I am beat....

Today my whole body is aching and I feel like I am getting sick....I think it is because of the very intense last week.
Not only did I once again have to make a new decision to say no to the manager position (although I am flattered that they called and asked me to reconsider) but 90% of our unit was sold to another company, and people were very upset with that. I belong to the remaining 10% who is staying on the original company, but for quite a while we did not know where we belong to. Then the week continued with the three day long grief recovery workshop, and I continued using the tools I have learned to grief some other people during the weekend, and now I am just beat.....I guess it is my body saying that I need to stop for a while, and that is what I am going to do. I am not going to train as I planned to, instead I am going to go home and take a long warm bath.

Third day of grief recovery

Yesterday it was the third day of the grief recovery workshop. It was the roughest day for my part as this day consisted of making a relationship chart over mine and my mother relationship, and also writing a fullfilment letter, that you can also partly call a goodbye letter. Reading the relationship chart was really hard, but reading the fullfilment letter actually made me feel like something was flying away from me. After I had read the letter I remember watching up to the roof and thinking she is free and so am I....I am not going to publish the whole letter as it was quite long, but I will publish the end of it here, the part of letting go:

I want you to know, that despite everything I really miss you in my life and I wish that things could have been different. I want you to know that you were my security and the best person in the world when I was a little kid, I was just so mad at you for choosing alcohol instead of me, and that is something I am still sad about, but I forgive you for that. I would have loved to keep my mother with me for a longer time. I want you to know that I have blackpainted you for a long time, just to be able to handle the rejection I felt from you, but I dont want to do it anymore, I want to say goodbye to you and live my life. You need to know that me letting go does not mean that I will forget you or that I don´t love you, it only means that I dont want to feel tha pain anymore and I don´t want to let it affect my life in the same way anymore.
Thank you mother for loving me so much as you did and I want you to know that I am so very sad for the fact that life was such a big darkness for you, and so many times I wished I would have had magic powers that would have helped you. Despite everything, I will cherish my positive memories of you in my heart.
I know that you are afraid of letting go, and so am I, but maybe it is time for us to do it? Maybe we can do it together? Both be free from the prison of the past.

I miss you a lot mum, more than I have wanted to admit, and I love you.

I forgive you for all the bad memories, and I know you always tried your best, but now it is time to say goodbye.


Goodbye mother

Second day of Grief recovery

Today we presented our loss charts. A loss chart is a chart that shows the losses in your life. It was hard to tell about it to the other people in the goup and some losses definetly still hurts...
Our second task was to imagine that you would die in an hour and you needed to write our last toughts before you would die. You also needed to write a letter to the ones left behind and here is my letter:

Since I moved away from home, my life has become better and better. With theese words I dont want to make anybody feel guilty or punish anybody, it was nobodys fault how things were. We were all unhappy in my family home and it is is better for all of us, as things are now. The meaning of life is to be happy, and that is why everything happend just the way it was supposed to happen. With this I want to say that don´t lock yourselves into a selfmade prison to which only you have the key to. If you feel that you have to punish yourself for something you have done, then look at yourselves, learn from the experience and dont do it again. That way you will be able to open the lock to your prison.
The meaning of life is to live in freedom with yourself, not to lock yourself in, in accordance to what other people think or what society thinks, the only one who can keep yourself free is you. Dont make my mistake and spend half of your life punishing youself for things that were not your fault, but learn to let go of what hurts and allow yourself to enjoy life to 110%!

First day of Grief Recovery

Today was the first day of the grief recovery workshop (www.sorg.se) I am attending.
This day was not that hard as it consisted mostly of lectures, but there were som tragic lifestorys that were shared with the group.
Tomorrow and on Friday we are going to work more on our own grief and we are also going to choose a person that we are going to mourn. I am guessing mine will be my mother although there are two more candidates that needs closure, but I will probably take them at a later point.
Right now I am just feeling sad, but that is part of the process.....

Winter beauty

I was home in Finland during this weekend to attend a wedding. Once again I was feeling reliefed once I was on my way back home to Stockholm. But I was struck by the beauty of my hometown. When living there as a kid I never realized what a oasis I was living in, I did not see the beauty of the sea and the archipelago and I did not feel the peacefulness in the town.
There is a major difference from the buzzling Stockholm and this sleeping summertown, which is taking its beautysleep during the wintertime to be at its best during the summertime. Still....for me there is more under the surface than what is showing, the icecold sleep is hiding old memories from the past, memories that cannot be erased....

List

I got a challenge from Maria, and it is a long time since I did one the last time, so here we go:

What did you do ten years ago?
I lived in a small town in south of Finland, studied and lived a decadent life. Those days are now gone (lucklily!)

What did you do a year ago?
I celebrated that it was a year since I moved to Stockholm and felt happy that I had finally made the decision to move here. It really feels like my home :)

Three kind of candy you like?
Sura remmar, turkish pepper and chupachops lollipops

Three songs that you know all the words to?
Hmm....Enternal flame with Bangles, Chiquitita with Abba and....Touch me with Samantha Fox. All those old goodies ;)

What would you do if you were a millionare?
I would spend my time working with trying to give away money to places needed, or have different projects to build schools etc. Then I would also have a home in the Fiji Islands, Sydney and somewhere in the Caribbean....and some other stuff here and there :)

Three bad habits?
I like eating chocolate to breakfast in the weekends, I like having cake at least once a week, I like watching reality (crap) TV.

Three things you like to do?
Dancing, sunbathing, travelling

Three things you would never wear or buy?
Neon coloured t-shirts, goth clothes, ??

Three favourite things?
A picture of my grandmother, a seal toy that I have had since I was 8 years old, a painting I bought from Benin in Africa

Saying No.

I did the whole day management assesment today and I decided that I am not going to take the position as a manager.
I feel like I am not ready for it yet, and I would probably be able to do it, but I feel the chances for a burn out would be very big.
Saying no is also a strength ;)

3:rd step in jobinterview

OMG! The next step is to have a whole day management assesment with interviews, IQ test, perosnality test, motivation test and role playing. I don´t feel like I am ready to become a manager and I guess that will show up in the test, but it is definetly going to be an interesting experience with some good feedback....wish me luck...or something :)