Reduce, Reuse and Recycle Your Grief

You know how I've been going through all the various stages of grief over the past 18 months after being yanked out of my native homeland, Hawaii, and forced at gunpoint to move to the mainland?

Well I'm happy to announce that I think I'm in the final stages of grief--the flower arranging stage.

And the recycling stage.

Did you know you could recycle your grief? Well you can. You can make a million bee-U-tiful things out of your grief--when you're ready--and right now I'm making flower arrangements.

In short, you can live vicariously, not to mention metaphorically, through your crafts:

(What is that old proverb again? The one about how you can take the girl out of the sand, sea and sun, but you can't take the sand, sea and sun out of the girl. Or at least not out of girl's flower arrangements.)

Behold the sand. And the sea . . .

and the sun . . .

Sand, sea, sun . . . You get me?

How about my craft? Do you get my craft?

Let me speak plainly then. For Martha. Sand, sea and sun preceed all beauty.

Okay, I don't get it either, but this is my grief so I can do what I want with it.

BTW, the recycled sand in these photos is 10 years old and 100% authentic--straight from Kawela bay, via our 50 gallon fish tank--(which hasn't been up and running since I accidentally killed all the fish after scrubbing their tank clean with a brillo pad five years ago.) (But that unfortunate event hasn't kept us from keeping the empty tank on display, in all of it's uselessness.)

The sand is useful, but the empty tank is not. But no worries, it's number 10 on my list of tasks to complete before April is over.

Which reminds me, can I segway to the subject of Dummy Boot Camp? It turns out I've been wrong about a lot of things lately. Dummy Boot Camp isn't a boot camp at all. Rather it's a place of refuge. And after spending two days with my top three frenemies, me, myself and I, I discovered that there are no bears on the bear hunt neither.

(Are you disappointed?) (I know, what a boring bear hunt, huh?)

Our bears are just little girls hiding behind scary masks. You don't need to hunt them down, just offer them a cup of oolong tea and tell them they're safe and they'll show you what they're hiding from you. While I was in the slammer I had tea with two of my bears. (Well, I had soggy, homemade chicken soup with two of my bears, but same dif.) When they pulled off their masks I discovered two things I didn't know I had.

Allow Kelly Rae Roberts to illustrate:

I have a pair of un-broken wings!

All these years I thought all my wings were busted so I've been duct taping them together just to get my feet off the ground.

I also have a whole heart.

Did you hear that peeps? I have a whole entire heart. It may be stone cold heart, but it's a WHOLE stone cold heart. And I can use ALL of it. If I want to.

I probably won't want to, but it's nice to know I have it in reserve, just in case.

If I do decide I want to use it, I will start with my magic quilt project. I've been posting over there lately, and my magic traveling baby quilts are in the works. So far I have received seven donations from mothers and grandmothers and aunts who have lost a child-loved one. I can cut 2o blocks from each yard of flannel, which means each donation of one yard of flannel will be sewn into 20 baby quilts. That's 20 mothers who will be comforted from one single donation.

If I can get five or six more donations, my sister and I will have enough material to make 20 magic traveling baby quilts to send out to mothers who have recently lost a child. And then, when they are ready, those 20 mothers can cast a love spell on their magic quilts and send them on to 20 more mothers. And so on, and so on, and so on.

Is there a better way to reduce, reuse and recycle your grief.

There are three ways you can help me make this happen:

1. I am compiling a list of names of mothers to send a magic quilt to, so if you know of someone who has recently lost a child, please send me their name and contact information.

2. If you, or anyone you know has lost a child, and you would like to donate a yard of flannel in memoriam, that child can be part of the magic which brings comfort to other grieving mothers Email me @ ctddiaries@gmail.com for my address.

3. If you have magic in your fingers and would like to help sew the baby quilts together, email me at ctddiaries@gmail.com