We've all had...

things in our lives or in the lives of people we love that are just so profoundly overwhelming we almost can't say them aloud. They can be good things or bad things. Like when my husband found out he was going to be a grandfather, he, perhaps unknowingly, whispered the words, "a grandpa" as he let them take hold and settle in and alter who he was. He has a new moniker, a new superlative for the shingle he hangs outside himself that attempts to describe all the things he is: son, brother, uncle, welder, dad, husband...grandpa. It's a beautiful moment when someone opens a welcomed gift life gives them. If you're the one giving that gift, it's even more lovely. It's like holding out your hands and showing them heaven. As life sometimes works, that of course means sometimes the hands open and what we see looks a little more like hell. 

I read a quote the day the hands opened and I found out my niece wasn't going to live. "We are all just walking each other home." -- Ram Dass. I don't even remember where I saw it. If it was you who posted it, thank you. I've run my fingers over that like a smooth stone dozens upon dozens of times since then. And not just about sad things and hard things, but I've come to see that walking each other home happens in the light and the dark.

I see us all headed in a general direction together on a wide expanse of hard-packed dirt road. Along the way, there are forks in that road. Sometimes those forks lead to gentle slopes with spectacular, breath-taking views. Sometimes they are dark and overgrown to almost impassable and you aren't sure where you will end up or if you'll find the way through. Both times we call out to our people, to the ones who walk with us and to the people who've taken those similar paths before us... "Come see this...it's beautiful" or "Come with me...I'm scared. I'm lonely. I'm grieving. I'm broken." 

The truth is, while I firmly believe we are all in this real life production together, we are all very much the main character in our own stories while being the supporting cast in everyone else's. And while we are all on the road together, walking each other home, no one else walks in our footsteps. We are all somewhat alone together. While that may sound disheartening, it shouldn't. Being alone together means that looking to the left or the right, you will find someone there and even if that person is scared, you still have someone to be scared with. Alone together is better than alone, alone.*

Think of it this way, if it's night and the power goes out and you can't see anything but dark, you would find comfort in knowing that one of your someones is in the dark with you. Maybe they aren't afraid of the dark. Maybe they have a better sense of space, a better memory of where things are so they can guide you around the chair leg that could surely break a pinky toe. Maybe they know exactly where the flashlight is. Maybe they will sit in the dark with you for as long as it takes for the light to return. Maybe you are the someone who isn't afraid, who knows how to navigate, who will share their light, who will sit until they can see again. Be that person. Be the sharer of the light. We need to be people who are as willing to help shoulder the burden or shout the good news as easily as we share the gossip and the scandal.

When someone is going through hell, we don't want to say the wrong thing. Maybe because we've had people say the exact wrong thing to us and felt it burn as it went into our ears and swam around our brain and slammed into our heart in a way that fueled the angry part of going through a hard patch. I think we all so much want to be the person who says the thing that heals the wound, and we just as much don't want to be the person who says the thing that makes the cut deeper.

I think back to the times I desperately searched people's faces and words to find the ones that made my hurt or fear or uncertainty lessen... "It is well with your soul. She's in your future now. You will find a way to carry this." Or the words that increased and confirmed my greatest joys... "You were born to do this. You are exactly where you were always meant to be. He's who your dad was talking about when he said you would find the very best man for you." I think back, and I so very much want to wrap those feelings of safety, optimism, hope, comfort, peace around my people, my fellow travelers. I want them to know their good and bad are seen and acknowledged and felt by me, because I want them to know I'm rejoicing when they do and mourning when they are. I want them, the ones sharing the road with me, to feel what I felt from others. That in their aloneness, (because no one else feels your exact joys or sorrows) I'm together with them. I'm either cheering for them or ready to carry with them.

I'm up in the middle of the night talking to you, because I'm thinking about the people who have walked with me. I'm hoping that they know I'm walking with them too, that we are walking with each other. My heart and my mind is heavy tonight, because I have a dear friend who has a family member who isn't well. I've typed and deleted the "not well" several times trying to find a softer way of saying it. Trying to find words that convey the enormity of the situation without dramatizing it. Trying to recognize the weight they carry without dwelling in the unknown. Trying to stand beside her in the certain hope that everything is going to be okay without silencing her need to say the scary things, so she can see them outside of her head and know that the fear isn't always the reality. When I see her, a lump forms in my throat. All the things I want to say, all the things I don't know how to say, all the silly and trite and unhelpful things, the platitudes that don't feel sincere but are the things everyone says when they don't know what the right thing to say is because there is no right thing. All of that sits in my throat. And she knows this because she's swallowed those kind of words for me too because she has never failed to walk toward home with me. I don't want to fail her.

The joys are easier. They are. Cheering, if you really love someone, is so natural it happens without effort. 

Hard stuff is, well, hard. It requires your best effort. If you really love someone, you stay with them through their hard stuff. You show up for it. You don't veer off the path and wait for them at the end. You just don't.* 

I guess the point of all of that is this, even when I am standing here with a lump in my throat that contains all the things I want to say, all the help I want to give, all the things I shouldn't say because they won't help, the point is...I am standing here. I am right here looking at your face and seeing your pain or sadness or fear.

And the moment you take a step, because you will take a step, it's inevitable, I will follow you even into the dark. I'll bring my light. I'll carry it because your hands are full. I'll run along side you even when we can't see where we are going. I'll go because you are. Because that's what love does. Love sometimes travels through hell to walk you home.

*I'm not talking about toxic or abusive relationships here. You know better than to think I am, I hope.

I have a lot of...

feelings, like, all the time, feelings and feelings and FEELINGS. I have feelings about the sunrises and how I feel when I drink coffee in the morning with my husband (always from matching cups, because I would definitely feel something if they didn't match). I have feelings when my stepdaughters and son-in-law have feelings. I have feelings about my dogs, the weather, my shoes, good food (or bad), my friends, my family, my garden.  I have ALL the feelings about ALL the things, apparently. So do you, right? I daresay, even "what fresh hell is this?" has a feeling to it. Or perhaps, it is a feeling unto itself. 

My favorite oldest stepdaughter, MPG, is wonderfully pregnant. Oh my, do I have big, beautiful feelings about that. Next level joy and excitement mixed with constant worry for the little mama and her little one, layered with the absolute knowledge that she and her husband will be outstanding parents to that little girl. And then I have feelings about it being a girl and everything that means in our world. (Don't worry, this blog isn't about that.)

MPG, the expectant mother, is a pre-kindergarten/kindergarten teacher. She helps her classroom of kids express their feelings by using an imaginary bubble of colors. Sometimes their bubble starts getting red, and they need to reset so they can figure out why they are so upset. I like that. Thinking of my emotions outside myself as a color hovering over my head. Wouldn't it be so much easier if that were real? We could see if someone was sad or scared or thrilled instead of trying to guess. So when someone asks you, "Is something wrong? Are you upset?" You can't get away with "No, I'm fine." when you really, really aren't.

For years now, as a person who has lived with depression (and tried to die from it), I've often been aggressively aware of my emotions. I feel the need to assess them almost constantly, to name them, to keep track of how long I've felt whatever I'm feeling. Sometimes, when I've had several days or weeks of apathy, I start feeling about my lack of feeling. Is exhausted an emotion, because, dang, I get so exhausted of my emotions.

As always, I've said all that to say this... sometimes, I feel something because I feel like that is how I'm supposed to feel.  It's not even a conscious choice. It's almost like my brain or heart or whatever is steering the ship at any given moment starts running a formula. A plus B equals C. It must, because that's the expectation. It must because if it doesn't there's something wrong, right? 

That's why much of what we watch is formulaic. I mean, Hallmark makes bank on those Christmas movies because they follow a well-worn path that evokes a consistent set of emotions all leading to the happily-ever-after ending. I'm not knocking it (no Mackenzie, I still won't watch them. Michaela and I will be over here...uh...not watching them.) There is comfort in knowing how you are supposed to feel and when you're supposed to feel it. Things like that give us a break from having to wait to see what happens next in our own lives to know what kind of sentiment to express next. Our real lives don't stay on the well-worn path. They twist and turn and sometimes head straight for a cliff.

Think about this... hometown team comes from behind and wins, you feel....? Survey says?! Elation and pride! They suffer a crushing defeat...heartbreak and pride. 

Now try this one...I'm sitting in my bed at 3 am, writing this blog. My husband is sleeping (trying to) next to me, his hand on my leg. Six and a half years of marriage, and I still love the weight of his hand. It's so dark, I can barely see his face in the light of this computer screen.  A cool breeze comes from the open window, because fall has made an appearance. I can smell the dampness from yesterday's rain. All is still and quiet except the soft snores of our dog curled up at my feet. 

Did you ick or awwww? It's okay. You feel what you feel about it. Unless you don't. Unless you feel what you think you should feel about it. Our emotions have so many layers. They are born from our past and present. What's happening to us at this moment? What from our past colors how we see things now? We can feel indifferent about the hometown team analogy, because we have a lot going on right now that seems more important than sports. Or we can feel that deeply, because we used to love to watch our kid play basketball in junior high, and now she's grown and off making a life for herself, and we miss those feelings of elation and pride or heartbreak and pride that were tied to that part of our lives.

The one about my writing in bed...if you've lost your partner, that could be an absolute gut-punch (I'm sorry if I did that to you.). If you are struggling in your relationship, reading that could just flat out make you furious (red bubble!). You could feel totally grossed out. (I can just HEAR favorite youngest stepdaughter now...ewwww, STOP IT!) Maybe you can relate, so you did the awwww. Or it could be all of that or even none of it. You do you, boo. 

We're almost to the point, I promise. This week I started a new job. My second new job this year. My third job in 32 years. The first job lasted 30. I have big feelings about it. It's scary, it's sad, it's exciting. It's a lot.

My first day at this third new job in my lifetime was Monday. With a week of hindsight, I can say I like it. I'm optimistic that I will love it. It's challenging and different, yet familiar enough to be somewhat comfortable. At the end of the first week, my brain is exhausted, but I feel a sense of pride that this old girl is learning new tricks. Pride isn't something I've given myself an allowance to feel in the past. But this Lisa allows it now. She let's me feel what I'm feeling without as much expectation and judgement. I don't have to feel what the formula says. I get to just be in it.

Want to know the crazy part? I didn't give myself permission to really decide what I feel until just this past Monday. Seriously. The first day of the new job, I had an epiphany of sorts or rather I was given one. That morning, I happened to run into a beautiful soul who reads this blog. Her daughters are longtime friends of mine. When I told her about my new job, she and her husband immediately cheered. They literally cheered. She asked how I was feeling, and I said what I believed was expected, the A plus B equals C answer...excited and nervous. Because the unknown plus change equals excited and nervous, right? That's how someone would write that scene, yes?

When I answered DKD's question with "excited, nervous" she simply said, "I find the older I get, I don't really get nervous about most things anymore." Wait. What? She doesn't WHAT?! She didn't realize how wonderfully profound that statement was. I sat with it for a moment and realized I really wasn't nervous, or rather I was only nervous about figuring out where to park. And I wasn't really nervous about THAT, I just didn't know where to go. That's not nerves, that's a need for information. The people that hired me weren't going to kill and eat me if I made mistakes. They could tell me I wasn't working out for them, but I wouldn't die from it. I've had years of experience, and most people genuinely hope you succeed, especially, I'd think, people who just hired you to do work for them. I felt solidly good about starting this new job. Huh. That's something good new, not scary new.

I wasn't nervous, yet I felt that I should be, because I've always thought that my self-confidence would be seen as arrogance, so it was important to be nervous in order to show humility. That's some kind of algebra or geometry or whatever other math is out there. That's fancy calculator math. It's self-sabotaging math. I thought that my formula A plus B equaled C, when in truth, it equaled nonsense. So how do we get to DKD's level of not-nervousness? Perhaps we start by not putting expectations on other's feelings. We stop believing we need to have an opinion on what someone else's answers to their own equations are. We stop saying things like "They moved on rather quickly, don't you think" or "Did you see what she was wearing? Who does she think she is?" or "He seems a bit full of himself, bragging about that." We let people feel whatever the fresh hell they want to feel, because we don't have to have feelings about other's feelings. Hey, eyes on your own paper.

Maybe in not assigning a faulty formula to others, we can begin to re-write our own emotional spreadsheet. We can actually delete that thing altogether. Instead, we can just be and feel and act in a truly unadulterated, authentic way. 

If someone wouldn't have shown me a new way to emotionally math, I would have convinced myself I truly was nervous, and I would have acted with that nervousness. At worst, that might have caused me to fail before I started, at best, it would have made me miss the goodness I felt walking out to my car in the spot where they told me to park when I simply asked them. I would have missed that very good beginning. 

I certainly wouldn't be sitting in this bed, writing this blog, with my husband's hand still on my leg, my little dog snoring, and the sky even darker, because it's just before the dawn. 

As for me, the bubble above my head is the color of sunrise with a hint of coffee with too much creamer in a blue cup that matches his. It's the color of possible and hopeful and excited with little to no nervous and certainly no hell.

Thank you DKD. I will carry your wisdom in my heart and call up the sound of you cheering me on when I'm truly feeling I need it.

If you would have...

asked me when I was in my twenties what the primary motivating force in the universe is, I would have said love. Easy right? True? Well that's subjective. Now that I have more experience, I'd certainly agree that love can be one's driving force, but as with most things, it might be a little more complicated than that. 

Money motivates, yes? I mean you can't eat love, so you need money; therefore, you work to make money to meet your needs. For some people, that's enough. Meet your needs, take care of your family, save for the future. Cool. Some people need more than just enough money, so they do more things that make them more money, and that's cool, too.

Recognition motivates. Some people are driven by the need to have folks know their names. They need for people to know the good they are doing in the world or about the big life moves they are making. I mean, that's why we all have social media, right? To share things. To be a little bit famous. Other people are motivated by a cause. They do things because of something we see as bigger than us...for the greater good.

So those are all obvious, but now that I'm a bit more self-aware and honest, I realize one of the things that moves people is shame. Sit with that for a second. Think of what you immediately thought of when you read the word shame. I would wager that almost everyone seeing this had an immediate reaction. I did. A highlight (lowlight?) reel of things I've done that are shameful starts to play. Shame has weight. I feel it as I type. It can paralyze you; it can make you into someone you wish you weren't; it can make you do things you wish you hadn't to cover it up; and it can even kill you. Shame changes how you believe others see you, but even more so, it changes how you see yourself.

Shame is often coupled with a secret. We certainly don't want people knowing what makes up the darkest parts of us, the corners of our lives that are scary and dirty. The ones we try not to visit until they start screaming at us in the middle of the night. "Why didn't I?" "Why did I?" "How could I have..." Shame eats at you. Oh you can go long periods of time without it showing itself, but it's always there, waiting. It wears you down, doesn't it?

Sometimes the disgrace is not even caused by us. Being sexually assaulted as a child had absolutely nothing to do with anything 8 year old me had done. I didn't ask for it. I didn't create the monster who did it, yet shame and fear kept me silent for almost two decades. That secret shaped parts of me that are still disfigured and disordered. Even though it's not something I hide anymore, there are things that create panic in me because of that. And my inability to completely overcome that experience causes an entirely new type of humiliation. Other people can build shame in us that should be theirs instead.

Shame makes us believe many untruths about ourselves. We're not worthy of good things. We're unlovable. We're an imposter. Shame makes us believe others see us differently, broken, worthless when the truth is, we see ourselves through the lens of regret. It makes us see ourselves as different, broken, worthless.

Now we know, logically, that's not real. It's a distorted vision of who we are. We can know people who love us deeply; we can express our own self worth when pressed to do so -- I'm kind. I contribute to my community. I care for my family. I work hard. We can even find our sameness to those around us. But that thing that we did/said/had/took/gave is like an itch you can't scratch. You carry on, but you're never truly permanently comfortable.

I think about some of the things I've done and said in my past, and I wonder how anyone could like me, let alone love me. My husband knows things about me no other human does, and that man thinks I painted the sunrises just for him. I have dear friends and family to whom I've said things that make me physically duck and cringe when I think of them. I've been selfish with them. I've been absent when they needed me. Ugh, the way I treated my mom when I was in my thirties...I just can't. And yet, they care for me in a way that makes me feel like some kind of prize. I wonder what I've done to deserve such care, such devotion, such love. I can name things I've done to not be worthy of those things, but why they give them to me anyway eludes me.

Except...perhaps they feel something similar. Perhaps they have had moments where they believed someone couldn't continue to love them. Perhaps they all carry secrets they believe make them unworthy and unlovable. I can't for the life of me think of any. I can hold my oldest dear friend Julie M. up to a light, and I can't see a single flaw. I can sure count mine. Somehow, she is still there. After 46 years of friendship, she would still check the YES box on my note asking if she's my bff. KGC has known me since fourth grade. She carries much of my history. I feel no judgement, only acceptance. No appearance of looking back, just continual forward motion.

My husband, well, he knows everything. Yet he squeezes my hand in the middle of the night. He tells me I'm the good stuff, that I'm his bestest good friend, that he loves me with a love that is more than love. He held the trashcan when I threw up after my hysterectomy. He stood quietly while I railed and screamed and cursed with grief in my backyard. He asked gentle questions about my reactions, so he can help protect me from my own demons. He knows things about me that I almost can't bear to think about. And he's in our bed right now sleeping peacefully knowing who I am and what shameful things I've been capable of in the past, still loving me fiercely and profoundly. He's seen me, really looked deep and seen me, and found me more than worthy.

I say all of that to say this, perhaps I was right in my twenties, about that one thing at least. (Definitely not about the stacked bob haircut or frosted brown lipstick.) Perchance, twentysomething Lisa knew that the supreme motivating force in the universe simply, profoundly is love.

I know I promised our visits would not be all live, laugh, love. This isn't that. This isn't love is blind, love conquers all...blah, blah, blah. This is love sees and knows and ultimately understands. Love knows your shame, it sees all the hell you've created and it picks you up and carries you through it.

Hello...

I haven't been here for a while, because for a long time, I felt I had nothing of merit to say. At first it was because I felt incredibly boring...middle aged/menopausal woman - blah...happily married - yawn...stepmom to two adult children - nothing new to see here. Then it was because I was so terribly, profoundly, deeply grieved, and someone else's grief does begin to exhaust folks who aren't in it with you and even those who are. It also seemed, suddenly to me, the entire world got so brutally LOUD. I didn't want to say something because I felt I had nothing. Nothing interesting, nothing that did more than simply add to the noise.

Here's the thing (because there's always a thing) yes, I know there are many, many, MANY important even life threatening things happening in the world. Of course we should raise our voices and vote our conscious. We should fight injustice, and hold accountable those who abuse their power and privilege to oppress. We should also listen to those who have been running the race and fighting the fight for generations. We should, and I do...but I won't here. Not really. Not overtly. I simply can't. I don't have the answers, and sometimes I don't even know how to ask the questions. I cannot be a voice who speaks without full knowledge or authority. I know reading other's research doesn't equal doing one's own. Hang in, because it's not about this.

I am aware that not using this space to move toward equality and justice and right is born out of privilege. In all honesty, my life doesn't depend on it. It doesn't mean I don't care; it means I don't have to live every second like it does depend on it. That's privilege for anyone who is confused. I will boost other voices I believe can speak to the issues I hold dear on other platforms, but I won't pretend that anything I write will have any real value. I won't insert myself into places where I have no footing, where I'm a distraction. I won't add to the sound without adding to the substance. 

So now that I've hopefully explained what this place is and what I won't do, let's figure out what I will or what I hope to do. I hope to encourage you to look at others through a softer lens, the candlelight filter perhaps. I also want to encourage you to take a gentler look at yourself...to allow grace when needed, forgiveness when earned, love when merited, and joy when possible to yourself first, so you can extend those perfectly lovely things to others in a real way.

Let's not get confused, I'm not all live-love-laugh/coffee o'clock and wine-thirty/boss babe either. First, coffee yum/wine yuck so that would never work. I'm too much of an introvert to boss anyone, and I've lived-loved-laughed in the nineties - I'm not wearing that trend again. Like ever.

Now that I've written my mission statement of sorts, the disclaimer I guess, let's actually do something here, but do let's keep with the theme because every English teacher I've ever had said that's how this is supposed to work. Here we go...finally.

I notice posts/memes/missives floating around about how we used to go to Grandma's house on Sunday and spend time with family doing something called visiting. For those of us who have forgotten what that is due to isolation, ball games, work, laundry, genuine malaise, flat out dislike of people in general or whatever you've been up to, visiting is being in the presence of others, making eye contact, listening and talking, reminiscing, telling jokes and stories, laughing and crying with other people. You remember, like together with people who do not live inside your house. Spending time, which is finite and valuable, not just with each other but on each other.

People my age (ugh - that's just -ugh) remember stopping by someone's house (Don't do it. I mean it. I'll be in my panda nightgown for sure.) or seeing circles of lawn chairs in people's yards, gatherings on porches, the "adults" lingering around the table just talking. Just...visiting. We don't do that, not really. We pontificate, proselytize, and regurgitate* the headlines we read, the "research" we've done, the sound bite we found oh so clever and we "look at this meme -- boy that says it all." No. It doesn't.  (Unless it's that weird white cat thing with its arms spread. That one really does say it all.) We argue and silence and shout over, and yes, sometimes those things are not just necessary but mandatory. But, I believe true and real human interaction that seems to not move a cause or ideology forward is still incredibly necessary. Our souls need it. Lately, those moments of ease of conversation are often the only parts that remind us that we are all people trying to figure it out. Failures and successes, joy and sorrow, fear and bravery...we are all made of stories, experiences, beliefs, hopes, losses. We are all beauty and ashes.

That's what I want to talk about, sitting on my porch with you (not really, not yet, panda nightgown is super comfortable). This place can be my existential porch swing. We'll start here and see where it goes.

I want to know what's planted in your garden - literally and figuratively. I want to hear KP talk about Disney. SDK about Newton Eagle Football. CS about glorious shoes (sole sister for real, pun intended). DG about waterfalls. JM about her freshman. KGC about things that gross me out, man. HBF about her plans for next summer with no travel ball. KL about mid-century modern everything. JGM about her brother.

Add your initials and your thing. I want that. I don't want a headline you read; I want the headline you live.

Welcome back. I hope you sit for a moment and visit. If you don't like the topic, no worries, it'll change shortly. Leave your shoes and your drama at the threshold - they'll be there when you leave. Hopefully, you take with you a little bit of peace and at least a small measure of "oh that was nice". Maybe you'll even lessen some of your burden, because it's been replaced with a different perspective. In other words, leave some of your hell and take some of the fresh.

See you all soon. Don't forget your shoes.

*KMG hates the word p*ke more than I love an alliteration. Respect to her.)

I didn't believe...

 I deserved to be happy. Insert eye roll. I get it, that phrase itself is overused, trite, gag-inducing. But hear me out, perhaps it's really just misunderstood. Maybe what I didn't understand was what "happy" itself meant. Not the dictionary version, but the living it, feeling it version.

Ready for another rather obvious insight? We sabotage our own happy. We do. And I think because of that, we're bringing up the generation behind us to not even know if happy exists for them. We've turned it into an unattainable "unless it's picture perfect, then we all know that's a filter, so it doesn't exist" emotion. We've improperly labeled happy. 

We expect it to be something to attain, something to aspire to instead of something we feel. We confuse happy with stuff and clout and attention and success. That means that there has to be more stuff and clout and attention and success in order to stay happy. There's no enough, and I believe one can't be truly happy if one is constantly having to collect it.

Maybe what we need to look for is contentment. I've always loved that word. To me, it means "enough" in the most beautiful way. It's a state of being where we aren't always searching, where what we have is all we need and if something else comes our way, then that's just gravy. And I love gravy.

We all know people, maybe we are people, who seem to have contentment within their reach...they just need to stretch their fingers a little further. But suddenly, as if hearing a sound behind them so compelling they can't ignore, they make an abrupt turn and walk away from it. It's so frustrating and heartbreaking to watch. Like "Dude, it was right there! Finally. How could you leave it?" I've been that dude.

For me, and undoubtedly for you, it's fear; sometimes it's shame. We don't deserve it, because we've done this and this and this. Now, I know it can be doubt or confusion or insistence on being a martyr, but all of that is still fear or shame. I firmly believe it. 

It becomes a self-fulfilled prophecy. Something feels "right" and "good", and we're afraid of it so we do something to destroy it, which creates shame, shame creates unworthiness, so we stop looking for it. When it finds us...this "happy" or "content" we can't trust it (fear) because we don't deserve it (shame) and on and on.

Some of this is rooted in things that happened to us and some of it comes from things we've done to ourselves. And we did that to ourselves because someone did something to us. Around and around it goes... where it stops...

It can stop, with us. Not all of it. Not all the time. Not happy all day every day but happy every day. We have to figure it out so we can help the kids coming up. We've created a world where joy is unspeakable because it's unattainable not because it's full of glory.

Everything is awful. Isn't it? People are absolutely mean. No one cares about their fellow man. If what you are living is hard, just turn on the tv and see even harder. Families torn apart by hate and anger. Empty seats at tables because of senselessness. Loss and loss and loss. People giving as good as they get, except it isn't good they are giving or getting.

Except... the stories of sweet children making Valentines for the people in nursing home. Organ donors. Couples being married for 70 years. Videos of babies hearing their daddy's voice for the first time. Animals being rescued. Momma's kissing newborns. Mindy's countdown to spring in the midst of her grief for her husband, reminding us that the light does always return. Dancing for mourning, beauty for ashes, laughing through tears, coffee in the morning with your love, pizza with a dear old friend. A baby learning to walk. Laughing until your stomach hurts. Holding hands. Petting a dog. A bird singing (not too loudly and not to early in the morning). The smell of fresh cut grass or drying leaves. Someone finding their voice and speaking their truth and taking their power to move and inspire others. Being secure in your beliefs. Music, art, touching words. The sound of my husband saying "hey baby". The smell of chicken frying. The perfectly round cookies my mom bakes. The smell of the ocean. The quiet of snowfall. Hope. Love. Grace.

Joy unspeakable.

We deserve it. Our kids deserve it. We have to show them. They have to know they are worthy and no matter what they've done, they can have it. In the middle of the storm, you can find a place of peace, you can find the laugh, you can find the sweet, sweet spot where happy is. You won't find it in comparisons to others. You won't be able to see it if you are constantly looking toward what is next...what you have to attain or gain or collect believing that happy is in that thing or job or person. It's right here.

Happy is in finding contentment in the right now. I'm not asking you to find it in everything. This isn't a "happily ever after" story. I'm saying to pick one spot and live on that spot. Hold it and nurture it and watch it grow.

I know it's possible. Want to know how, because I'm doing it. Not always perfectly and not always successfully, but it's happening. Sometimes I'm reaching for it and shame or fear calls my name and I turn away from it. But sometimes, oh beautifully, my fingers close around it and you couldn't take it away under any circumstances.

Want to know another way I can prove it can be done? Read back over the paragraph about all the exceptions. I bet you felt something. I bet one of those things resonated  with you. I bet you thought of at least one thing more. You felt a spark. Give that spark oxygen. Talk to it. Build on it.

We need happy. We need contentment. We have to show our kids that having and doing and getting isn't where it's at. It's in being. It's in living now with what you have while carrying the hope of what will be, letting it motivate us, of course, but not letting us miss what is surrounding us in this moment. Because right now is full of good stuff.

I used to be afraid to have a good day, because a good day made the fall into a bad day worse. The comparison was too stark, too harsh. I wonder how many happy days I missed. Perhaps I spent so many days looking for fresh hell instead of seeing the lovely I deserve.

Not today. I'm not doing that today. I'm going to stand up, walk into the sunroom, see the birds and smile at my husband and just feel it. Just feel the unspeakable joy.

I recognize my place of privilege in writing this. I'm sitting on my couch in my warm home with my WiFi. I'm going to make an early lunch with the things in my well-stocked refrigerator. I'm healthy and so is my family. I am what the world unfairly most rewards with the exception of being a woman. I am unafraid in so many ways that I take it for granted. I recognize taking any of those things away considerably alters my ability to find contentment. Which leaves little room for me to not acknowledge that it is easier for me to find.

It's been a year...

in a lot of ways. It's been a year in the - wow that was...uh...something - way and it's been a year since she had to leave.

We, my family and extended family started 2020 with the profound and immeasurable loss of my brother's daughter, Delaney. That had quickly followed us closing 2019 with the birth of Delaney's son and the lovely wedding of my husband's oldest child.

Great love and then great loss, as the story of humans frequently seems to play out. Come and go. Laugh and cry. Give and take.

I've reminded myself and my stepdaughters (and lovingly they've reminded me) that we have already lived through the immediate impact of Dee's death. That first moment of knowing is not reproduceable, thankfully. However, one does relive it in a million different ways. Of course, moving forward carries great relief in knowing that we'll eventually learn to carry the grief we will never be able to truly put down. We somehow become accustomed to the weight. But moving forward is also  moving away -- from the sounds and sights and smells of them. The essence always lingering, but their hands unreachable.

I couldn't change the calendar from January 2020 until well past the first of July. She existed in January, but not February, March, April, May, June.

My husband and I went to Fort Morgan, Alabama at the end of February. It's our favorite place. The Gulf was made to seem small in comparison to our grief. We came back to a pandemic, a shelter-at-home. We came back to confusion and fear and anger. And I, so full of loss, had no room for those things.

My immediate family took it seriously. As a group, we chose to trust experts and our guts and our own common sense. (I said ours, not yours.) We social distanced, wore masks, washed our hands, but we didn't hoard toilet paper. We followed what is part of our family creed; we loved our neighbor as ourselves in the best way we saw fit.

We were called stupid and sheep, directly to our faces and indirectly on social media posts meant for the general population. And we understood and believed it to be true, that we are sheep, we all are. We just follow different shepherds.

All the while we grieved. We met and adore Dee's son and his father and his family and family of choice. We did this while being isolated emotionally and physically. Forcing ourselves not to focus on Dee not being here with that precious little man...not to think about all that she was missing. But we still did think all those things.

I watched from afar my mom, Dee's grandmother, bend to grief and then rejoice, as is her grieving process. Always believing that Dee is in her future now, just as she was before she was born. I watched the burden of a lost child settle in the corner of my brother's eyes and the way he now carries his body. I watched my sister-in-love pick up the broken pieces of her children and her husband all the while trying to hold herself together. I watched it from six feet away. Oh the irony of it being six feet. The permanent physical distance between us and Dee.

Out there beyond our personal hell, people were losing and grieving their loved ones, jobs, homes, businesses. I wanted to look at it, see it, weep for them, but I was still in my own world of loss. I couldn't see it for that.

Grief, to me, is constantly near drowning. You come up just long enough to rake air into your lungs, only to be swallowed by another wave of it. Over and over and over.

Meanwhile, our country is on fire, and I struggle to focus because grief is selfish. I'm busy watching my nephews and niece stumbling at times to move forward because the path of deep loss isn't smooth. I'm watching my stepdaughters bob up and down in their own waves.

So perhaps that's why I wear the mask. Staring into the deep well of our loss and finding it unthinkable that I could cause that to a fellow human. Thinking about how deep that well would be if something happened to my mom, my FIL or my stepdaughters' mother. If I'm wrong, no harm done. If I'm not...there's that deep well I couldn't bear causing someone else to fall into.

Remember how I changed the calendar from January to July in one motion? August brought the loss of my husband's aunt. On the day of her memorial his aunt's nephew, my husband's first cousin, his first playmate, his first best friend suddenly went too. He left three little women reeling in the wake of their dad's death. They still are nearly drowning in their own river of grief. My dear old friend, KMC, his ex-wife, was left holding the pieces of her family together not knowing how or where or if she herself fit in. Trying to fix the unfixable in her girls. 

My husband, still steering me through my grief, now wears a blindfold of his own, yet still manages to hold my hand and keep me moving forward. Add him finding his job has an end date. A job with people he cares for and respects, a job that gave his family before me and now me a comfortable life, will end sooner rather than with a retirement party. He's worked since his was 11 years old. He's had a full time job since he was a senior in high school except for the time he was in trade school for six months. Now he's being told that his loss is for the greater good, and like many, he's wondering about our good...his good.

Give and take. Sow and reap. We went back to the Gulf and it seemed bigger in November than in February.

And our country is more on fire and it would get worse. Things no American has ever seen or experienced or imagined have happened. I moved through it with a vague awareness. Aware enough to vote, aware enough to fear and be ashamed, but only aware enough to feel not act. Because grief, my friends, continues to make me selfish.

A little girl I used to babysit, who is now all grown, lost her only child -- her adult son. I know only peripherally the weight of the loss she was just assigned and will forever carry. I know that many many parents were suddenly, needlessly assigned their burdens -- many family members lost their loves without a proper goodbye this year. Knowing that becomes part of the weight of the loss. Others grief reminds you of your own.

We moved through the Fall and the election and the mess of that into the holidays that already have huge holes in them because before if she wasn't at the table, she was at least out there, but also because of the distance we needed to keep so hopefully we can try again next year without more empty seats. 

Grief has holes in everything...the spaces they took up. Everything is missing something. It's missing them. It's writing and thinking and talking in streams of consciousness instead of more linear, the way we were taught in elementary school to do those things...beginning, middle end that circles back to the beginning. I can't write (obviously!) or think or talk that way right now because the ending is too fresh and painful and lonely. Because almost constantly, in the background, I hear "Delaney is gone."

My friend, CS, put a shell on a rock on a beach in memory of Delaney. It's just a lovely, poignant gesture. I've visited that shell often in my mind. Is it still there? Did it travel out to sea? Did it pass the sea turtle Delaney helped find its way to the water shortly after it hatched? Is it beautiful sand now? Did I pick it up at the Gulf and it's now in a jar in my house? I hope it's still there. Sunning itself. Beautiful and a little out-of-place, like our Delaney always was.

Between the "hello little bitty pretty one and goodbye sweet girl" there was so much love.

We're nearing the end of this cathartic wail. We're nearing the end of the year since she had to go, but never the end of the grief. I feel myself moving toward the anniversary of her dying thru no power of my own -- a simple yet profound flip of a calendar page -- and I feel myself adjusting to the weight of the loss. Some days even being able to carry it gracefully.

I guess there is at least a beginning, middle and end to this writing. It does circle back to the beginning. As I said, it's been a year in many, many ways.

P.S. I'm okay. I am. The players on my team are the best and my bench is deep and my husband continues to hold my hand and my heart so gently. BCL.

I rest easier in the assurance that Delaney will be waiting for me. She'll be standing at the gate, opening it for me...pushing when it's clearly marked pull, because that's just her way. 

I've been trying...

to start this blog for several days. I've been trying to write thank you cards. I've been trying to make myself shower, brush my teeth, look people in the eye, leave my house. Some days I manage to do all those things, and some days I sit and stare. Grief is a hell of a cage.

People who know me know that my 21 year old niece, Delaney, died January 30, 2020. She has a son who was six weeks old at the time. Everything was in front of her, and then she was gone. To say it's a profound and devastating loss is an understatement. I ache for what she's missing. I ache for everyone who loves her.

Because we do still love her. That love doesn't go anywhere. In some ways it intensifies. It has nothing to bounce off of. Delaney isn't here to receive our love, so it pools up and spills over and multiplies. Love is made to be given and received, so when you can no longer give it to someone and receive it in return, it sits waiting and it can overwhelm you.

Grief is the absence of many things, and right now, at the beginning, there's nothing to fill those absences, or rather the things that fill those spaces are heavy and heartbreaking. 

The absence of breath is always startling to me. Of course, they do not look like they are sleeping. They look gone. But somehow I stood there holding my breath waiting for hers. I remember watching her little chest rise and fall while she slept as a baby. Somehow my heart hoped that magically her chest would rise and fall and she'd look at us and roll her eyes at our tears and complain about her makeup and her outfit and her lack of cleavage. She'd throw her head back and do her "you people are so ridiculous" laugh. I hoped she'd just come back. Just breathe, Dee.

Of course she didn't. She couldn't. She's gone.

There's the every day absences too. The lack of text messages and phone calls. The loss of the sound of their voice, their smell, how their hands feel. Not being able to tell them, show them, give them something you know they'd like. Not being able to make them laugh.

There is also the fear. Will I ever feel happy again? Will I ever not feel guilty when I do feel happy? Will I ever wake up and not think about it immediately? Or fall asleep to it? What's normal going to look like? 

Will this grief ever stop feeling like a cage? I feel panicked by it. I can't get away from it. It will come on me with hurricane force, and I just want to run away from it. I want an evacuate myself from my own heart. In those moments, I feel desperate and trapped and terrified. 

I just want her to stop being dead now.

Grief is also the absence of time, yet the acute awareness of it. It's been 2 days since she left... two weeks... soon two months. Yet in the middle of all the time marking, it seems to just disappear. It's just day after day after day of not being able to see the end of it. It's also knowing there is no real end of it, because she won't ever stop being dead.

Grief is always feeling concerned that you are burdening others with it. That they are tired of you being sad, of you talking about it, blogging about it, posting about it. It's feeling that because they aren't in the middle of it, they don't know how freaking heavy it still is. Grief is worrying that people don't think you are handling it well. That people don't understand that perhaps they are hearing you talk about it, because you have to say something or you'll break. It's being afraid that the people who love you most can't love you through this. 

Grief happens on your timeline. Even losing Delaney is personal to each of us. None of us will ever truly heal; we'll just adjust and live with it. It will come up. The waves will continue to roll in and out and sometimes they'll make us feel as if we're drowning. Yet we'll not want to speak about it, because we're certain you're tired of hearing it. We believe that you believe we should be completely okay; and if we're not, we should just push that down inside and smile through it. We believe that you are judging us as weak or dramatic or pathetic. 

And you'll be afraid to bring it up. You'll be afraid that we're having a "good day" and not want to rattle us. You'll see the look of fear on our faces in the grocery and know we just can't handle a conversation that starts with "how are you?" and really means "how ARE you?". You'll be afraid of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. Grief scares us. It paralyzes us. Grief doesn't fight fair. 

The truth is, if it's not your loss, you do move on. You'll sincerely check in and make sure we're doing okay. You aren't being cruel; you simply aren't in the cage with us. Until you are.

Because we all end up in there. Grief swirling around you, fear, desperation, hopelessness with it. 

We're all alone in it. The swirling, the hurricane, the cage. Grief is internal and private and personal. Oh my, it's so hard. Fortunately, in the midst of it, through the wind and the water and between the cage bars, we see our help. We see you sometimes crying with us, encouraging us, and we see you walking towards us, into the middle of our hell offering to steady us until we can plant our feet and stop just trying to survive and start living with the grief.



Thank you to all my people, whose faces I see guiding me home. Eternal gratitude to my family, friends, Big D, my SBJs, the Julies, The Haggards, and neighbors, who have encouraged and listened and supported us. Most especially, to my Shannon who from the moment I got the phone call reached for me and held me tight. BCL.