Healing – Page 6 – Jennifer Ohman-Rodriguez

Faith, Grief, Healing, Newsletter, Trauma recovery

February Newsletter 2022

February 17, 2022 Jennifer Ohman-Rodriguez

WAITING

This month finds me busy doing book interviews, planning for upcoming in-person events, and writing a couple of articles. But I am also listening to the stirrings of Spirit. Wondering when and where my first call in ordained ministry will be. In other words, I am waiting.

Waiting can be frustrating. I have days in which I am anxious about the future and angry at the process. These times remind me of when I waited for grief to lift just a bit so I could feel like myself again. And as in grief and trauma recovery, I find myself doing a lot of slow breathing in and even slower breathing out. For me breath work helps maintain a small sense of still being centered in my body.

Breathing also reminds me I have agency in my life. Agency means choices. Some seen, still more cloaked under my own or the world’s pain. Prayer often accompanies my intentional breathing. And as my angst lifts, I thank God for the help and gifts I am aware of and also the ones I have yet to discover. My prayers often end with an exhaled “amen.”

Waiting then is not stagnate. It is full of moving air often taken for granted as Spirit swirls with an imperceptible wind gaining momentum until fully revealed.

THE VALUE OF REVIEWS

So this is a big one! Every author relies on readers to write online reviews. Authors need a minimum of 100 reviews on Amazon and/or Goodreads to be effective. Please, please, please consider reviewing my book on Goodreads and at my Amazon author’s page. You have my thanks!

BUY THE BOOK

Put A Time to Mourn & a Time to Dance on your bookshelf! My book is currently available (on sale!) at Chalice Press.

BONUS SECTION

In one of the many early drafts of A Time to Mourn & A Time to Dance I included a poem as an epigraph before what is now the Prologue. Here’s the poem.

Remembering our beginning,

Misplaced in life’s ups and downs,

Rekindled in a shared glance,

Me alone holding our story,

Attending eternity’s truths,

Gifting me again with our love.

RESOURCES IN GRIEF AND TRAUMA RECOVERY

I love this video from the Ergos Institute of Somatic Education: Growing in Spirituality

A BOOK RECENTLY READ

I recently finished reading Elizabeth Stout’s Oh, William! The character, Lucy Barton, says toward the end of the book something resonating with me both as a writer and as a mother.

“But I was a writer. And that is a vocation…but I wanted those children more than I wanted my work. And I had them. But I needed my work as well…I would give it all up…all of it I would give up–in a heartbeat I would give it up–for a family that was together and children who knew they were dearly loved by both parents…”(219-220)

HAPPENINGS

Planning for future in-person, hybrid, and online speaking engagements is underway for 2022. If your organization, church, podcast, conference, library, or literary festival is interested in inviting me to speak, please click here: Invite Jennifer to Speak. Here’s what’s on the calendar so far:

In-Person

Monday, February 21, 2022: I’m presenting at the event “Poems for a Dangerous Time” at the Montreat Conference Center in Montreat, North Carolina.

Sunday, March 13, 2022: Join me at the Tucson Festival of Books! I’ll be at the Adult Fiction/Non-Fiction tent from 2:30 to 4:30.

Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 7:00 pm: In-person book talk at Gloria Dei Lutheran Church in Iowa City, Iowa. No registration necessary.

In the News

Gather Magazine published my article, “Small, simple self-care” in their January/February 2022 edition.

Read why Chalice Press decided to publish A Time to Mourn & A Time to Dance.

November 4, 2021: A Time to Mourn & A Time to Dance is in the Southeastern Iowa Synod of the ELCA eNews.

Interviews

Q & A with Chalice Press President, Brad Lyons.

Book launch interview with Brian Allain of Writing for Your Life and Compassionate Christianity.

On this podcast episode of This is Life and the Living of It, Steven D. Lee and I talk about trauma recovery and faith.

Family, Healing, Love

My Children Leave Me in January

January 31, 2022 Jennifer Ohman-Rodriguez

My children leave me in January when winter sky covers the fields. Dropped temperatures bundle us into sluggish selves. Frosted windows watch as the world whispers in thickened silence.

My children leave me in January never following the predetermined course of others their age. Not August or September when many return to school. While recent graduates load trailers traveling toward new adventures. And gap year’s youth stuff large backpacks with necessities for discovering the unknown.

But January while I wonder who I am without their daily sounds and smiles. Mourn my womb’s smallness. Never enough to hold them forever, within me, around me, close.

My children leave me in January leaving a scattering of unpaired shoes, balled up socks, and half-read books. Things set down as markers of this place still theirs while they seek something other than here.

My children leave me in January as if coming back. And they do. But each time less to stay than to visit. A gradual reduction of living together as family. Signaling a time almost over for forever. Womb receding, shriveling, sobbing in emptiness.

Healing, Love

A Nest Between

January 4, 2022 Jennifer Ohman-Rodriguez

Weave with precious threads rounded walls,
Unraveled from various fabrics,
Wedding gown, suits, maternity clothes, barongs,
Neckties, favorite shirts, ripped blue jeans, funeral attire. 

Fill woven cup with soft flannel,
Cut from well-washed baby blankets and elders' crocheted throws,
Topped with wooly lambskin meant for lining Swedish baby buggies,
Nestling in other comforts left-over from past years,
Favorite plush toys missing ears, eyes,
Bird feather fluff found on family hikes,
Pieces of fleece, flannel, silk scarf, and sweatshirt worn thin.

Bit by bit we build a nest between us,
Into which we welcome our beloved children and grandchild one by one,
Some home, in-between, partnered, 
Engaged, married, parenting,
All with their own hopes and dreams,
Yet still needing a place to land in relationship to us. 

Gather into our nest other beloveds,
Some alive, some gone before us,
Mothers, fathers, in-laws, siblings,
Youth's loves, wife, husband,
First love from time after life falls apart.

Settle all into our nest,
Along with hearts' unhealed pains colliding with fears of loving again,
As arms stretch out surrounding nest lifting it's heaviness,
Heads bent in watchful lingerings,
Before lifting eyes to stare into the other's
Small tears of acceptance, gratitude, joy, amazement, and courage,
Slide into our growing nested circle.

Move then with clumsy care,
Carrying nest's expanse between us,
Arms reaching farther into each other,
Holding love and loves together for the next part of forever,
Until parted by time moving into death,
For now loving our nest, each other, our us built around this shelter,
Raised for past, present, and come what may.

Written during the Paschal Triduum (The Three Days) of 2019. Read in celebration on December 28, 2021 while proclaiming my covenant of marriage with Forrest T. Meyer.

Grief, Healing, Trauma, Trauma recovery

To Everything There is a Season

October 25, 2021 Jennifer Ohman-Rodriguez

Week after week of therapy sessions. Each hour supporting healing through writing. Page after page revealing in words both pain and joy, sorrow and solace. All the while surrounded by loving writing professionals delivering suggestions with more care than critique. Revision after revision after revision accumulating into hundreds of rewrites leading to now. Filling my heart with a cascade of emotions.

With gratitude to God and to all the healers in this splintered world of ours, I officially announce the birth of my book. A Time to Mourn & A Time to Dance: A Love Story of Grief, Trauma, Healing & Faith is now available for preorder through Chalice Press at https://chalicepress.com/collections/coming-soon/products/a-time-to-mourn-a-time-to-dance.

Domestic Violence, Healing, Liturgy, Trauma, Trauma recovery

Litany of Mercy for the Ceasing and Healing of Domestic Violence

September 30, 2021September 30, 2021 Jennifer Ohman-Rodriguez

A litany is a series of prayer requests to God typically made by a worship leader. These requests are called petitions. The people gathered for worship respond to the offered petitions with a repeated refrain. In this litany the refrain is the ancient liturgical prayer Kyrie eleison. This litany is offered as we begin October and Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

Women in posture of pain and protection.

The Leader begins.

We pray to you, oh God,

LORD, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy for the people in our prayers.

God, we pray this day for those people living with any form of past, present, or ongoing violence,

Stop the violence,

Lead all people to safety,

Provide all who suffer with healing balm.

We pray to you, oh God,

LORD, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy for the people in our prayers.

For those people among us now, in our immediate environment, our church, our neighborhood, or community who today live with the ongoing pain, fear, perpetuated trauma, and victimization of domestic violence,

Give these people the inner strength to survive,

Help them protest without being hurt,

Send them help NOW,

Keep them alive in body, heart, soul, and mind.

We pray to you, oh God,

LORD, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy for the people in our prayers.

For all survivors of domestic violence in all its evil forms living throughout the world,

Settle their nervous systems,

Calm their bodies’ racing chemicals,

Make room within their hearts, bodies, souls, and minds for healing.

We pray to you, oh God,

LORD, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy for the people in our prayers.

For all domestic violence helpers and healers such as mental health clinicians, domestic violence shelter workers, hotline volunteers, trauma-informed body healers and therapists, givers of monetary donations, police personnel, teachers, emergency medical technicians, medical doctors, nurses, social workers, chaplains, pastors, researchers, and all others who provide aid, safety, and healing,

Help these helpers, healers, and those for whom we have not named to do no harm,

Send them courage, strength, and your power to both stop the violence and support the healing process of others,

Remind them to care for themselves each day so that they can fully care for others.

We pray to you, oh God,

LORD, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy for the people in our prayers.

For all people, including ourselves, who know or suspect current occurrences of domestic violence and do nothing,

Open our voices,

Project our words,

Turn our words into protests,

Pivot our protests into necessary actions.

We pray to you, oh God,

LORD, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy for the people in our prayers.

For all communities in Christ gathered around you God in Water, Word, and Meal,

Build true sanctuary within church walls for all victims and survivors of domestic violence,

Create within these walls environments for healing,

Ask all of us as Christians to participate in our own healing so we in turn provide healing for others.

We pray to you, oh God,

LORD, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy for the people in our prayers.

LORD, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy for the people in our prayers. Amen.

This prayer was first given to God on October 14, 2020 during chapel at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota. My thanks go to Dr. Beverly Wallace for giving her students space for creative voice.

As with all liturgy, this litany has a life of its own. The words printed here will shift and change. Some will stay. Others will go. The litany, as is, is just a beginning. It changes to voice the needs of each context. If you use this litany in any form I ask that you attribute the work to me even if you add or modify the work. The attribution may look like: “Our litany today is based on a litany written by Jennifer Ohman-Rodriguez.” Please also let me know you are using it. Thank you.

Image by Diana Cibotari from Pixabay