This month’s topic choice has been a very interesting. As our readers know, this is about to be our 9th article and interview with Karyn Lynn Grant in our 2019: The Year of Joy Series. Much has happened to both Karyn and I over the last two months or so which has delayed our conversation, but we are back in full force ! The topic for this installment is “Wisdom” and how appropriate and God directed it has been!
Wisdom can have many facets, applications and necessities in all areas of our lives. Today, however, we will be concentrating on: Wisdom in the Mourning, Turning Regret into Resiliency. Join Karyn and I now, as we jump right in.
Carol: Karyn, I just wanted to take this moment to thank you once again for these last 8 months of our series re: Peace, Love and Joy — sharing how we can all gracefully transition from grief to joy! You know, as well, my feelings of being an advocate and educator for the success of people and I strongly believe we have been doing just that!
Karyn: Thank you, Carol, and I believe, we are doing so as well.
Carol: Wisdom means different things to different people. Wisdom can range from knowledge of oneself, to being humble, to gaining wisdom as we experience and go through life and look back on some choices and wonder why we made some of the choices we did make or wish we had the wisdom, at the time, to know differently. Wisdom can also mean or involve: sharing wisdom with others from advice giving to being there for them in times of need, joy, loss, accomplishments; wisdom about finances and life and …
Carol: Karyn, what does wisdom mean to you and how does one find the gift of wisdom in times of mourning?
Karyn: I do believe that in every experience, whether happy or sad, there is wisdom to be gleaned. When the outcomes of our choices lead us into a place of regret, it is through the choice to become resilient that our lives are made better. I truly believe we can gain wisdom through our sad experiences.
One of the ways we can find the gift of wisdom in times of mourning is to make a decision to act from a place of resiliency rather than from the seat of regret.
Carol: I mentioned earlier about the intense 2 plus months we have both been experiencing. It seems that has been a pattern almost every month when we are about to do another interview, we seem to experience much in our lives to enlighten ourselves on the subjects as well.
I know for you , in this case, it seemed, for lack of a better term, one “attack” after another and it was the first time, I saw your excellence in songwriting, as a musician and also as a creator of a unique healing system struggle to having your normal, effortless flow of words, feelings and wisdom join me in contributing to what has become some very highly, visible articles and interviews.
Would you care to share the one major event that affected your delay re: this interview?
Karyn: Absolutely. I recently suffered a huge fall that sent me flying through the air onto the back of my head onto a rocky slab of cementitious stones. My life was deeply affected in many ways by that fall.
An MRI scan showed deficits in many areas where I once had experienced no issue at all. Finding the right words in my sentence structure became difficult, making writing a simple article seem like a momentous task (hence this article never made it out in September). My short term memory was disconnected from my long term memory. My emotions weren’t the only thing out of whack; the smallest irritation that I would normally pass off without a second thought, now became a unique gift for making mountains out of molehills.
Carol: I know concussions are serious and can alter much in one’s life. How have you been overcoming?
Karyn: In the weeks that followed, I began to notice that I was accepting a sense of defeat. Truly, I was in a state of mourning the loss of my true self; the self I remembered being. When I listened to the countless songs I had written and sung through the years, which sing of faith and hope, I wondered who that person was who had written them. When I gazed at all the books I had written and read passages from them, I wondered how on earth I had ever accomplished those things.
Carol: I can feel how devastating that was for you and was experiencing ( in our communication), first hand, many of the changes you just mentioned. Please continue.
Karyn: I had to learn what my new “normal” was while I regained a level of emotional well-being and mental awareness and consciousness. It’s like the lights were knocked out in a few areas of each quadrant of my brain. In a moment, my heart and mind were filled with a sense of regret that I had ever chosen to sit down on that inviting country swing that had rotted at its footings and set me hurling backwards through the air onto the back of my head.
Carol: How horrible and frightening that must have been! I can relate to your reference about regret ever getting on that swing. It is sad as it seemed it normally would have been a very peaceful and enjoyable experience.
