It’s another spectacular sunny fall day. The leaves have muted from their bold reds and oranges now; they are rusty and golden and pewter. Softer. I wish I felt softer. The past few weeks haven’t made it any easier for me to write, or talk. I’m experiencing some kind of spiritual disintegration; I can’t even explain it. Words fail. Words talk about. This isn’t about anything. This is my life.

I am 4 months shy of being 72 years old. Other than my joints, I feel 24. I’ve always thought that I was a deep thinker and an even deeper feeler. Only recently have I come across information that informs me that I am an HSP, or highly sensitive person. It was my middle-aged son, actually, who shared this with me. He cued up the movie about it saying, “This sure would have been helpful to know decades ago.” No shit. I’m sorry for both of us, as this explains a lot. Never mind I would have been a better Mom.

While this may inform what I am experiencing now, it doesn’t explain the depth of my grief, nor the enormity of my anxiety. C.S. Lewis wisely said, “No one ever told me that grief feels so much like fear.” I’m afraid, plain and simple. Terrified, in fact – like never before. That recent encounter with a huge black bear wasn’t this scary.

When I wake between 2-3am I give myself a good talking to, calm right down, and meditate. The energy doesn’t leave, but the terror does. The fear abates and a profound peace, also new in it’s intensity, fills this cavity I call my chest. It doesn’t change the fact that I don’t know what anything means anymore. I don’t know what this is for, this life. I find myself questioning everything. I have never felt so completely and utterly alone, and so entirely part of the trees and the birds and the air and the life. I’m inside of a constant awe. It all feels new, so I am obviously being renewed beyond my previous belief systems. I don’t know about anything at all – but I do know it. I am aware that I am more now, somehow. I am expanding, and I am certain that you are feeling this stretch also, not yet able to define this. I don’t want to define it, because I don’t want to define it away.

So…nothing is the same as it was. I hold onto an expectation that the next few months will unfold me and I will find a new way to be in this new life in this new world. In the meantime, that’s just the way it is.