Tag: sadness

A Few Thoughts On This Christmas Day

Carl Setzer
Christmas Tree

After a lovely day with my family where I got to feel joy and contentment, remembering happy moments at various times in my life, I received a reminder that not everyone reflects on their childhood with happiness. Surviving Childhood Trauma is a blog that, well, it’s title sums it nicely. And today’s post, Trauma & the Holidays serves as a reminder that not everyone’s memories are laden with love and joy. We need to honor our friends and neighbors who find the holidays to be times of horror, anguish, and pain. And, especially after the year that 2020 has been, many people are struggling with loss, sadness, despair, and loneliness. Those feelings should be honored, too. Such are the elements of grace.

May we all find peace, grace, and well-being this season. And here’s to a 2021 with less misery and more connection.

Featured Image by Olenka Sergienko from Pexels

A Meditation This Memorial Day

Carl Setzer

Please remember why

So many giving their lives

Bird song on marble

As a young man, I was quite proud of my decision to join the Navy. No plans for great and noble sacrifice. My future was what mattered; potential, possibility. There were thoughts of glory, but not of sacrifice. 

I’m sobered as I remember my youth. The naivete. The impulsiveness. The reckless spirit. The commitment to my friends. A child in so many ways, carrying amazing responsibility. I held the keys to horror. Mistakes could mean anguish and death for my friends, my crew, those I loved, and for countless innocents. 

I’ve seen the face of parents who’ve lost their children. Of wives who lost their husbands. The promise of youth shattered to pieces. That leaves a horrible swath of destruction within hearts. 

I consider all of this as I look upon this day and it’s symbolism. There’s so much we have yet to learn. 

Endings and Such

Carl Setzer

A business I helped form, build a website for, manage social media…Well, it’s gone out of business. The doors locked,  website shut down, and now, adding a weird  sense of finality, we’re shutting down the Facebook page. I guess I should deactivate the google business page, but I digress.

Facebook was the business’s best performing community engagement tool. Well over a thousand likes. Lots of liveliness, vibrancy and connected people.

But the project is done, and it’s time to let go, sad or not. Letting these sorts of things go, and moving forward; tis quite the challenge. I’ve given so much of myself. But, the past needs to be laid to rest so that the future has room to move. No matter my ego’s misty eyes

There’s always something new my give attention too.

This Painful Evening

Carl Setzer

​Over fifty-years 

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Youthful Memories: A Free Verse Meditation

Carl Setzer

Youthful memories 

Comic books
Toy ray-guns
Sunlit days 

Free of shoes
Sand covered toes

Burning echoes
Of the first-girl-I-loved’s
Bemusement
And resultant mockery 

I wonder
Why suffering
Delights us so?
Such cruelty divides us
A charred gulf bearing
Smoldering rubble
Remnants of hope

So many memories of this journey called life. Painful ones sometimes rise up, reminding me of their place in my mind, my psyche. Hints of underlying angers and frustrations, damage done.