By Dawn Grinenko, Guest Columnist
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I love to glimpse the moon peeking between the branches on a cold winter evening, so uncluttered. Wondering, can we shed our dried-up leaves and unclutter our lives like the trees in order to let our souls reflect the light like the moon?
I’m ready to wash the sheets after the lingering sickroom sense the pandemic has left us with and get to a fresher place. In so doing, I would like to explore the healing nature of words this year in my newsletters. Taking a look at what words we might start shedding to make room for new healing words to take shape.
Words have so much power. Even in thought form, before the words reach our lips they start a cascade of emotions, expectations, contradictions, actions and a myriad of consequences. Some words when strung together have forged history, created heroes and villains, or released us from imprisonment through a whispered prayer.
I have this weird thing – I notice when repetitive words or phrases slip into our conversations and stick. They kind of infect our speech, and we all start saying them.
Example, yeah-no, right-right, you as well. “So” is big for me, in fact every time I write I must search and delete all the so’s. So (see that?) what if healing words instead of destructive words could start to infect us as a society?
The pandemic changed us, often not for the better.
For me I realized I was cluttering my thoughts and conversations with destructive words, judgmental words, trigger words. Even starting a happy conversation would veer off to a place where what I call tribal thinking emerge.
We all seemed to have strong opinions of everything stemming from the pandemic. We jumped to conclusions based on a word. Within our loss of control, we needed to develop our own rigid framework to survive, walls of words that might give a clue to which camp one belonged to whether it be Covid-related, political, religious or personal.
It is hard to have true dialogue if we allow words to lump us into assumptions about our beliefs. After getting drawn into some of these conversations, I would think to myself, “Wow I just kind of lost myself, created and engaged in a bunch of negative energy.”’
I love the words I hear coming from the children who visit The Still Place. Their words are uncluttered, still connected to their sweet hearts and souls.
I hope you will travel with me this year, away from destructive words and into healing words. Those words you might hear in the children that surround you. Cherish those words, explore them, think them and use them in order to infect others.
Dr. Dawn Grinenko is founder and executive director of The Still Place in Hayesville. Visit thestillplace.call 828-209-8021 or email info@thestillplace.org.