Posts Tagged 'journey'

Walking towards joy

Published 05/01/2019 Counsciousness , Death , Growth , Life , Philosophy , teaching , Uncategorized , writing 1 Comment
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2018 I am glad to see you go.

You nearly got the better of me. You tried hard to break me, along with 2017, 2016 and 2015. All of you went on rampages of preposterous proportions to see if you could be the one to wear me down and make me admit defeat. You nearly did. Each of you in your own way did your best. Throwing at me whatever you could muster. Digging deep to maintain the deluge.

I’ll admit you brought me to my knees a few times…. more than a few….but I am made of more than the sum of all of your excruciating pain and heartache. I am made of stardust and little bits of warrior woman. I have fueled myself with love and hope and I have rebuilt myself on a foundation of strength and softness. I stood up to your storms and swayed in your wind. I am still here. I am still rooted. You did not win.

These years came with heartache, immense loss, death and betrayal on a scale I hope none of you ever come remotely close to experiencing. I have mourned and cried. I have shuddered under the weight of worry and surrendered to the storms. I have extended grace where I could and wrapped those I love in all the light I can find.

I am still doing the work. I am still fixing and healing and soothing my soul. There is always work to be done.

Listen carefully 2019. I have set an intention. My intention is simply to move towards joy. I seek joy. I seek light and love and laughter. Work with me universe. Work with me. It is a simple and unassuming request. I do not ask that you provide it, for I can find it for myself. I only ask that you do not stand in my way.

Do not block the light I seek so desperately. Do not stand in front of love.

2019 I ask that you hold my hand and walk with me towards joy.

Tree stumps and emotional concussion

Published 11/11/2018 Counsciousness , learning , Life , Philosophy , teaching , Uncategorized , writing , Yoga Leave a Comment
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Here I am doing some sort of crazy balance on a tree stump. Why? Because I can and because I’m damn strong and it’s a whole lot of fun.

That stump – well it feels like it resembles my old life. The one I used to have before the universe decided that I needed some fucking big challenges and some real time growth.

Thanks universe.

It came along, pushed me out of the tree and chopped the whole bloody thing down, right down to the stump. Off went all the branches of my life. Left me with a sorry seeping stump and no place to call home. So, after a bit of confusion, (I like to call it emotional concussion), I found a new tree. Took me a while but I found a new tree and that emotional concussion is wearing off.

But this story is not about a tree or a stump. It’s about this thing that happened right about the time I fell out of the tree.

I had a friend. A best friend. We met in 1999 and for 17 years we were partners in crime. She was my person. I didn’t make a decision without speaking to her. She knew my moods, my thoughts, my troubles and my joys. This friendship saw us through some tough times and we shared all the stories that ran deeply through our intertwined lives. She was the family I didn’t have. The sister I always wanted. She was my home from home and my first port of call. I would always hold space for her no matter what load I might be carrying. If she called I put down my shit and listened. She had a big place in my heart and I would step up in an instant if she needed me.

Then I fell out of my tree. Actually I didn’t fall out of my tree I was pushed but that’s for another day. Where do you go when you are bruised and broken? You go home. Ahh yes, but I had just fallen from there so I went to my second home. To the home of my best friend.

I had a life to rebuild, a new home to find and an urgent need to find a way to support myself. I was drowning in a shit storm so I wept for a while then I started to put myself back together. The logistics of which can not be underestimated. This was a herculean task. Whenever I could catch my breath, and as I had always done, I would knock at her door to connect and hear her stories. To hold space for each other as we had done for seventeen years……but she stopped answering.

She stopped answering my calls.

She stopped replying to my messages.

Then one day I saw that she had unfriended me on Facebook. Good god I did not see that coming.

I never even got to tell her why I fell from the tree.

The wounds from that fall run deep and will take a lifetime of healing, and my person……she doesn’t even know why.

On food and how I move.

Published 10/04/2018 Body , Growth , learning , Uncategorized , Yoga Leave a Comment
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I promised this some time back but – well you know – life kind of gets in the way of life sometimes.  Curve balls, commitments and chores seep their way into all the spaces of your day and all those things that are not so important on your todo list take a bit of a backseat.  This blog has had to take a bit of a demotion to my not so important list for a while but hopefully a revival is on the cards

This particular post has taken it’s sweet time in coming to fruition.  Some things just have to mull about in the brain for a while before they are ready to be committed to the big wide world.  Prompts and prods over the last week or so have given me the push to put pen to paper (which isn’t really the case but you know what I mean)

I regularly, and by that I mean probably twice or more a week, get asked what I eat and what I do to look the way I do at 53.  Well thank heavens these poor people only see me prepped and ready for class in yoga pants that I swear put everything back in it’s proper place.  However, they all want to know so I’m going to tell them and anyone else who is listening.

Firstly I move. A lot!  I do yoga 7 days a week.  I teach classes 6 days a week and you will find me on my mat doing my own practice every day unless work gets in the way.  If that happens I just do as much of my class as I can.  Over the week this probably works out to between 1 and 3 hours per day.  Not every day is three hours but an hour is my minimum.  Personal practices vary between vigorous (inversions and arm balances ) and just rolling about on my mat stretching this way and that depending on current curve balls and state of being.  I teach vinyasa and when it comes to yoga you don’t get much more vigorous than that and classes will leave you in a happy sweaty heap.

So I’m strong and flexible but mostly I get on my mat because it fixes my head and my heart…. both of which need a whole lot of fixing.

What do I eat….

A lot of potatoes….and pasta.

When I say a lot of potatoes I really mean it.  Potatoes – good old fashioned Irish white potatoes (Irish on my father’s side) are the foundation of my diet.  I love them baked, wedged, roasted, chipped – just not mashed! I will cook three or four medium sized potatoes just for myself at most meals. It is possible I will come back as a potato in my next life!

At home I am predominantly plant based.  This means that 80% of what I eat comes from plants).  I don’t eat meat at all and don’t have any dairy at home.  Eating out I’m a little more relaxed and don’t cry if there is some feta in my salad.  I do have one general rule.  If it needs to tell me on a packet what it is I don’t eat it.  I eat real food. A carrot is a carrot and it doesn’t need a label.  Processed food is a no no!

So average day – actually every day – starts with sugar and wheat free muesli with added seeds, raisins and rice milk.

Then around 9 (I might have a small coffee addiction) I’ll often be found having a croissant at VovoTelo to keep me going.

Lunch time varies depending on classes and meetings.  Favourites are pasta with mushrooms and tomatoes from VovoTelo or a baked potato and curried lentils from Nouriti.

I often get in late from class so tend to make things that are either quick or can last a few days.  Three bean chilli is one of my go to meals.  I’ll have this with two or more baked potatoes or rice.  Sometimes I’ll make a quick pasta dish with tomatoes, peppers or mushrooms depending on what I have in the house. Always plenty of onion and garlic and a healthy helping of pesto.  Lentil stuffed peppers with wedges is another firm favourite but my all time best meal is an abundantly large tray of roasted vegetables (including lots of potatoes of course).  Best things to add to this are brussels spouts, carrots, beetroot, cauliflower, broccoli and sometimes I’ll throw in a can of lentils at the end.  Saturday evenings are made for trays of roasted veg and Netflix!  I have a few apps on my phone for recipes.  Forks over Knives and Yummly having proved themselves to be the best for me.

….I love coffee, matcha green tea and try to drink plenty of water.

….I drink alcohol rarely, if ever, and don’t drink any soft drinks.  Water is my soft drink.

….I don’t have a sweet tooth.  Dislike cakes of any sort and ice cream but you might find the odd ginger biscuit in my house.

At the end of the day you have to put good stuff into your mouth and you have to move your body. Potatoes and other carbs are not your enemy.  Being lazy is your enemy and eating rubbish is your enemy.

Get moving and eat real food people…oh and meditate!

 

On travelling solo.

Published 11/05/2017 Growth , learning , Life , Philosophy , Travel , Uncategorized , writing 1 Comment
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No one can say that my life has not been interesting.  From the very beginning it appears I was destined to live a life full of challenges interspersed with an occasional adventure.

It all began in Singapore where my mother, just twenty-one, fell pregnant with her second child.  She had married my father, a slim and charming Irish airforce man at nineteen and their first posting had been to Singapore.  A couple of years later we returned to England and within a year or so we were off to Germany where I began my schooling. I distinctly remember being dragged to school through the snow… not eager to leave the warmth of our top floor flat and the sweet stories of ‘Listen to mother’ on the radio.  Three years later I had to leave my first best friend Gillian and return to England.  I cried for a week and experienced my first broken heart.

Back in England it felt like we moved incessantly.  House after house and school after school.  I became a bookworm.  The corner of the school library and a soft cushion became my friend. The books I read being familiar faces no matter where I found myself.  It was during these years that I discovered the value of knowing how to be alone and I remember my mother telling me how important it is to know how to do this.  To being easy in your own company.  To savour the very sweetness that is solitude.

Finally in my teenage years when my father left the airforce and started his own company we started to settle and yet life began to fall apart.  My father, a typical irishman was a drinker and the more money he made the more he drank.  During his airforce years he had never really been home and I was probably to young to be aware of his addiction.  Now it was glaringly obvious and his indifference to me became a thorn in my side but, at the same time, I developed a deep friendship with my mother that lasted until the day she died.

A week after my seventeenth birthday, having been dumped unkindly by my first boyfriend, I hopped on a plane and went stateside to escape yet another broken broken heart and my father.  I stood at Atlanta airport feeling tiny, afraid and incredibly vulnerable.  All I could think was ‘how am I going to survive this’….but I did.  I ended up in South Carolina and spent a year exploring life, making friendships that are still alive today, learning to stand on my own two feet and the art of ‘conversation with a stranger’.

A year or so later I returned to England and instantly regretted the decision.  Driving through the grey, damp streets on a foggy November morning I longed for the sunny skies of the carolinas, the friends I had made there and once again to be far away from my father and the shit storm that surrounded him.  Just eighteen I sat in my parents little house in England and felt lost, alone and once again incredibly vulnerable.  No plan and no idea where to start. My parents marriage a mere pile of rubble and his love affair with the bottle all the stronger.

Now so many years later I am so grateful for those early adventures.  I am eternally grateful for those early life lessons of savouring solitude and travelling solo.  Of learning to talk to strangers and of reading anything and everything.  Of knowing that broken hearts do mend and that there is power in vulnerability.  Of knowing that you don’t have to tolerate other people’s stuff no mater who they are.

Today I savour my solitude and that little armchair at the back of the bookstore is still my friend.  I have more books than clothes and still love ‘conversations with strangers’.  To hear snippets of their stories and exchange friendly smiles.   I am alone, a little lost and once again feeling incredible vulnerable…..but it feels like home.

I’m not where I want to be…

Published 27/03/2017 Life , Uncategorized 6 Comments
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I’m not where I want to be.  I’m far from where I want to be, but I’m closer than I was.

Two years ago I was on my knees.  Broken by the end of a twenty seven year marriage and just months later the death of my mother.  I had no idea how I was going to survive let alone live.  I’m not there anymore.  I’m so not there anymore.  I’m putting myself back together bit by bit.  When things get broken and put back together they don’t look the same.  The japanese call it kintsugi.  The art of fixing something that is broken and making it more beautiful. I’m putting myself back together and hopefully the new me will be better…..but I’m still a little bit broken.  Fixing some things takes time.

Lots of time.

In the meantime I am perfectly capable of constantly beating myself up about not being where I want to be.  Not being good enough.  Not achieving enough.  I know we all do it but I am the master of it.  Constant tirades at the mirror.  Moments of pure diatribe when I am driving.  Telling myself I should be better. I should be stronger, fitter, more capable, more successful. I should be where I want to be….but I’m not.  It’s too soon.

So in a quiet moment this weekend I wrote down all the things that I have achieved in the last two years.

I did 500 hours of yoga teacher training and passed with distinction

I started teaching yoga daily and in doing so making a difference to so many lives

I did counsellor training and passed with distinction

I did my meditation teacher training and passed with distinction

I started an online business learning about packaging, trademarks and countless other things

I started importing for my online business

I helped write a book that is about to go to print

I wrote my own book – well the first 60,000 words of it.  It still a work in progress.

I expanded my photography business

I went on a blind date

I buried my mother and dealt with her estate

I stopped watching tv

I increased my exercise and changed my diet

On a personal level I moved house, bought a car, opened bank accounts, opened cell phone accounts and learnt to do life on my own

I’m learning to deal with my anger

I’m learning to soften

With the support of some incredible friends I survived

I survived and I grew and I got to know all the broken parts of myself.

I’m not done putting myself back together.  I’m still hurting.  I’m still a little bit broken.

I’m not where I want to be but I’m closer than I was.

It doesn’t have to be this way…

Published 07/02/2017 Counsciousness , Death , Growth , Life , Philosophy , teaching , Uncategorized , writing Leave a Comment
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In my little world right now I have people close to me who are suffering the unimaginable – stuff we can’t even dream up.  Worlds being turned so upside down that the simple act of breathing becomes impossible.  Heartbreaking, excruciating stuff.  The life is not fair kind of stuff.  The cry for three days and still not catch your breath kind of stuff.

They are not doing this to themselves.  It is forced upon them by the universe for whatever lesson it is they have come to learn in this lifetime.  It is out of their control but it is also out of everyone’s control.  It is just the way it is.  The universe’s plan.  It’s unbearable, but it is the universe’s plan so we catch our breath and move forward as best we can.  It is not in anyones’ control so we breathe and move.  Step by step. Day by day.  Knowing we are doing our best.  All of us doing our best in every moment.

Also in my little world I have other people close to me who are suffering due to the choices of those around them. I have been in that place.  I know how it feels.  I know every single desperate inch of how it feels.  It’s equally heartbreaking….but it’s different.  It’s different because it doesn’t have to be.  It’s the ‘choice’ of the other person.  It can be fixed.  It may take courage but it can be fixed.

Do something once and it is an accident.  Do it again and it’s a choice.  Didn’t have to happen.  Didn’t have to go down that road.  Didn’t have to hurt the people around you.  Didn’t have to do that.

Do it again and it becomes selfish.  It becomes weak.  It lacks integrity and soul.  It becomes pathetic. It becomes deliberate.  The deliberate cause of suffering to others.

Addictions are a disease they say.  Perhaps.

Choice is not a disease.

Addictions are selfish and destructive.  They are harmful and hurtful.  They cause pain wherever they go….and they go everywhere.  They are everywhere.  They are all around me causing immense suffering to people that I love dearly and so many people I don’t even know.  People I have yet to meet.  Addictions are selfish and they are a choice!  I am astonished at the prevalence of them.  I am astonished at the quiet whispering voices as they tell me their stories.  Their stories of breaking hearts and loss of hope.  Stories of broken families and suffering children.  Stories.  So many stories.  I am over whelmed by them.

I do not understand despite a lifetime of being in this place.  I do not understand someone making that choice.  I do not understand the destructive selfishness of it all.

I watched my father destroy his family unit. Destroy his job, his friendships and eventually destroy himself.  Done and dusted and pushing up the daisies by the time he was my age.  He knew what he was doing.  As a child I knew he had chosen his addiction over me.  His selfish destruction of everything around him was more important than I was.

And then I watched it again….

It was a choice.  It was not a disease it was a choice.

It simply didn’t have to be that way.

It never does.

 

 

A new year…..with a suitcase from the past.

Published 09/01/2017 Life , Philosophy , writing Leave a Comment
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There is something wonderful about a new year.  A vast horizon of some three hundred and sixty odd days of emptiness waiting to be filled.  Pages and pages of days anticipating the arrival of stories.  Stories of summer nights and life changing experiences.  The sweet blankness of the unfamiliar.  So many new chapters of a book yet to be written.  Each of us with our own blank book and our own empty pages.

Somewhere, in the dark corners of my mind, I imagine that I am able to shed all the unwanted parts of myself and leave them, tattered and rejected in the past of the old year.  That I can begin the new year as a new person.  Glowing and unafraid with just a beautiful sunny horizon beckoning me to step forward and take the deep unhindered breaths of a fresh new start.

But it is not so…

All those tattered and intolerable parts of me step into the new year along side me.  Shadows.  The darker parts of my character dragging themselves along for the ride despite my deep desire to leave them, crushed and discarded on the forgotten side of midnight.  Is it that I did not work hard enough on myself?  Did I not fill the last 365 pages with stories of being good enough?  Did I not try hard enough to peel away the layers so that a new me, a me without the shadows, can start writing those magnificent stories.

I thought that perhaps I could step into 2017 unafraid.  I thought that my work there was done.

But it is not so…

In the first few silent hours of this brand new year I read this quote  ‘ There is great value in being fearless.  For too much of my life I was too afraid.  Too frightened by it all.  That fear is one my biggest regrets’.

I sat sullen in the guest room of my friends house and decided that if I am ever to cast off this murky war I have with myself I need to understand it.  I  need to break it down into little pieces.  Manageable bites.  I need to wrestle with the individual parts of it for as a whole it is too strong for me.  Otherwise it will win.  It will always win.

So I take out my brand new journal.  The one with the delightful, creamy, empty pages waiting for my pen to fill them with exquisite tales of bravery and success.  I think of this thing….this fear.  Of how it bears itself to me.  For I am not afraid of real things.  Snakes or spiders are not my demon.  I do not fear death or deadly disease.  I do not fear open spaces nor being alone.  Being alone is my friend.  No my fears are not so simple.

And so I write on those new velvety pages…

I fear I will disappoint myself.  I fear that I am not as strong or as brave as I think.  That I am not really the sum of all the intelligent parts and that the result will be breathtakingly short of all the infinite possibilities.

….. and so I fear that I am, after all, not enough, even for myself.

I fear my lack of courage.

I fear that trust is too big a mountain for me to climb and…

and I fear that this broken heart will never mend.

 

I’m so out of my comfort zone I can’t breath.

Published 10/10/2016 Death , Life , teaching , Uncategorized , writing 5 Comments
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That quote, you know the one that goes like this…..  ‘Life begins at the end of your comfort zone’.  Well does it? Does the magic really happen when you are pushed to your edge? Does life really begin when the proverbial rug is pulled out from beneath you?  Does it really begin when you have to start again.  When you have to do it all over but you are tired and afraid.

I’m waiting life.  I am waiting for you to show me.

It seems I have spent the last two years being terrified.  Two years of grappling to find comfort in the unfamiliar. Searching for the path back to comfort.  Back to that comfort zone where life felt safe and I had a plan.

I continue to have my daily conversations with my mother, as I have done for the last fifty one years.  She no longer answers.  There is no comforting reply.  No sound advice from the email address that was once hers.  No Sunday Skype and reassuring smile.  No ‘I can come if you need me’.  I need you.

I tell her that nothing is the same.  I tell her that I wander around this ‘edge’ in search of home but I have yet to find it.  I tell her that a blind man does not use his cane to see where he can go but rather where he can’t.  I tell her that I have lost my cane.  That I don’t know where it’s safe to tread and I have no one to tell me.  I tell her that I can’t see the road ahead.  That it is all blurry and misty where I am.  That there are no white lines or cats eyes showing me where to go.   I tell her of opportunities that come my way but that I don’t know if I should.  That I need her  to tell me that I should.   I tell her that I have no place to call home anymore.  Either here or there.  That I have lost my secret place where I could hide from my fears and from the world when it all got too much.  I tell her I do not know how I will survive this.

I tell her that I am having to do things differently and I’m not sure that I am doing it right.  That there were people I believed in, totally believed in that let me down.  That there were new people I thought were honest and kind but they were not.  That I told them my stories and now I realised I should not have.

I tell her too of all the beautiful friends I do have that listen endlessly to my why’s, what if’s and how’s.  I tell her that all the little gifts she gave me over the years are my new familiar.  That I can see her everywhere because of those things.  I tell her that it is from her that I learnt the real meaning of unconditional love.  That her exceptional friendship is what I hope to emulate with my own girls.  I tell her I’m trying.

I tell her of the days that are magical and happy and of the dark days when I can’t even remember how to breathe.

I tell her that it is all down to me now.

I tell her I am scared that I am doing it all wrong.

I tell her I am alone but never lonely.  That she taught me that art of being alone.  I am eternally grateful for that.

I tell her I am so out of my comfort zone I can’t breathe.

Does life really begin in the unfamiliar?  Does it begin with a new front door of a home that is not mine? Does it begin with the loss of friends there were supposed to be there for a lifetime ? Does it begin in the space of starting again.  Does it begin in the not knowing of how this is supposed to work?

I do not know. I think by now I am supposed to know but I do not.

Don’t be co-dependent on your story.

Published 27/09/2016 Counsciousness , creativity , Growth , learning , Life , Uncategorized , writing Leave a Comment
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We all have our story.  Pages and pages of stuff we travel with.  Baggage we hold on to.   Each of us with our own piteous little pieces of our past.  Your father walked out when you were little or your boyfriend cheated on you once upon a time.  You never got that promotion you always thought you deserved or  your school marks didn’t reflect how hard you worked.  You were not chosen for the A team so gave up sport. That guy never asked you out and then dated your best friend.  He left you.  She left you.  Little traumas.  Notches in the bark of our souls that make us who we are. We are filled to the brim with them.  Overflowing with them.  You can’t get to adulthood without bags of the stuff.  We carry it around and blame our messy lives on it.

I am guilty.  A father who was indifferent to me at best and drunk a lot of the time.  A shabby english comprehensive that, were it not for the daily register, would not have noticed I was there.  My father’s job that made us move every few years resulting in no roots anywhere,  no sense of belonging, no real home.  These are just aspects of my childhood.  I would not dare to tread publicly into my teen years let alone all the diatribe that followed.  I would not dare to go on pulling out the relentless garbage of my life and laying it out and telling you ‘see….that’s why’. That’s why I can’t. That’s why I’m too scared. I couldn’t possibly because….

Here I am in my very adult years trying to lay down that heavy load of history.  The mountainous pile of the former me that I have dragged around year after year. The relentless hurt that the last few years delivered in breathtaking quantities.  I am trying, in tiny daily steps, to release any co-dependency on my past.  To believe that ‘I can’ despite a life of believing that ‘I can’t’.

It’s not easy.  We are comfortable in our co-dependency.  It’s a beautiful excuse.  It’s a beautiful excuse to stay in our sweet co-dependent state. It’s a reason to not.  A reason to not write that book or start that business or take up that sport.  It’s a reason to not be easy in that relationship.  It’s a reason to not open our hearts to all the incredible possibilities.

As safe and comfortable as this co-dependency is you are not all that has been.  It’s done. It happened but now is now. It’s not who you are in this moment.  Place all those bags of stuff gently down and move on. Let your heart gently open to all the promise and wonder of what life can offer.

You are not what happened to you.

There is so much to come.

Grief does not know of time.

Published 20/07/2016 Death , Growth , learning , Life , Uncategorized 3 Comments
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Grief is an disobedient entity.  It does not know of boundaries or timelines.  It does not care for working days or weekends.  It does not arrive at the prescribed time, waiting its few mandatory days after shock and despair to enter stealthily through the door.  It does not wrap you in its dark cape for the allotted or subscribed time you might have read about and so think ‘oh yes so now you are here and in x number of days you will be gone and I can move on’.  It does not come when you are expecting it.  It does not always come with death. We have many reasons to grieve and most of them we ignore.

Grief.  It comes in the middle of the most perfect day.  You have just taken a deep breath of pleasure, the sun is out and you can hear the delightful laughter of small children.  What ever it was that was the cause of your grief was months, even years ago.  Long forgotten.  Dealt with, you thought, in the most efficient of ways.  Packed down tightly, taped up and placed in a long forgotten corner of a cupboard never opened.  Then there you are standing in line at the grocery store perched somewhere between the pretty little packets of nuts and the magazines depicting perfect homes and deliciously robust bodies and suddenly you hear a voice, or smell a scent and it hits you like a freight train.  Right there, out of the blue it hits you.  It was there all along.  A tiny ember barely alight somewhere deep within you glowing so quietly you could not even hear it’s whisper.  Then a memory, a sight or sound opens the door just enough to provide oxygen to that tiny cinder.  You feel the heat rise up within you.  Rushing and enveloping you.  Overwhelming you. You are in the middle of the line at the supermarket and all of a sudden you feel your world fall apart.

It comes in a dream and when you wake the day does not caress you with it’s normal sweet and charming hello.  You open your eyes to crashing waves of every unwanted and unwelcome emotion.  Immediate thoughts of ‘I cannot do this day’ engulf your both your mind and every pore from the tips of your toes to the top of your head.  We are who we are though and we get up and tape down that box and carry on.  We shut the door and hope the cinder dies down.  No oxygen, no fire.

Then there you are in line at the supermarket and the heat rises and your eyes fill with tears.   You cry at the checkout and you wipe your eyes at the parking exit.  You stop your car in a random spot in some side street and are engulfed in great heaving sobs that tear you apart.  Once it comes its unstoppable and the pain it seems is unbearable.  That fire will burn and the only thing to eventually put it out will be your own tears.  You can’t can keep closing that door and trying to put out the flames, it will never work.  It will come again and again at all those unexpected times until you finally deal with it.

Thats grief.  It’s unexplainable and although it is not always related to the death of a person it usually involves loss of some kind.  There are many reasons to grieve.  It can be the loss of a place.  The breakdown of a friendship.  The deep hurt from betrayal.  The pain of something that never was when you so desperately wanted it to be.  The bottomless despair that comes with the realisation that things are not how you thought they would be.  The loss of a future you thought you would have.

When it comes it might be because of all these things.  There is nothing to do but go with it.  Pull over at the side of that road and cry those tears.  Stay in bed and refuse to do the day. Open the door and let out that whole lifetime of piled up emotion. Maybe, just maybe then you can start to heal.

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