Our days are spotted by loss and grief……….and a world of well-meaning people who pat us on the back and tell us ‘everything will be okay’. And surely it will, but it will not be the same. I feel sad for the soul who doesn’t understand – that some hurts aren’t meant to scab over. I have lost many who I loved deeply, and I’ve yet to find any other person who could perfectly fit into the place left by another. It cannot be done, and it shouldn’t be. Our healing isn’t about getting us back to ‘normal’; it’s about learning how to live (to love) even when much of who we are seems to have been lost.

In times of great sorrow, my only joy seemed in the moments just after waking, a time when I could almost convince myself that it was all a dream. But over time, I found another joy – an almost secret knowledge – that I’ve not lost a one. I sit cross-legged on the floor with a cup of coffee by shear habit, a nature……..and yet, my grandmother is there. I laugh and beneath the squealing pitch of a little girl, the timber that is my grandpa’s voice. My granny lifts the cup to her lips, with pinkie extended just so……..and more than once, I’ve felt the calm reassurance of my uncle’s hand at the small of my back. Some store away treasure in cedar, but the real treasure is that which we carry – all who have loved us, in us, still.

If we know heartbreak, then we must also know love. If loss, then surely abundance. Joy sits many a night on the same bed as once we mourned. Our ability to hurt, to break, to fall……there are blessings unaware, reminders of the times we laughed, danced, and soared. Always, we are blessed. Let us not forget the letting in letting go.

❤

stay
that I might tell you
of times before the fall
for prehistoric winters
might I grieve

the leaving
for the welcome back
poetry you wrote
now again
a promise to believe

verses of surrender
confession
heard the same
as ancient constellations
to pretend

the path
was never easy
as getting back to one
a forest grew
to block the view
again

held me here
one faraway
decision to return
across a sky of blue
another day

slipped
into the ocean
embrace of waking arms
as breezes come
to carry me
away

❤