If You Are in the Early Days, Hold On

Three-and-a-half years ago my life fell apart. It opened up at the seams and my insides were exposed and it felt like everyone was watching. 

I think back on those early days and I can’t believe I survived. It was torture, a constant nightmare that I desperately begged the universe I’d wake up from. That feeling, the agony, it makes my skin crawl.

I remember wondering if it would never end. I had a vague sense of hope, but I didn’t really understand what that meant or what I was hoping for. I was barely breathing.

Lately, I’ve been having this experience where I’m literally stoped in my tracks and just hit with a giant wave of wonder. How did I get from there to here?

This is how: It was the small moments, the never ending nights, the packing, the moving, the writing, the tears, the anger, the second guessing, the returning to my intuition again and again, the huge grief learning curve, the teaching, all the meals cooked, hugs given, the advocacy I had to take on for myself, for my decisions, for my child.

I was right, it didn’t end. But man has it changed.

That early pain, it’s still here, inside me. It’s like I’ve alchemized it, and it’s changed and transformed into a super power. It’s not anything I’d wish on anyone. But I’ve gotten accustomed to my own story and it’s given me a power and dare I say it, a strength, that I didn’t know was within me.

In another version of my life, things are simple. I have a house and a husband and some babies. I move through the world with the ease of normalcy. Finding common ground with others is easy. I “fit in”.

This is different. But somehow, over the small moments that have been drawn out forever, the days that have morphed into years, I’ve found a solid comfort in who I am now. An alchemizer. A pain feeler. A warrior.

It’s been exhaustingly difficult to get from there to here. And oh the casualties, more than I can count. I’ve grieved so much more than the person who I lost.

If you’re in the early days, hold on. Keep going. Wake up. Listen to yourself. You are the key to your own transformation through this grief. I’m here and I see you. You can do this.