What is spiritual direction?

Posted on April 21, 2024 by Lora Brandis

Spiritual direction is a deep listening for how the holy (however you define it) moves in your life. As your spiritual director I witness as your heart expands, how you grow more comfortable with uncertainty, you grieve your losses, and you live your life with awe and joy.

Rev. Teresa Blythe defines spiritual direction as “the exploration of a person’s spiritual path with someone trained in listening, deep reflection and discernment.” Spiritual direction comes out of Christianity, dating back to the 3rd century Desert Fathers and Mothers. People traveled to visit with these monastics for spiritual guidance. For hundreds of years spiritual direction was mostly for priests and nuns.

As interest in psychology grew in the mid-20th century, so interest grew in spiritual direction as well. It is important to note that spiritual direction is not therapy. Spiritual directors do not diagnose or solve problems. There may be a spiritual component of therapy, but in spiritual direction it is our primary focus. We recognize the divine/god’s presence in the directee’s life.

As already mentioned, spiritual direction comes out of Christianity but it no longer only resides there. As a Unitarian Universalist minister and a trained spiritual director, I want to know how you name god, great mystery, life, love…the list is long. I like this quote from Octavia E. Butler: “All that you touch you Change. All that you Change, Changes you. The only lasting truth is Change. God is Change.” That’s how I’ve experienced god in my life. I want to know how love, life, mystery, shows up for you.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Comfort for your mother’s heart

Posted on May 7, 2021 by Lora Brandis

“They” say that the second year after a death is the hardest. I don’t know if that’s true or not. What is true is that you’ve gotten past all of the “firsts” – the birthdays, the holidays, the weird Hallmark holidays like Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and Grandparent’s Day. So, this is my second Mother’s Day without my daughter Zoe. My second Mother’s Day without my step-daughter Emily.

The holidays were hard – so hard that I haven’t posted anything since then. The last couple of days I have noticed that I cry more easily, just like I did when I was first grieving. Perhaps it is because Mother’s Day is Sunday. I don’t know. I’ve never done this before: this second year grieving for an inexplicable loss. I do know that I am comforted by some research I became aware of a few years ago. If you are grieving this Mother’s Day like I am, I hope you find it as comforting as I do.

There is a process called fetal-maternal microchimerism, meaning both the mother and child have small pieces of each other on the cellular level. Fetal cells have been found in mothers’ brains. A study of women who had died in their 70s found that over half of the women had pieces from the Y chromosome in their brains, probably from when their sons were in the womb. A study of mice showed that fetal cells left in the mother’s body will go to the site of injury in a heart, turning into specialized heart cells that might start beating if needed.

Other studies have found fetal cells in a mother’s bones, liver, lungs, and other organs. Science writer Laura Sanders suggests this may be a way for a child to give back to the mother. That after taking nutrients and energy from the mother during pregnancy, after causing morning sickness, heartburn, and body aches, this is a way that the fetus can provide helpful cells. The fetal cells have the potential to turn into lots of different kind of cells that, according to the studies, can help repair a damaged heart, liver, or thyroid. There is a warning attached to this good news: the fetal cells can also cause damage, possibly playing a role in autoimmune disorders.

Sanders also points out that fetal cells may migrate early in pregnancy, meaning that even miscarriages and fetal demises can leave their cellular mark on a mother. This is heart mending news for those of us who have lost children too soon. Our mothers and our children do live on within us in ways we are just beginning to understand.

This comforts me. I am comforted by knowing that both my mother and my daughter continue to live on in me at the cellular level. I hope it comforts you, too.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

You have your memories to comfort you

Posted on August 22, 2020 by Lora Brandis

This is what my sister said to me after she read the following piece I wrote for a grief class. “You have your memories to comfort you.” I wouldn’t advise saying that to anyone in the early stages of grief. She’s my sister so I didn’t slug her. We have beautiful memories of both our daughters. Some days they comfort us. Some days we remember and find ourselves standing in the middle of the living room sobbing. 

Zoe, Frank, and I had a magnificent tea experience at a restaurant once. It was so magnificent that we kept trying to replicate it. Zoe and I went to a local shop that sells loose leaf tea and we smelled countless canisters of tea, never quite satisfied that we had found the right one. Acting on the advice of the shop owner, we came home with an earl grey and a rose tea to be mixed together until we got it right. Like so many moments in our lives, we never got it quite right.

We went back to the restaurant and discovered it was an Israeli tea that could be ordered from Amazon. We ordered a box of 100 tea bags. Frank ordered four small glass tea mugs so we could really replicate the experience. The only thing missing was sugar cubes to hold in our mouths while we sipped our tea.

We ordered one more box of the tea, then drifted back to old habits. For Christmas this year, my daughters gave me a tea subscription – a tea sampler is delivered every month. It was Zoe’s idea. While she was searching for the perfect tea gift for me for Christmas, she found a new local tea seller for us to try.

The day after Christmas we went there. I bought Zoe some ginger tea – one of her favorites. Now I have an unopened package of ginger tea in my pantry. I have a few things like that – items I bought for Zoe a couple of weeks before she died. Items she’ll never use but now belong to me.

Her dad gave her a nice set of earphones for Christmas. She brought them over to our house and we looked them up online because I wanted some – they were a little pricey for me. After she died I asked her dad if I could have them. The first time I had to charge them I sobbed, realizing that the last time they would have been charged Zoe would have done it.

I am comforted by owning stuff she once owned. Comforted by knowing that she once was a part of me. That her ashes, some of which are now sealed in an antique tea jar, contain my DNA. She joked that we should put her ashes in a coffee can and place it near the TV so she could watch sports with us. We found an antique tea jar instead and placed it on the mantel. She can see the TV just fine from there.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Leave a comment

Making Meaning of Loss

Posted on August 15, 2020 by Lora Brandis

The quote from the Upanishads stayed with me through all of the loss I have experienced this past year. I quote it a lot. It helps me make meaning of all the death we have experienced in my family. I don’t know if heaven is an actual place, but it gives me comfort to think of dying as a return to a love beyond belief.

I often include in my remarks at memorial services a caution. I caution mourning family and friends not to rush too soon to make meaning of their loved one’s death. As Unitarian Universalists we do not have a doctrine to explain what happens after death; we each need to take time to make sense of the loss.

So it is with resilience. If building resilience is one way to get through loss, then we shouldn’t rush through that either. Rather, we shouldn’t rush towards that, checking it off once we arrive. Made meaning? Check. Arrived at resilience. Check.

My 28-year-old daughter died January 10 and it is a loss that is unlike anything I have ever experienced. Our first child died in utero at 29 weeks. Both my parents are gone. My step-daughter died in July a year ago. I know loss. Losing my daughter is a loss that is beyond words – as many have said to me. They have no words for me. I understand. I barely had words for myself at first. Seven months later, words are finally starting to come.

Resilience may come too, but it is not a goal I am working towards.

Psychotherapist Candyce Ossefort-Russell cautions that “resilience as a grief myth hurts people.” She continues, “I’m worried that the 21st century bandwagon of resilience is becoming a new hurtful grief myth that grievers will have to fight against in order to heal; a myth that will make grievers feel ashamed, crazy, and isolated if they cannot quickly bounce back, if they cannot return to a self they once were, if they cannot strive toward joy when they are slogging through.”

Because I am a Unitarian Universalist I do not have a doctrine of what happens after death. I have not made meaning of my daughter’s death and I have not made resilience my goal. Instead, I have embarked on a journey that I have never before taken. Maybe I will develop resilience. Maybe I won’t. Maybe I already have it. Maybe I don’t.

When I was a hospital chaplain attending a death, I would often say to the mourning loved ones in a prayer: “from love we come, to love we are returned.” It is a Universalist belief that I have come to after striving to make meaning of all sorts of terrible loss – mine and others. It is a universal truth found in the Upanishads: “All the universe has come from love, and unto love all things return.” That’s all the meaning I need for now.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Leave a comment