The Swan Collection

Gracefully express your withheld and unspoken words, while they can still be received by your parent, partner, child, sibling, relative, friend, colleague, or someone else,in the remaining months or weeks of their life.

But how do you share what’s on your heart when you feel…

• ambivalent about what and how much you do and don’t want to share, 
• afraid to express your deepest beautiful or sad truth,
• hesitant because you know you are running out of time,
• fear that once they have passed away, you are left with your own agonizing thoughts about what you should have said while it was still possible,
• worry that later on this will evoke feelings of guilt, shame, pain or suffering within yourself.

Then this is the moment to pause, slow down, reflect on your relationship and ask yourself what would contribute to you both in order to bring closure to your relationship and have inner peace.

During this last phase of your relationship, do you lead yourself from a place of fear or love?

Exploring the scope of memories, interactions, emotions, feelings and needs – met and unmet – which you experienced in this relationship, can be both a beautiful, enriching practice, as a painful and sad one.

I understand you may not feel compelled to even start thinking about doing any of that.

Let alone decide what you are still wanting to share. Or how to express yourself to not stimulate additional hurt, sadness, disconnection or even conflict in this stage of your relationship.

The path of fear can be a long and lonely one.

If instead you choose to lead from love by acknowledging the limitations of this relationship to yourself, the beautiful contributions you have made to one another and the mourning of needs that were hardly ever contributed to, never got or are ever going to be met, you set yourself free from so much emotional baggage.

Imagine how you will feel when you no longer ruminate upon the past nor carry the emotional weight into the future. So much brain space will open up for the present and the future. So much heart space will open up to let love in and flow out.

By giving yourself the chance to reflect on your experience of the relationship, you give yourself and your person the gift of acceptance, and of gratitude for the contribution they made to you – may they have been painful, wonderful or a mix of them.

This way you not only contribute to gracefully bring closure to your relationship, it also helps clear the way for future generations to walk a path of intentional contribution, gratefulness and love.

Facing sudden or expected loss of many friends, relatives, colleagues, business partners and clients to illnesses, suicide, accidents, and peaceful deaths, from a young age, the one thing I learned about were the inner dialogues that went on – some for years – about what I wished I shared with them, but had not found the courage to speak my truth even when my voice was trembling.

I wanted to give myself a chance to speak my truth in order to avoid the suffering I had created for myself in the past through those  internal dialogues.

I wanted her to be known with how she impacted me and my life.

The time I sat down in silence to reflect, helped me own my experience of the relationship. This made it easier to separate what is my responsibility to work out and which parts did I really wanted to be known for by my mother. 

In search of an authentic way to communicate, I drew visuals which represent, within the context of our family bond, needs I had selected. These images helped me be present to and reflect on how each specific need was and wasn’t were met in relationship to my mother and how that affects my small or daily, or even big life changing choices.

Sending cards of my artworks to her, with parts of my reflections, helped me have inner peace around both painful as very sweet matters. Expressing what I imagined would be a gift to her and what her weakening body, questioning mind and softening heart could receive, contributed to connection and harmony between us during, what turned out to be, the last few weeks of her life. 

The time I sat down in silence to reflect, helped me own my experience of the relationship. This made it easier to separate what is my responsibility to work out and which parts did I really wanted to be known for by my mother. 

Expressing my unspoken words to the person that mattered so much to me, gracefully honoured our relationship and the life we lived together.

THIS CARD SET IS MEANT FOR …

a relative, friend or colleague – as a gift of contribution, love and compassion (we can deliver directly to their address.)

WHAT WILL YOU RECEIVE?

• 15 cards (148 x 148 mm) – to send (a selection or all of them) to the person you are about to loose
• 1 card with all the visuals of The Swan Collection – to keep for yourself
• 15 white envelopes (150 x 150 mm)
• 1 login code to the program platform at www.visualempathy.shop, to access the guiding prompts for each need/card to help you reflect on your relationship.

WHAT WILL YOU NEED?

• Pen and notebook to do your journaling before writing your messages in the cards
• Stamps to mail your cards
• A comfortable space to sit and write
• Access to internet and a device if you choose to be guided by the journaling prompts

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