Tuesday, June 17, 2025

24 hours

 One day is the worst day of your life.

The day that the most unimaginable horror happens, and it happens to you.

The day you struggle to breathe. To survive. The day you pray for the night to come because that means this day, this worst day, ends. 

Then it's the next day.

You're still breathing.

You survived.

 

 

And then, you have to navigate the rest of your life. 

 

No one talks about the day after and then the day after that. When you wake up and you forget, for two seconds, about that worst day. Then it all comes back and it's another day and it's not over. You still have to face it. You still have to live.

 

Then it's another day and another. Time keeps moving and so do you. You feel like you are in molasses in Winter sometimes, but you keep moving.

 

No one talks about this. 

 

The trauma. 

The ripping apart. 

The folding together. 

 

And during all this?

 

You still have to be a person.

 

An employee.

A wife.

A mom.

 

Dinner still needs to be made. Dishes still need to be done. You still have to clean the bathrooms and get the groceries and sit in meetings and perform tasks. You have to pretend like none of it happened. Like the worst imaginable thing, the thing you most dreaded in the world, didn't just happen. 

 

You don't forget though.

 

You never forget.

 

Another day happens and then another week.

Another month.

Another year.

 

You don't think about it, this worst, most horrible day every single second anymore. It doesn't consume you the way it once did. You are able to sit in meetings and pay attention. You can make dinner without burning it. You can watch an entire episode of your television show, or read a whole chapter in a book. It's better.

 

 

It's not better.

But it's better.

 

People forget, because it's better.

 

You don't forget though. You never, ever forget. Your body keeps the score and sometimes you're okay. You're perfectly fine. You are laughing or driving or climbing a ladder and all of the sudden you remember the worst day of your life and you can't breathe anymore. You can't see. That day, that worst day, didn't go away.  

 

Other people forget, but you never do. They say ugly things about people who are drug addicts, or who took their own life, or who had bipolar disorder forgetting that you loved someone who was an addict, who did take their own life, who did suffer with bipolar disorder. They forget because it didn't hurt them. Even if it did hurt them, they still sometimes say things about others. Because it's so easy to "other" people you don't know. It's so easy to talk terribly about addicts who are the sons of politicians, as though they aren't people too. They talk about those "selfish" people who took their own lives, not realizing or understanding that it has nothing to do with selfishness and everything to do with pain. They say things like, "Oh I was being bi-polar" when they were simply upset and having human emotions. None of it's okay. People destroy you so casually. 

 

They don't realize what you had to do to rebuild after that worst day. That worst day of your life.

 

You forgive them though, or at least don't say anything. No one is responsible for your worst day. For your pain. For your grief. Your loss is your own and no one can take it. People exist that love you so much and they would carry it for you if they could, but they can't. It's yours to carry, forever.

 

But you breathe.

You survive.

 

People call you a snowflake, a bleeding heart. All manner of mean, ugly things because you care.  You understand that people are complex and no one is all good or all bad and not everyone does. Hate is easier. It's always easier.

 

But not for you.

You can't hate.

 

You understand what hate does. You can't hurt any more than you already hurt. 

 

You lived through the worst day. 

Wednesday, May 28, 2025

Que hermosa vida

 Growing up I had a lot of really big dreams. 

 

I want you to know I still do. 

 

My dreams are different now though. 

I dream a lot about peace. About building community and friendship and love. 
I dream about travel and adventure. I dream about being successful, even though that means something very different than it used to. 
I dream about making my husband as happy as possible and giving him every single thing he deserves. 
I always thought it was wrong of me to want more. But I want more. 
The world is so big and so beautiful. 
We are just a tiny dot. 
We're only here for a moment. A heartbeat.
And it's just so damn beautiful. 
So we're going to love more. 
Lean into our people. The people who love us back. Who want the best for us. Who see things in us that we can't even see in ourselves. 
We're going to try new things without fear. 
Breathing it all in. 
The places, the people, the moments. 






It's a beautiful life. 

I'm thankful for it all, every day. 

Tuesday, December 31, 2024

Steps

 

In 2022 my brother died by suicide and I remember so clearly the feeling of panic and despair on New Years Eve. I didn’t want 2022 to end, even though it was the most awful year of my life, because it felt very deeply like that year ending took me further away from my brother.

2023 felt very similar and now 2024 is coming to a close.
 
Yesterday morning I was out walking, as I do most days. This walk felt especially sad. 2024 was an extremely discouraging year and the disappointments have stacked up on me lately. I have come to realize that I put too much time and effort into certain relationships that aren't healthy. I've done this time and again over the years, it's never worked out for me, and yet here I am fully forty-nine years old and still trying. I didn't win the big award at work...again. I didn't get the promotion that I deserve either. Despite all my hard work, I am still not Beyonce and it seems really unfair for me to put as much time and effort into my workouts and eating as I do and still be so absolutely mid.
 
It's more than that too, of course. It always is.
 
I am worried about my children. As usual.  I want everything for them and the world around them seems blindingly unfair. I worry about my nieces and nephews, particularly the ones who share the most with me...the ones who have become my bonus kids. I want everything for them too. I worry about our country and the direction we are headed. I almost completely avoid social media and news, but the news I have seen and heard has been troubling. 
 
Also? I miss my brother. He loved Christmas. He loved me. It feels lonely and hard without him and it's never going to get better. No one ever asks me how I am. They ask how my parents are and I'm sure they are not great and will never be great again. I am also not great but it doesn't matter. My grief is mine and that's it.  It's been almost three years and my grief only matters to me now. The passing of each year just reminds me how much further away he is and I hate it. I hate it so much.
 
I paused to take a photo of the sunrise and in that moment I had the most overwhelming feeling of peace. 
 
 
You aren’t walking further away from him. You are walking toward him.
 

 
I can't fix any of this. I can't bring him back. I can't change the world or the country or even the minds of people who have lost them. My grief is mine alone and I can't make anyone else care about it. I'm a fixer, I always have been, and it's almost overwhelming to me sometimes that I cannot figure out a solution for any of this.
 
Yet.
 
I will be 50 in 2025 and if I am anything like the women on both sides of my family this means I have at least 40 years of my life left to life. I fully intend to live these years as big and bold as I have lived the last ten, but thinking that I am walking towards that beautiful light that made up my sweet brother gives me so much hope. 

It was a gift to walk alongside him while he was here. I did not realize I was walking him home. Not then.

I don't have to fix everything.

 
 
I just have to keep walking.
 

Tuesday, November 12, 2024

1000 days

 I bought myself the good coffee last week.

The good coffee that I usually have as a treat to myself, that I make in the special machine bought for me by my sweet nephew and his precious wife. I never let myself drink it every day, because it's special and every day could not be special.

Last week though? I restocked the good coffee.


I am incredibly disappointed in humanity as a whole, but I ignore that a lot. It's not up to me to deal with the repercussions of anyone else's choices. I'm in my healing era and that's where I need to be. 


I don't go to church anymore. I haven't for a long time and maybe won't ever again. I stopped finding God there.

 

I do sit with the broken though, because I believe that is God in his purest form. I believe that is where God commands us to be. With the broken.

With the brokenhearted.

 

The friend who lost a beloved pet. Another friend who is worried for his marriage. A lady who, quite frankly, really didn't like me at first and made that very known, who hugged my neck on Saturday because I heard her. I heard her pain. 


I feel her pain.


1000 days have passed since my brother Chris left this Earth and lately, sharply, I feel this. 

Someone I know very gently suggested to me that perhaps I was still too mired in grief and maybe I should seek additional therapy for that. 

It was meant kindly and I know this.

The reality is though that this grief is an appropriate amount of grief for losing someone that important. I told many people (but not him, which I will forever regret) that the last few years of my life he'd become my best friend. He was my first friend. I took for granted he would always be there. There will never be a day I live that I will not think of him. There will never be a day I live that I don't miss him.

Life goes on for me, even though I am broken. 

 

So I buy the good coffee. I tell my friends that I love them. I take my dog on long walks, breathing in every bit of the world around me. I have dinner with my kids and we talk about anything. Everything. They have a safe mom and there is nothing more important to me than that.


I can't bring back my lost brother. 



I can just work on not getting too lost myself.

Friday, November 8, 2024

When days are hard.

I think dogs were made for hard days. 

Dogs and trees.

Somehow talking to either of those helps. I'm not always sure how it helps or how much it helps, but it does something for my soul.


Some days I have to remind myself that it's important that I am here.

Even when it feels very unimportant. 

Even when it feels incredibly lonely and fragile.

I am here.

If nothing more than to make sure a little black dog has her dinner and her cuddles. I am here for that.


Some days I have to remind myself that for every bad person, every person that is trouble, there are more that are not. 

The bad ones don't win, even when it feels like they do. 

No matter how loud and mean they are.

(and they are so loud and so, so mean)

That I am made of stars and I know other people who are too. 

I get to love people who are made of stars.

Dogs are also made of stars. 

So are trees.

They don't talk back, but they listen.

 

 

Some days when it all feels too much, I remind myself of what I've come to know and understand.

That my spirit deeply disturbs unhealed people.

That I can't heal people.

That it's important to never dim my spirit because of those unhealed people.

 

 

Some days when it's all too hard, I think about Chris. My brother who has been gone from me for 996 days.

He was also made of a million stars.

His were supernovas, unlike mine, which are just regular and quiet.

I think about how some people would have thought he was trouble, but how I knew the truth. 

That people are complex and lots of things.

No one all good or all bad.

His spirit disturbed people too. 



Some days I am just hanging on, waiting for other days.

Some days I am full of the light of possibilities and love and goodness.

Most days I'm somewhere in-between.