A web-based action plan for those who have lost a loved one.
This website is designed to encourage the sharing of real-life examples to either read, listen, view, learn, and then to create your own expressions of how you accomplished your own restorations. We offer a way share them on this same site. We can use our expressions to help each other.
There are no better communicants than those who have been in the same place, who have experienced the same kind of loss. We can all relate to each other. We can all support each other. Our joint efforts will move us with every action we take and will get us closer to restoring some of our lost light.
How?
Go to your computer and get about recreating the life about you. Add to your best memories. Share your restorations. Bask in their glories. Learn from each other. Enjoy them. Express them. Store them for future use.
This website is intended to inspire you to recreate and share some of the deep and precious memories that were lost by the passing of a loved one.
In this process, there is an action plan.
For Example
Recently, in Rochester, New York, a young wife of a fallen Police Officer was at the center of a number of memorial events to support her and her young family after her sudden and tragic loss. The Rochester community rallied around her in so many ways, including financial fund raising events. All well and good and most needed, but after watching her reactions to all of those activities, I heard her own words describe those that had the most healing effect: the recreation of memories. A large metal image of her husband`s badge was lovingly created by her supporters. The memories and support it represented were particularly appreciated and referred to as she thanked all those who rallied around her in her loss.
That story clearly describes the purpose of this website. It is intended to put in place ways you can recreate and share some of the deep and precious memories that were lost by the passing of a loved one.
In this process, there is an action plan. An action plan, because it requires participation, just like the creation of the badge monument. Physical action effectively sends the message by what it produces. We are all capable of creating memory images.
Participate
When we were very little, mostly in kindergarten, we were given paper and crayons, and tasked to create our vision of life around us. We expressed our memories of the world we saw in simple pictures of houses, sky, birds, flowers, animals, people, clouds, grass, and on and on. We created from our memories, a simple image of our own version of our relationship to God. Our memories were very revealing. They were us. They were us as memories are us. We had then, and still have now, our memories. As with children drawing pictures, if a picture was damaged or lost we could take another sheet of paper and redraw from our memories, another image. The memories were our inspiration. In the case of our life restoration, we will not be able to restore all of the lost beauty, but we can still make small images, or other means of expression that will help us recreate some of the beauty of our original image. In that sense, we can restore some reminders of our loved one`s departed Spirit. In effect we can create surrogate memories. To do this we need the help of others. It has to be a joint effort.
This is where the participation comes in. This website becomes the vehicle for that participation. In it we can read stories from others that deal with part of the action plan outlined below. When we recreate, we can leave all the bad memories behind. Our restoration will be of only good memories. We can choose how to best express our self. We may even use more than one way. We have many options. We share with and learn from others, on and on. But the chief ingredient is in the participation. The healing is most benefitted there.