Time Out

To Tune in..

I enjoy sharing about my grief here, and it’s cathartic and beautiful and therapeutic for me to do so. From the few messages I’ve received it’s actually helpful for some people and I love that I can reach even one other widow/widower/griever and have them know they’re not alone in how they’re feeling.

Every once in a while I cycle through a time of letting things go. It builds up and I need to love it and release it. To write when I’m in that is so important to me. To share the process is too, especially if it helps someone else. These last few weeks the overwhelm, the grief for so many people and lost time and lost things has really built up for me. It’s a long list. I know many people are feeling like this right now and to be honest with the state of the world right now it’s unsurprising. This one though, feels bigger than others and I wonder that maybe, just maybe, this time of year will always be like this for me. A time to go inward and learn, to pare life back to the bare bones. To find a new way of living and being and hopefully of sharing.

I have a deep knowing that it’s time for me to put the posting to one side for a little while to actually be off line and in real life. To sit with my thoughts and the love and the memories, the vulnerabilities, the fears (the world is so fucked there are many big fears) and to sift through it all to mine out the gold I need to carry forward with me. To see what might help, both me and others. To figure it out. To write it by hand, into an old journal that I started a few months before John got sick, with just my Ted and my coffee to keep me company in the office in the garden that John used to work in. To think about clearing his things and making this space a studio for the creatives in the house. Pared back, window open, birds singing, and the smells and sounds of breakfasts beginning to rise.

I don’t know how long I’ll be. I’ll be back whenever it’s time to share again.

“Every day the world will drag you by the hand, yelling this is what’s important, and this is important, and this is important and you need to worry about this and this and this and this. And each day, it’s up to you to yank back your hand, put it on your heart and say, no, this is what’s important.” - Iain Thomas