It’s been quite a year. #
Sometimes our lives are upended in ways that we don’t expect, we are asked to do things that we don’t know if we can do, and core pieces of our lives are stripped away seemingly overnight. Relationships change. Loved ones are here one day and gone the next. We find ourselves face-to-face withour own mortality. Structured schedules and activities that we thought gave our life meaning, suddenly knocked over like a jenga stack. It changes our situation, passively. But we are also called into action, and in doing so change ourselves.
I’m being vague about the details for privacy, but also because they don’t matter. Everyone at some point faces life challenges related to family, life, death, and we need one another in these moments more than ever. Others need us, and that may be the challenge.
After facing a series of these sorts of challenges, which began to show up in early March, I feel like I’m finally only recently stepping into the next phase of life. I feel comfortable enough that the situations are under ‘control’. I’ve had time to grieve loss. I have a better understanding of my own physical and mental health, and the steps I need to take if I want to thrive.
Still, I feel that the person I am now has come out different, still adjusting to the everyday interactions and activities that one needs to undertake in order to live a life deliberately and consciously. Like I put on layers of armor, but also shed so much of who I was before to make the space for the protection I needed. I made sure that I was hardened against the outside world. That’s a word that comes to mind. That armor is still melting off. Some will stay on forever. But I’m still picking up the pieces of myself, like articles of clothing strewn across a room after getting changed with no time to spare. I’m going to try writing more, as a way to share myself and thoughts with the world. And as a way to heal and rebuild myself, not exactly how I was before, but in a way that works today.
In Memory of Holly. Thanks for all the walks, laughs, and love that you gave us.
