June Issue of Tidewater Woman Article

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How do you rebuild your stamina

after experiencing a terrible loss? How do you recover from the death of a child, a spouse, or a family member? How do you put your life back together after a divorce? How does anyone recover from a fire, tornado, hurricane, or flood? Everyone handles loss differently. Some people simply never fully recover.

Many people feel that somehow they are so changed that their former selves will never return. Others feel that they age, that the trauma, the emotional bodyblow is so severe that it can cripple them for a very long time. Some people note that while they feel they have aged, they don’t necessarily look older. They just feel older.

Some feel that something has died inside of them, that the very heart for living has gone out of them. Others feel they can never love in the same way and that they have to hold on to who and what they love more possessively. Many feel an exquisite loss of control over their lives. A profound sense of insecurity develops around them, and they begin to withdraw.

If you have experienced any type of loss, perhaps you can relate to these feelings. If you have observed similar behaviors in a friend, worker, or family member, you can perhaps relate to how hard this is by observing it.

There is no easy answer to rebuilding physical, emotional, and spiritual strength after you feel that the life has been knocked out of you. There is no pill, potion, powder, or procedure that will take away the pain. There is no magic that makes the grief waves that keep coming, ever more slowly, turn off. The only aspect that makes this comprehensible is the concept of experience. We don’t enter mortal life to sit and be idle. We come into the physical realm to feel life. For example, one woman can’t explain to either a man or another woman what childbirth is like—it just isn’t possible. You have to experience it. Why do people go to war? They go to experience the extremes of emotion. If this were not so, then there would be no wars. If we cannot get experiences through actual contact with good and evil, then we seek these experiences through film and TV.

The experience of loss is a painfully important one, for it causes us to appreciate what we not only have, but what we have had. When the loss is very personal, we have to go deep inside ourselves to find meaning in the experience. The interesting point is that not everyone crumbles with loss. We are changed, often changed for lifetimes to come from some losses, and yet some people use loss as a vehicle to have the experience of healing. They appreciate the loss, love what was lost, but do not cling to what is no longer in their lives. They choose to move forward with living. The people who learn the most from the lessons learn to love more. They learn that healing can only come from opening our hearts to other people and helping them. The spiritual law that notes, “As you heal others, so are you also healed,” is the truest aspect for rebuilding strength and internal life after severe loss. When you choose to maximize loving and giving and you appreciate and hope for a better tomorrow, you will be lifted up.

The journey and the effort involved can be a challenging ladder to climb. At some point, 100 percent of souls will experience every type of loss there is for the very experience of it. It is the point of mortal life—all these joys and all these sorrows.

Soul evolution is ultimately determined by how we choose to handle these dynamic and painful experiences and by the courage we show in the face of great pain. When we don’t need the experience any more, we no longer have it. It takes tremendous courage to love more after loss, but it is that very courage that takes each soul up another rung of the spiritual ladder and eventually, finally, evolving toward a very different type of existence.

Excerpted from The Lightworker’s Guide to Healing Grief by Tina D. Erwin, CDR, USN, Ret, who has studied the spiritual side of life for many years. These studies were further enhanced by the experiences of a dynamic 20-year career in the Navy, working for the U.S. SubmarineForce. Tina’s book is available from www.thelightworkersguide.com/ and Amazon.com.

Some Butterflies Get Color from Crystals

RESEARCHERS STUDYING certain species find that their bright hues are the result of gyroids, which manufacturers hope to copy.

By Rachel Bernstein, Los Angeles Times

Butterfly wings are so synonymous with bold color that few people may wonder what makes them that way. But Yale University researchers studying the green color on the wings of five butterfly species have found the source of that striking color – threedimensional crystals known as gyroids.

Such crystals create vibrant hues through their interactions with light – a type of color that is structural, as opposed to pigment-based. Other animals, such as peacocks and frogs, have structural colors as well, but these particular butterfly colors were based on the especially complex gyroid.

“The structural colors are notable because they’re so brilliant, so saturated, so pure,” said biologist Richard Prum, senior author of the study published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

And at last, researchers have been able to see – in three dimensions – the gyroids that create some of these colors. In doing so, they’ve gained a greater understanding of how butterflies produce them.

This study was the first to use a three-dimensional imaging method, called small-angle X-ray scattering, to directly observe the unique structures. “The gyroid is the most challenging thing to describe in this research,” Prum said. “I’m still mystified myself. It really is mind-bending.”

Vinodkumar Saranathan, co-author of the study, took a stab: “Imagine a maze of these pinwheels, hundreds of thousands of pinwheels connected in all directions.”

The team surmised that the wing cells weave in and out among themselves, so that the external surfaces become internal, creating channels in which a material called chitin can be deposited. Chitin is the hard material that forms insect exoskeletons; when the cells die and decay, the chitin is left behind as a gyroid, making the wings a vivid green. Not all butterflies employ such complex structures to make their colors; others use simpler structures or pigmentation.

Structural colors of all types are appealing to textile and cosmetic manufacturers because they’re fade-resistant. They’re also responsible for iridescence and are used in products such as holographic wrapping paper and CDs.

Gyroids, however, are too complex for current fabrication processes, so manufacturers are keen to mimic the butterflies’ method for producing them. Not only could they be used to create vibrantly hued textiles, gyroids respond to light much like wires transmit electricity, so the potential technological applications could be enormous.

Because butterflies create such structures naturally, the findings suggest that technological developments wouldn’t have to come at an enormous environmental cost.

“These guys can make all the stuff at room temperature without toxic chemicals,” said University of Albany biologist Helen Ghiradella, whose prior work on structural color had an impact on this study. “The biological systems are showing us it can be done.”

KS&L 329 The Power of a Handshake Part 2

So, what constitutes a ‘good’ handshake and what does it mean on a psychological/spiritual level?

• As you reach out your hand to the other person, it literally means that you are extending yourself to them.

• As you reach for the other person’s hand you open your hand all the way to be able to have complete palm to palm contact meaning, that you are open to the interaction.

• As you close your hand around theirs, use a firm balanced grasp. Do not deliver a crushing, weak, or limp grasp. Be very firm, business like, and direct. This action reflects the fact that you mean what you say, you are business like, fair and that you expect the same treatment in return.

• As you shake the now combined hands, up and down two or three times, not more, give an extra slight squeeze and release. This final action says that you are a professional, you get to the point, you want to do business and you expect the same in return.

The silent cues from a handshake linger with both parties for a while although they may not be consciously aware of them at the outset. As you practice getting a sense of another person through this process you may find that you develop a more mature sense of this person and of other people in your life in the process. This isn’t so much to judge someone else as it is to decide whether this is a good person to do business with and that includes people who give you care including doctors, lawyers, contractors, teachers, all people who are going to work with and for you. Learn to know people on other levels.

Can someone give a firm handshake and still be deceitful? Possibly. This will require a bit more awareness on your part. Think back to past interactions with other people. Are you able to remember their handshakes? Can you marry that memory to your experience with them?

As an experiment, for a week, after you shake someone’s hand, make either a mental or written note of your impression of this person based solely on his or her handshake. Over time, review your memories/notes and see how accurate you were. You might just be surprised.

What if you have an exceptionally small hand? How do you deliver a good handshake, especially if the person coming toward you has a hand the size of a catcher’s mitt? Do the best you can to get your fingers all the way around the palm area of the person’s hand. They will instantly recognize that you have a small hand, but the strength, which you used to execute the handshake, will linger in their memory. Literally, you were not intimidated by their size on any level. You, with the small hand, will also get a sense of whether this person makes any accommodation – literally is sensitive – to the requirements of your size. They do not crush your hand, but are inherently courteous. See how much you learned in that one exchange?

Handshakes also represent your style, your energy, your zest for life, and your passion for whatever has brought you and the other person together. Possibly changing your handshake could offer you insight into yourself. If you had a weak handshake, you may now choose not to be ‘weak wristed’. If you had a crushing handshake, you may wish to be more sensitive. You can change with insight and care.

Human interaction and reaction is based in a very large part on subtle cues. Being sensitive to these cues can go a very long way in gaining insight into the person in front of you and that is an excellent use of spiritual insight. Signing off with a strong, firm handshake!