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The World’s In Need of Love Today

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I woke up with a song running through my head, but I couldn’t place it. I finally remembered that it was on a Stevie Wonder album that Ron had given to me years ago. I had trouble finding it because I remembered the name of it incorrectly. The actual title is Love’s in Need of Love Today, and I was singing it to myself as The World’s in Need of Love Today. I’m sure that happened because that’s how I’ve been feeling.

In our country and around the world, much upheaval is occurring and people are experiencing fear, anger, hate, greed, and grief. Those are words I generally don’t say, and to shift my mood into positivity, I looked at Stevie Wonder’s lyrics of the song:

 

Love’s in need of love today
Don’t delay
Send yours in right away
Hate’s goin’ ’round
Breaking many hearts
Stop it please
Before it’s gone too far, yeah

…

We all must take
Precautionary measures
If love and peace you treasure
Then you’ll hear me when I say

…

Love’s in need
Of love today
Don’t delay
Right away
Just give the world love

 

Listen here

 

The lyrics that are so powerful to me are “Just give the world love.” That could rise all of us everywhere up if we could all just focus on that.

I started thinking of other songs we could all sing and support bringing up that positive energy. My friend Sadie suggested:

 

What the World Needs Now by Bert Bacharach and Hal David and originally sung by

Jackie DeShannon. Listen here.

Then I remembered Josh Groban’s version of The Impossible Dream by Mitch Lee. Listen here.

 

My most recent new favorite is Brighter Day by Michael Franti. I love his music! Listen here.

 

What songs can you think of that can help us all focus on love and peace? I’d love for you to share the songs you think of in the comments below.

 

The more people in the world who focus on love, peace, and happiness, the more of that we all can share.

 

 

 

The Grief and Happiness Alliance

Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief

My email is emily@griefandhappiness.com

Let me know if you’d like to receive my newsletters which have lots of good things!

You can listen to my podcast here.

You can join the Grief and Happiness Alliance Gatherings which meet weekly on Sundays by clicking here

You can order the International Best Selling The Grief and Happiness Handbook by clicking here.

You can order The Grief and Happiness Cards by clicking here.

You can order Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief by clicking here.

 

Change

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The Greek philosopher Heraclitus, 540 B.C., is accredited with the quote “There is nothing permanent except change.” And the concept of a desire for change has been constant ever since, and probably before that too. When a U.S. presidential campaign occurs, it seems that once every four years the country focuses on changes the people see as essential at the time.

I remember when I was in high school, I wore a button on my jacket that said, “Make Love, Not War.” The friends I spent time with and I believed that if we all focused on ending war, that could happen. And look at the world now. That giant change we desired still hasn’t occurred.

When Obama won the election, his theme was, “CHANGE we can believe in.” That fostered so much hope. And positive changes were made, yet still not everyone believed in those changes.

I will never forget the discussion my husband Ron and I had when the winner was declared for the 2016 presidential election. He said for me to watch because that election was going to bring changes that time. At that point, I had no idea what that would mean. The changes that came at that time were the antithesis of the changes I longed for.

Now we are at the precipice of change yet again. There is so much on our ballots now beyond just the decision of who our next president will be. At this time, voting is essential for us to experience the change we desire.

Please vote to express the change you want to see.

 

 

The Grief and Happiness Alliance

Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief

My email is emily@griefandhappiness.com

Let me know if you’d like to receive my newsletters which have lots of good things!

You can listen to my podcast here.

You can join the Grief and Happiness Alliance Gatherings which meet weekly on Sundays by clicking here

You can order the International Best Selling The Grief and Happiness Handbook by clicking here.

You can order The Grief and Happiness Cards by clicking here.

You can order Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief by clicking here.

Cultivation

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Where I live in upcountry Maui now, I have the biggest garden I have ever had, and it takes lots of attention. Even with two people who help me, the tasks seem never ending. I am not complaining, however, because the rewards are worth all the time it takes.

I grow tropical flowers, fruit trees, lots of bananas, herbs and vegetables, and flowers. When we first moved here, one large section of our yard was covered with what looked like yellow golf balls. I discovered that those balls turned out to be one of my new favorite fruits, lilikoi, otherwise known as passion fruit. I found lots of ways to use lilikoi, but there were so many of them! I also had huge racks of bananas and many papayas.

Not wanting the food to go to waste, I put an invitation on the Nextdoor computer app for people to come to my house to take what they could use, and people came! With the new friends we made, we decided to meet and share the abundance of our gardens every Friday. That was 9 years ago. We still meet every Friday.

Through those years we have become special friends. We have celebrated weddings and birthdays and holidays. We have supported each other through medical challenges and funerals. We consider each other Ohana, the Hawaiian word for family. I cherish these experiences and friendships.

This wonderful Ohana has thrived through our mutual support. Just as we cultivate our gardens by replenishing the soil, planting seeds and plants starts, pulling weeds, pruning, watering, and harvesting, we cultivate our friendships by staying in touch, sharing what we grow, sharing advice and skills, and we tend to both our gardens and friendships with love.

I share about the Ohana we created because loneliness can be one of the biggest challenges we face while grieving. When you find yourself lonely, be creative and think of how you can create your own Ohana. If you’d like to know your neighbors better, try inviting them to your home for a cookie exchange or dessert potluck. If you have friends you’d like to see more, invite them over for a game night. Or invite someone to go on a walk with you.

 

The key to developing relationships is to tend to them. Friendships thrive with cultivation. Think of something you would love to do with your friends, then do whatever you dream up. And keep doing it. That’s cultivation. There is no need for loneliness in your life.

 

The Grief and Happiness Alliance

Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief

My email is emily@griefandhappiness.com

You can listen to my podcast here.

You can join the Grief and Happiness Alliance Gatherings which meet weekly on Sundays by clicking here

You can order the International Best Selling The Grief and Happiness Handbook by clicking here.

You can order The Grief and Happiness Cards by clicking here.

You can order Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief by clicking here.

Allowing

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Have you experienced talking yourself out of doing something you would love to do because you are grieving?  We all do that at some point – even when we’re not grieving. Early in grief, people may hesitate to invite you to their party, to dinner, or even for a walk. They talk themselves out of those invitations because they are concerned about how you would react, or maybe they fear that your grieving may bring what they are planning to be of happiness, to a time where people talk softly and don’t know what to say.

Eventually, they may cease to invite you because they got out of the habit of calling or you have declined invitations one too many times. They may not realize what they are doing. They mean no harm and don’t remember how much they enjoyed having you around. You may also not remember how much your enjoyed be around other people. When that realization happens, that is the time to start reaching out, allowing you the joy of spending time with others.

When we were young, we had to get permission from our parents to go out. Now there is no one to ask permission of, but we may not give ourselves permission to do what could help us be happy. Think about what you may not be allowing yourself to do like going to a movie or out to a restaurant. When you think of something you have not been allowing yourself to do, make a plan and do it! Don’t let another celebration or a class you’d like to take pass you by because you have forgotten how to say yes!

Whenever you find yourself alone or feeling sad, ask yourself what you can give yourself permission to do. My husband loved for me to bake cookies for him. I didn’t notice that I had stopped baking cookies, something I love to do. I gave myself permission to make a big batch and passed them out to people who had stepped forward to help me. When I delivered the cookies, it always started a conversation, and I started receiving invitations again.

In what ways are you not allowing yourself to start to move forward? Give yourself permission to correct those thoughts and allow yourself to live your best life now.

 

 

The Grief and Happiness Alliance

Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief

My email is emily@griefandhappiness.com

Let me know if you’d like to receive my newsletters which have lots of good things!

You can listen to my podcast anywhere you get your podcasts.

You can join the Grief and Happiness Alliance Gatherings which meet weekly on Sundays by clicking here

You can order the International Best Selling The Grief and Happiness Handbook by clicking here.

You can order The Grief and Happiness Cards by clicking here.

You can order Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief by clicking here.

The Stories of Veterans

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My father, Thomas Orville Lofton, served in the US Army during World War II. He never talked to me about his war experience, but I knew it affected him profoundly because he spent the rest of his life serving veterans. He became very involved in the Veterans of Foreign Wars, VFW, so my mother became involved in the VFW Auxiliary, and I was the first member in our local Junior VFW Auxiliary and I am now a life member of the organization.

Veterans Day was the biggest holiday of the year in our small California town of Porterville, and we always had a huge parade that Mom and Dad were in charge of for the VFW and American Legion. During the Vietnam war, more lives of military personnel were lost per capita in our small town than then were lost in any other community in the country. Most of those deaths were of my high school classmates.

I have always held a deep respect for veterans, so when the VFW Post in Maui invited me to come to an event to support war veterans who had been affected by the Lahaina fire, I said yes.  The members of the organization were collecting stories about the Lahaina fire, and about people who have served in wars. They plan to use these stories for a memorial they are building that can be seen by people walking on the beach.

 I spent the afternoon sitting outside of the VFW building at the beach in Kihei, Maui, watching as the men who came were showered with gifts from gas cards and Uber cards to equine therapy gift certificates.  I got to meet individually with each Veteran who came. I told them what I do to help people deal with grief and invited them to come to my free Zoom meetings. Then I asked them where they served and how the Lahaina fires affected them. Their stories from both the War and the fire were gut wrenching and broke my heart. 

After the fire, people donated funds to the Grief and Happiness Alliance Nonprofit Organization so that copies of the Grief and Happiness Handbook could be given to those affected by the fire. I gave one of those books to each guest that came to the event except one. That veteran told me that his wife needed the book more than he did, so I signed a book to his wife.

 As I listened to the experiences of these veterans, I thought about how important storytelling is to help people deal with grief. Having someone to listen to the stories is equally important. A story needs to be told over and over until it doesn’t need to be told any more.

Whose story can you listen to? And who do you tell your story to?

 

The Grief and Happiness Alliance

Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief

My email is emily@griefandhappiness.com

Let me know if you’d like to receive my newsletters which have lots of good things!

You can listen to my podcast here.

You can join the Grief and Happiness Alliance Gatherings which meet weekly on Sundays by clicking here

You can order the International Best Selling The Grief and Happiness Handbook by clicking here.

You can order The Grief and Happiness Cards by clicking here.

You can order Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief by clicking here.

Look Up

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Anymore when I am out in public, I find myself on high alert because it seems that everyone around me is looking down at their phones. They are so engrossed that if I don’t watch out, they will walk right into me and get exasperated that I was in their way. I am sure they are looking at something that caught their attention on their phones or they are texting, but I see the rest of the world go by them, and I see things they are missing out on.  

I choose to look up at all that is around me which, most often, is beautiful. I look up at the solid blue sky with constantly shape-shifting clouds moving along, creating their own stories. Right now, I see what appears to be a mother bird showing her tiny family how to fly, floating softly along their way. And in the time it took me to write that sentence, that same cloud is now a breaching whale frolicking in the blue water, but only for a moment because the wind blew him on his way.

I use my imagination to create new thoughts. When I allow it to flow freely, I become creative and allow those thoughts to create an ever-changing backdrop to my life. Often while grieving people find themselves in the same chair or on the same couch mindlessly staring at the same shows on the television and allowing their precious time to disappear without taking advantage of it. This results in a condition of being stuck in their grief because when people ignore what they need to be experiencing, their lives become stagnant. 

When you find yourself in this mire, try firing up your imagination. You’ll find that the more you imagine, the more you will have to imagine about.  Try this, try creating some sentences with the words “What if?”

 “What if you stepped outside and went for a walk?” What would you feel, see, or taste?

Or 

“What if you called the friend you have been missing just to tell them hello?” Where would that lead? Maybe you would get together to get a cup of coffee or go to a movie. 

Or

What if I finally sign up for that class I have been longing to take?” Maybe you’d meet new friends. Or maybe you would find a new passion by allowing your creativity to step forward. 

You will see that the more you use your imagination, the more things you will find to use your imagination about. I just spoke to someone who wanted to help others who were grieving like she was. She imagined a beautiful online retreat. Her imagination was so vivid that she created that retreat, and people loved it!

When you look up and you long to make a change in your life, you can. Be open to possibilities. Your imagination is unlimited. Your wisdom is what is right now, in this moment! Discover what is yours to do!

Look up!

 

 

The Grief and Happiness Alliance

Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief

My email is emily@griefandhappiness.com

Let me know if you’d like to receive my newsletters which have lots of good things!

You can listen to my podcast here.

You can join the Grief and Happiness Alliance Gatherings which meet weekly on Sundays by clicking here

You can order the International Best Selling The Grief and Happiness Handbook by clicking here.

You can order The Grief and Happiness Cards by clicking here.

You can order Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief by clicking here.