Emerging

Today I write from a place of feeling like the existential Drano is finally making its way through my pipes and allowing me to come back to myself.

What were there blockages?

So many.

Family death, family crisis, pandemic and all the chaos surrounding it, the country my heart lives in with our adult children, family and friends appearing to implode.

After my brother was found dead at the beginning of October, my mind/body needed a bit of a break from the death project to do my personal work. Not that it will ever be complete– as those who've experienced close loss know– but there was personal space that needed to be made to respect the process.

As I prepare to release the next podcast episode which is the first episode of season three, I feel myself becoming energized again by sharing through the project. It's a welcome return.

Do you ever find yourself wrapped in magical thinking after you've experienced a huge blow or all the sticks have broken the camel's back? Thinking, there then. Phew. That won't happen again. 

But the thing is "it" does. That's what was going on when this brother died. There was so much already happening in the world and in our family and death reminded me that it waits for no one.

So now, emerging from the darkened self-care cave, my eyes squint, I tentatively look both ways as I ease out, hoping I can avoid walking in the path of another barreling bus being driven by a crisis that isn't following the rules of the road. 

I long for a reprieve from "the hard."

Then I feel tremendously guilty as my loves are working towards a year of a severely limited lifestyle because their fellow citizens cannot find it within themselves to pull together and work towards a solution. 

Survivor guilt kicks in on this hill in New Zealand.

Who am I to be feeling the hard when others have so much to carry?

I remind myself there is no competition for who holds the most or who is having the hardest time. 

Right now, in this small window of time when Mr. 16 is with a friend and there are no demands but dogs looking at me, wondering when they will be fed, I take a moment. 

I pick up the keyboard and feel a full body exhale; a welcome home.

I organize the episode for the beginning of our third podcast season (to be released next week) and feel the energy behind listening to this transformative story from a mom whose 21 year old son died after an eight year odyssey of brain cancer; the beautiful-horrible of it all. So many lessons in this episode.

I see the miniature horse out of the corner of my eye and hope he does not kick the glass window and awe that I have horses in my garden; that I am living this life.

Thoughts of the personal losses and challenges breeze through my mind and I say to myself, yes, that is also my life. What will I do with it?

Today I shall rise.

(find out more about the podcast on the page labelled "podcast." please consider subscribing so you don't miss any of these moving stories, you can find it on your fave podcast platform: The Death Dialogues Project Podcast)