I want to write honestly…

It has been about 8 months since I’ve written and 9 months since I had a tremendous loss in my life.

In wanting to write from a place of honesty, silence seemed like the best solution.

Not having all the words to describe my grief or being able to put it on paper or screen, silence has been the best solution.

I’ve been living in a cocoon of sorts as I often do when I’m processing pain. Somehow through grief, pain and suffering you have to live every day.

You have to get up, you have to drive children to school, you have to work, you have to make food, you have to remember to eat, you have to shower, you have to go through mail, you have to show up.

Somehow.

You have to do the mundane as the globe keeps rotating around the sun and days become weeks and months without this precious thing that you are mourning or adjusting to new normals.

And yet, as cancer so brutally taught me, I may not have today or tomorrow or next week or next month. So how can I be present, right now?

That is what I have been putting all of my energy into these past 9 months. Mourning in earnest, not wasting the pain, letting myself cry when I need to, remember when I want to, flowing with the waves of it all … I’ve hear people describe grief that way before, that it comes like waves. Sometimes those waves are gentle and you can bob up and down or even float but sometimes they come crashing in and disorient you so much that you don’t know which way is up or down.

I’m still wading through the waters of grief. I’m still bobbing and floating and finding my way back up.

Last week, I was very impatient with myself, as I can be, and mad that something seemingly insignificant still made me cry. I’m still crying and erasing the harsh voice that sometimes creeps in that tells me that I shouldn’t cry anymore.

I’m curiously investigating that harsh internal voice and speaking softly to it … of course you are still crying, you may cry for a long time …. or not.

The internal conversation turned to a much more useful and loving, “do what you need to, it’s okay.”

Do what you need to, friend, it’s okay.