Reflections on the Pink Army | Metaphors and Meanings

My Race for Life tattoo and finishing medal 

A couple of weeks ago I took part in the Falmouth Race for Life event (see Blog entry 15/02/2015 for previous mention of this). As ever I was struck by how emotional the experience was and I beat my best time (just) arriving at the finish line after completing the 5K route in just over 40 minutes.

This year's theme for R4L is a military one. The running, jogging, walking women - along with their children, dogs, prams - are collectively referred to as the 'Pink Army' and each runner is issued with a pink glove and a number of temporary tattoos (I must admit to missing mine somewhat when the last traces were washed away five days after the race). This year's finishers' medals are fashioned in the form of a dog tag.

Me and other members of the 'pink army'

I have mixed feelings about both the colour (I like pink, I do, but it really isn't the only colour that women wear . . . ) and  the military metaphor. It seems I'm not alone in this for as noted in a recent post by @mosaicscience there has been much written in the last 40 plus years by people with cancer and other diseases arguing against  warfare metaphors. And yet it seems that although there are many that dislike their body being compared to a battleground, and prefer to speak of 'journeys' or 'pathways' rather than 'fights' and 'battles', there are many others who feel empowered in thinking that they are 'keeping up the fight' or in being described as 'a trooper'.

Like me (see Blog entries 05/04/15 and 11/04/15) Mosaic:the science of life suggest that metaphors are useful and help us through difficult times such as illness, loss and grief and different metaphors work for different people. The thing to remember is the need to be sensitive too what works for others as well as what works for you.

Ohh and  in case anyone is wondering I didn't get around to ironing the T-shirt. . . .

Stuck for a Venue? | Maybe Falmouth is the Answer

Falmouth is looking especially beautiful today.

A seaside naming ceremony?

What a wonderful place for a ceremony.

'Proper Job.'

An alternative aisle for a wedding or commitment ceremony?

A memorial ceremony within castle (can you see it) grounds? 

A Poem Fit for a Ceremony | Readings for Weddings, Commitment and Renewal of Vows Ceremonies

I bought a book of suggested wedding poetry recently. Of course these are relevant for commitment and renewal of vows ceremonies also. It contains some of my favourites but not all of them. Here are a couple of examples of poems I particularly like that feel appropriate for this kind of occasion:

I Would Live in Your Love by Sara Teasdale

I would live in your love as the sea-grasses live in the sea,
Borne up by each wave as it passes, drawn down by each wave that recedes;

I would empty my soul of the dreams that have gathered in me,

I would beat with your heart as it beats, I would follow your soul as it leads.

A Birthday by Christina Rossetti

 My heart is like a singing bird

                  Whose nest is in a water'd shoot;

My heart is like an apple-tree

                  Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;

My heart is like a rainbow shell

                  That paddles in a halcyon sea;

My heart is gladder than all these

                  Because my love is come to me.

Raise me a dais of silk and down;

                  Hang it with vair and purple dyes;

Carve it in doves and pomegranates,

                  And peacocks with a hundred eyes;

Work it in gold and silver grapes,

                  In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;

Because the birthday of my life

                  Is come, my love is come to me.


I also really love: 

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in) by E. E. Cummings which although popular at weddings and similar ceremonies, is I think, also appropriate for a funeral or memorial ceremony.

Vow by Roger McGough

Vow by Clare Shaw

Unlike my fist two examples these latter choices are still in copyright which means I am unable to publish these without permission. If you chose Arwenack Celebrants to prepare and facilitate your ceremony we will provide you with a Ceremony Transcript following your special day. If any of your chosen poems and readings need copyright permission we will obtain this. To look for your own favourite poems or perhaps find some new ones try:

Penguin’s Poems for Weddings Selected by Laura Barber (2014)

OR http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/apr/23/wedding-carol-ann-duffy-poetry

****

If you can’t find anything that you like you can write your own or ask a friend or family member to write one for you. My friend Thom wrote and read a poem for the wedding of one of his friend’s recently. This is how it begins:

Love is made of stuff.
Happy stuff.
Silly stuff.
Cute stuff.
Awwww stuff.
Angry stuff.
And compromising.

It starts with one person, and ends up with two,
And they do this thing where they gather everyone they know,
Well, everyone they like,
And they put them all in one room,
Dressed in best,
To witness them shouting out loud,
‘We are in love!’

There is standing; there is sitting,
And then there is CAKE!. . .

From And then there is cake . . . by T. S. E. Boulton. See Thom’s website for the full version and other examples http://ceremonial.weebly.com/readings





Purple Ronnie is another great source. There are several books for sale but also some free poems available via Google or Pinternet. Just a couple of examples follow: 

Bereavement and Grief (3) | More Swimming

Like many other adults I enjoy the wit and humour that often appears in ‘children’s films’. Finding Nemo is a particular favourite of mine; so much so that close friends regularly buy me FN related gifts. Here is just a small selection of my collection. 

The broach was made for me especially by my friend Ali (Alison Bendall Jewellery  http://alisonbendall.co.uk/)

For those of you who sadly don’t know the story as yet here is a synopsis:

Nemo is a young clown fish who lives on the Great Barrier Reef. He is the only son of Marlin, an anxious father who constantly warns Nemo of the ocean’s many dangers. Following an act of rebellion Nemo is caught in a net by a dentist who dives for a hobby and ends up in a fish tank in his surgery, overlooking Sydney Harbour. Marlin sets out to find Nemo and shortly into his journey he meets a female blue tang called Dory who suffers from short-term memory loss. She can read though and after memorising, as best she can, the dentist’s name and address on his discarded face mask she travels with Marlin and the two have many adventures - including encounters with sharks, turtles, angler fish and a whale - along the way. In the meantime Nemo and his fish tank companions attempt a number of escapes from the tank to the harbour. All’s well that ends well and despite innumerable problems father and son are reunited, with much help from Dory and others that they meet. Nemo, Marlin and Dory return to the Reef where Marlin attempts to mute his parental protectiveness. 

I first saw the film on a work trip to Australia in a hotel room in Sydney (honestly).

When encouraging Marlin to carry on in his quest to find Nemo Dory, the hero of the tale as far as I’m concerned, entreats him to ‘just keep swimming’. It isn’t just my love of swimming and the benefit I get from it that draws me to Dory’s advice but also the implication that to keep swimming, to keep going, is beneficial, for me at least, (see my reference to ‘occupation’ in my last Blog entry). I am aware that just keep swimming could be perceived to be and/or experienced as a platitude, so I could be accused of contradicting my recent arguments here. And yet to me Dory’s words feel more like a metaphor; more than a metaphor, as I swim my way to emotional and physical wellbeing. More evidence I guess of how grief is a unique experience for all of us.. . .

Dory

If like me you can’t wait for the long awaited sequel Finding Dory watch this trailer by Ellen DeGeneres (the voice of Dory). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JJmDavBXrw 

Bereavement and Grief (2) | Platitudes, Metaphors and Swimming

As I suggested in my most previous Blog entry platitudes following bereavement are often unhelpful but metaphors (figures of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action which is not literally applicable) are useful for some people. I have heard grief described as being like a punch in the stomach or a series of waves washing over a person. I can relate to each of these examples. Recently I read an account by a woman who described her own experience of grief as riding a wave. This makes sense to me too although I can’t imagine ever being able to stay upright on a surfboard, and I’ve tried body boarding and I’m pretty useless at it, so it’s not appropriate for me in the way it clearly is for her. For me grief is like walking up a steep hill, it is hard going and the pinnacle seems far way: the walk is tough. Sometimes you slip back, sometimes you need to rest, sometimes you are not sure you’ll make it to the top, sometimes you feel sure you will; eventually. This works for me but it might not for others.



Although I’m no surfer I do like to swim (I swim for at least an hour, often longer, four or five times a week googling to find a pool when I am away from home) and swimming, alongside other physical exercise (as a non-driver I walk a lot and a little later in life than some I’ve discovered that I enjoy Spinning (a gym-based cycling class that takes place to music) and BodyPump (a weight based class, again with musical accompaniment)), has also helped me emotionally and psychologically, as well as physically. I am not the only one, as these two articles - Sweating Out the Sadness: can exercise help you to grieve?http://dailyburn.com/life/lifestyle/exercise-coping-with-grief-sadness/
and Sweating Out Sadness: How Exercise Can Help the Grieving Process http://fitness.mercola.com/sites/fitness/archive/2014/06/27/exercise-grief.aspx - demonstrate.

The author of the second piece reports that exercise not only helps the body it also helps the mind; the focus needed leads to a sense of control and exercisers report that they feel less anxious and sleep better. Exercise increases circulation and blood flow throughout the body and improvements to the immune system mean the individual has a better chance of fighting an illness before it spreads. For many there is a reduction in the aches and pains, loss of appetite, headaches, fatigue and so on often experienced during the grieving process. My own experience of bereavement brought home to me the impact that such loss can have on one’s body as soon after I suffered from a number of (ill)heath conditions. This takes me back to swimming (more of this next time) although of course swimming (and other exercise) is only one form of occupation that the bereaved might find both challenging and helpful. As Steve Hoppes’ (2005) experience suggests occupations (using the term broadly and not merely in relation to paid work) may lose meaning when one is grieving but paradoxically occupation can help in regaining meaning in life and in general health and wellbeing. I agree. 

Hoppes, Steve (2005) ‘When a child dies the world should stop spinning: an autoethnography exploring the impact of family loss on occupation’ American Journal of Occupational Therapy 59(1):78-87.

Bereavement and Grief (1) | To Talk or Not to Talk

In the late 1980s, as a final year sociology undergraduate, I conducted my first piece of solo research on women’s experience of miscarriage. The title of my final dissertation thesis reflects something that was said to many of my respondents following their miscarriage: Never Mind, Better Luck Next Time. Since then I have researched and written about various aspects of loss (some of which I have previously referred to in this Blog). Whilst undertaking these projects I have met others, who like myself, have shuddered at the crassness of the well-meaning platitude (a platitude is defined as a remark or statement that is used too often to be interesting or thoughtful). Never mind, better luck . . . along with it’s for the best; at least he/she had a good innings; you can always remarry and so on and so on negates the experience of loss, of bereavement, and implies that the person(s) who experienced the loss should get over it quickly. Many people do not want; are not able do this. It is especially ironic, I think, that one of the most common platitudes is that grieving the death of a loved one ‘takes time’ and yet people are often impatient for the bereaved to ‘get over it’ and ‘move on’.

Loss and grief positions the bereaved as outsider, as stranger to ‘normal’ everyday life. Others see you as different and you feel different and it is different. The use of platitudes arise because many people are embarrassed, not least because they are unsure of what to say. It is accepted now that it is good, useful, helpful, to talk about death, prior to and after the event, but some sections of society, some people, are still playing catch up. A Dying Matters Coalition report published in December 2014 shows that almost half of us in Britain feel uncomfortable talking to the recently bereaved. Tony Walter, Director of the Centre for Death and Society at Bath University also suggests that changing, and sometimes conflicting norms around stoicism (the stiff upper lip legacy) and expressiveness (stimulated not least by the growing culture of personal revelation and confession) can lead to uncertainly over what to say to, how to behave around the bereaved. logs.bath.ac.uk/opinion/2014/12/10/talking-about-death/

On the whole though it’s better to say something rather than nothing. Bereaved people talk of their distress when others physically and metaphorically ‘cross the road’ to avoid speaking to them about their loss. A good thing to do is express sympathy and say that you’re sorry; or to indicate that you are happy to listen to, talk with, the bereaved person about the person who had died if they would like you to.

If there is one thing I have learned is that it is DIFFERENT for everyone, for all of us. There are similarities and patterns but each bereaved person is unique and the bereaved need to be treated uniquely and with patience.

Auto/Biographical Reflections on Grief and Bereavement | Bathwater, Babies and Other Losses

This week I had an article published in a journal entitled Mortality: Promoting the interdisciplinary study of death and dying

My piece is entitled:  Bathwater, babies and other losses: a personal and academic story.

This is the abstract:

In this article, I provide a sociologically informed auto/biographical account of my experience of grief and griefwork following the death of my husband William John Shiels (1948–2010) and my parents Ronald (Ron) Thornton (1923–1979) and Dorothy Thornton (1931–2012). Additionally, I discuss my personal, and academic, experience with reference to ‘infertility’ and ‘involuntary childlessness’. I reflect on the significance of my sociological imagination for the griefwork I do myself and with others and I consider how my experience of reproductive loss led me to sociology and how in turn sociology has influenced my experience of loss. In this piece, as in others I have written, I make epistemological connections between my academic work and my personal experience. I also reflect on the use of creative methodologies and different ways to tell academic stories and contribute to this approach.

As this suggests my piece includes some reflection on personal experiences, some research stories and some examples of short fiction that I have written. If you would like to read the article please follow this link.

http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/ZX763r5EIZWr2YCUQTYB/full