please direct all questions to the comment section of this post. I do hope this theme is interesting to all of you.

Ten Questions: Rituals

Once a month, still life 365 poses ten questions to our readers around the monthly theme. You can choose to answer one, or all ten, or any number in between. You can also use a question as a bouncing off point for a blog post. Then come back here and let us know you took the challenge and answered some questions by entering your name and blog into the Mr. Linky below. That way other readers of still life 365 can connect with your blog and you can connect with their blog. It is kind of a blog circus. Hopefully without the clowns. {{{shivers}}} If you don't have a blog, no worries, leave your question answers in the comment section. And don't forget to go check out the other blogs on this list, leave a comment.

Here are the questions for this month's Ten Questions:

What daily rituals do you perform in memory of your baby?

Do you have a yearly ritual you perform during your child's birthday? If so, what is it?

Has anyone performed a ritual in your child's honor that has been meaningful to you and why?

How does your religion, either of just childhood or adulthood or both, honor death? How was your loss honored?

Do you feel particularly connected to any time of the year to honor your child?

Do any holidays have any important significance to your grief? If so, how?

What are ways in which you perform private rituals for your child? (I mean, talking to him/her in the morning, wishing on a star, or something only you know about, etc.)

Have you felt a connection to other cultures and religions and how they deal with death?

Have you incorporated the religious traditions of another culture into your private ceremonies and rituals for your child?

Does creating art feel like a ritual to you? If so, could you explain it further?

Ten Questions Sunday: Trees

Once a month, still life 365 poses ten questions to our readers around the monthly theme. You can choose to answer one, or all ten, or any number in between. You can also use a question as a bouncing off point for a blog post. Then come back here and let us know you took the challenge and answered some questions by entering your name and blog into the Mr. Linky below. That way other readers of still life 365 can connect with your blog and you can connect with their blog. It is kind of a blog circus. Hopefully without the clowns. {{{shivers}}} If you don't have a blog, no worries, leave your question answers in the comment section. And don't forget to go check out the other blogs on this list, leave a comment.

Here are the questions for this month's Ten Questions:

1. When you saw the theme of trees for the month of September, what immediately came to your mind?
2. What kinds of words do you associate with trees?
3. Of these words, do you associate any with yourself?
4. Have you been an outdoorsy person throughout your life?
5. How has your relationship with nature changed since your loss(es)?
6. Did you plant a tree or bush in honor of your child?
7. If you have planted a tree for your child, in what ways do you incorporate the tree into your life? If you haven't, what natural images do you associate with your loss? (Do you tend to it? Do you meditate or reflect under it? Do you places flowers by it?)
8. Trees have also been used to represent families. Talk a bit about your own family tree.
9. What are your feelings now about family trees and exploring your own lineage?
10. The rings of trees fascinate me. I remember learning that in hard years, the rings were smaller, or darker than in years of good water. Describe the rings of your tree.

October Theme: Rituals to honor the dead.

I struggled with how to word this theme, even though I can see the idea clearly in my mind's eye. For some reason that felt possibly the most important part of this theme to communicate--that sometimes we feel concepts completely before being able to verbalize, make statements and commit them to language. Such is the relationship many of us have with death, especially when we lose our babies. We feel this importance, this gravity of spirit, without being able to communicate it to others. This is why ritual and art become so significant. They give us actions and means to tell our story without speaking.

When our children die, we suddenly touch our ancestors in the same moment that we touch our legacy. It is like time has folded in on itself.  I know when Lucia died I felt comforted by the knowledge that she may see or feel her grandfather in this place I couldn't visualize and state of being of which I was wholly unable to grasp, even as I wrestled with my own beliefs about life after death.  Most of us have our first experience of death from losing a great grandparent, or grandparent, but later when we lose our children, we bridge the experience of the "natural order of thing". I hate using the word natural, because death is natural, but what I mean of course is the early death of our children.

October seems to absolutely vibrate with the energy of the dead. Some people think of it as a magical time, or a time when the world of the living is close to the world of the dead. Halloween, maybe the most popular holiday, has its ancient roots both in the Celtic holiday of Samhain and the Catholic holiday of All Saint's Day. Samhain in its own right is still celebrated by pagans, and has the most vivid connections with the earth and harvest, the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darker half". As Wikipedia says, "The Gaels believed that the border between this world and the otherworld became thin on Samhain; because some animals and plants were dying, it thus allowed the dead to reach back through the veil that separated them from the living. Bonfires played a large part in the festivities. People and their livestock would often walk between two bonfires as a cleansing ritual, and the bones of slaughtered livestock were cast into its flames." Latin Americans celebrate Dia de los Muertos, or the Day of the Dead, on November 2nd (also All Soul's Day), which specifically honors those that have died. It is a celebration both outwardly and inwardly. People march in parade painted as skulls, but also create private altars honoring the deceased using sugar skulls, marigolds, and the favorite foods and beverages of the departed and visiting graves with these as gifts. Many people associate the morbid skulls and images of the dead to mean Day of the Dead is a dark holiday, but for most Latinos, it is a bright, fun holiday and an important part of their lifelong grief after losing their loved one.

So this month's theme is honoring the dead, our ancestors, our babies, and rituals around honoring them. I will break this down by week:

Community Poem

This month's community poem will be about rituals you do for your baby, be it light a candle, create an altar, sing a song, read a book. Write two lines based on a ritual you perform--the ritual can be something performed everyday, or it can be something performed once, like a funeral, planting a tree, or a religious rite. I hope to weave these together in a coherent poem, so while specifics of the ritual are important, try not to use specific names. There is a tie that will bind all these two lines together, begin first of two lines with the phrase, "In your memory..."

All community poem lines need to be submitted by October 2nd, for publishing on October 3rd. Please send it to stilllife365days@gmail.com. Just note that our email address has the word 'days' in it. I know some people have sent things to another, more logical, email address, so if you have, please note the correct email, and try resending. I have attempted to contact the owner of that email address to no avail.

Photo Sunday

Taking the theme further for Photo Sunday, please take a photograph of a something that you have done as a ritual, or that someone else has done as a ritual honoring the dead. All photos must be in by October 9th.

Mid-Month Challenge

Mid-month challenge is explore this theme in art, music, poetry or craft.

Ten Questions will be posted on the day of the Community Poem.

Please direct all questions to the comment section of this post. I do hope this theme is interesting to all of you.

For further inspiration, Mother Henna hosted an amazing Day of the Dead art swap last year and has compiled a book of the artwork for free! You can view it here, and while you are there, please check out her other amazing stuff. If you are looking to explore your grief creatively, I urge you, no, I push you, to take one of her grief home workshops, or connect with her for coaching. She inspires me everyday.

September Theme: Trees.

Community Poem
Everyone approaches grief differently. While there is many similarities in our emotions around loss, death and grief, we each come by it in our own way. I am constantly amazed when I pull together community poems how few overlaps of words there are. When, for example, I wrote last month's community poem, which was submit one word that you think other people would use to describe you or your grief, I thought I was going to get twenty submissions of "strong". That was the first word I thought of, but I only received two strongs, and that was the only overlap.

One of my favorite poems is Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird by Wallace Stevens. Each of the thirteen stanzas is different approach to the theme of a blackbird. The minimalist style of each stanza, while influenced by the haiku, is not a haiku. I am linking the piece, because I want each of us to use that style in September's community poem. But first, I would like you to put your grief or death goggles on. Now, we are going to each write a stanza to thirteen ways of looking at an object through the lens of grief. Of course, that thirteen will change based on the number of entries I get. I really wanted the object to be unrelated to death or grief, even though I want each person to look at it through their grief. So, September's community poem will be Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Tree.

Start thinking about trees through the lens of grief.

Please direct any questions about this poem, or any section of this month's theme, in the comments section of this post. This month's community poem will be published on September 5th, so all entries need to be in by September 4th. Happy poeming!

Photo Sunday.

Photo Sunday is a showcase of photographs about a theme. This month's theme is trees. Tying this project to grief is the important, and difficult aspect of this challenge. Photo Sunday will be September 12th, so all pictures need to be submitted by the 11th.

Mid-Month Challenge.

Mid-month challenge is to use the image of tree in a piece of artwork, craft or writing about your grief and loss. You can use any medium, as always. Please send in submissions by September 18th, for submission on the 19th.

Ten Questions.

Here are this month's ten questions. I will post a Mr. Linky on Sunday September 26th. You come and link to your own blog with answers to these questions. You can choose to answer as many as you would like, or just post about the month's theme. This is a way for members of the still life 365 community to find other people in this community.

1. When you saw the theme of trees for the month of September, what immediately came to your mind?
2. What kinds of words do you associate with trees?
3. Of these words, do you associate any with yourself?
4. Have you been an outdoorsy person throughout your life?
5. How has your relationship with nature changed since your loss(es)?
6. Did you plant a tree or bush in honor of your child?
7. If you have planted a tree for your child, in what ways do you incorporate the tree into your life? If you haven't, what natural images do you associate with your loss? (Do you tend to it? Do you meditate or reflect under it? Do you places flowers by it?)
8. Trees have also been used to represent families. Talk a bit about your own family tree.
9. What are your feelings now about family trees and exploring your own lineage?
10. The rings of trees fascinate me. I remember learning that in hard years, the rings were smaller, or darker than in years of good water. Describe the rings of your tree.


When I was a kid, I loved loved loved Bob Ross, and often think when I am painting anything, "Happy little trees." So, for a little inspiration...





If you have any questions about this month's theme (TREES), please direct it to the comment section of this post. Happy creating.