Our topic this week, after sitting and walking meditation, is how to work with change and loss. We used a podcast by Tara Brach, titled Skeleton Woman, to lead us into this unavoidable part of every human life. Brach says:

There's going to keep on being this stream - there's going to be pleasantness and there's going to be unpleasantness. There's going to be what we call the stuff happening that we want, and there's going to be the stuff where people don't cooperate and we don't like what's happening...Our suffering is that we're mightily trying to manage things.

Three key insights were:

• Recognize how we're resisting what is going on in ways that cause more suffering (for us and possibly for others)
• Bring a sense of kindness and warmth to what we are doing
• Notice that the underlying fear or grief isn't personal but rather part of being alive and human - it's not "my grief", it's "the grief".