I tried something new last night when I made a new hoop for myself... I was recently pretty ill for a couple of weeks - got hit with a bad kidney infection that is still making me feel like crap. It seems whenever I break down physically like this I start to quiver emotionally... It's normal to be moderately teary, I suppose, but I also have this habit of coming to grand conclusions about my emotional well-being while drinking my immune-system-boosting tea and such. Or possibly this is why I force myself to go to work when I am sick - to avoid all this mental work. Even when I am sick I can't seem to turn off my brain.

Anyway... I feel this recent surge in pain over the loss of a friend in the back of my throat... I fell overwhelmed and just sad....a weight in my chest and across my back. I thought I had worked through a lot of the pain surrounding his death, but this month has proven to me that I have a lot to still work on in order to heal. I made a hoop in May for "healing" for a similar loss, allowing the time I spent with that hoop to be symbolic for me and create a tangible connection with the person I was missing. While it was helpful, I kept thinking "I can do more than this...I can make this better".

So last night I did do something more. I have been thinking on this idea for a while, actually... I wrote down on two small pieces of paper things to both my friend and myself. Positive affirmations similar to things I have on my bathroom mirror: I love you, I am whole and healthy, I am worthwhile, I have the right to say no - and so on. Even not really believing what I was writing about and to my friend, I know it's a mindset and belief I want to get to in time. I rolled up the papers and slid them into the hoop before I sealed the connector. I chose tapes I felt my friend would have liked and used a lot of white tape to accent it. I spun it around me for a while, imagining the now tangible reality of healing, hope and letting go of the pain circling around me, becoming more and more 'real' the longer I hooped.

I have thought about this, usually annoyingly after the fact, for hoops that I have made for other people....even just writing on a small paper "I Love You" so that it can circle them while they hoop. It seems so many people hoop through difficulties or to escape them, and I know for myself I hoop for expression and release - whether it be joy or pain, it's just another way for me to voice it. But I also hoop to be and feel healthy - I feel that holding onto this pain about my friend isn't healthy for me in the long term... I just don't know how to let it go. Instead of thinking about how much I miss my friend while I use this hoop, I can think about all the things I wrote down, know they are safe and sealed inside...and maybe I will start to feel them at some point.