“I feel very sane about how crazy I am.” – Carrie Fisher
You know, I write about my grief here for two reasons: it’s the truth of what I am experiencing at this time, and also I want this type of conversation to be normalized. I am out of my mind right now, mentally ill. If I had the flu or cancer or any physical form of illness, it would be socially acceptable to speak about it. Nobody would think anything of it. Let’s make that true as well for mental illnesses. Let’s take the stigma away. Mental illness comes and goes like the common cold, and it does not mean we are insane. Insanity is terminal and requires different treatment all together. Insanity is self-destructive.
There is a common denominator between all illness, of the body or the mind: the goal is health. No one wishes to be unwell. But when we are, we need help from others. Let’s normalize that help, and let’s fund it. The U.S. is, as far as I know, the only “civilized” country in the world that does not provide health care for all it’s citizens. That, to my mind, is obscene disregard for our humanity. But then, you can’t keep people enslaved in poverty if you provide human services. Watch out for those strong, healthy people – they won’t hustle for your minimum wage.
Are you familiar with the Bodhisattva vow? I don’t know much about Buddhism, but I know it is the vow taken by all participants who seek enlightenment, and the short version is this: nobody is finished here until everybody is finished. Didn’t your mother teach you that?!
My dear therapist has done nothing but listen to me cry for an hour a week four weeks on end now. Poor woman. She’s grossly underpaid. She’s good; to her credit she doesn’t try to talk me out of my sorrow, or fix it. She just listens. My son and a few close friends have been stoically doing the same practice. They are hanging in there with me, “keeping vigil,” as one friend says. I’m not sure I could show as much patience, although what choice do they have, really? I’m uncontrollable. I’m entirely dependent on them right now.
My counselor did say yesterday, “you are grieving all the losses of your life again.” I think she’s onto something there. And more: I am allowing myself to grieve all the losses I perceive, mine and my loved ones. And by loved ones, I mean you, and the trees, and the animals. I am grieving because, as I said to my counselor yesterday, “given the state of things, how could I not?”
Life as we previously knew it is over and we’ve fucking survived, for better or worse. I remember watching the war in Vietnam on my television every night and being shocked that humans could possibly treat other humans that way. Am I the only person who saw screaming naked children running from the bombs? For years to come I lived in the comfort of complacency, believing things couldn’t get any worse, and that surely – surely – we had learned something there. I mean, something more than how to be better at war. How to achieve the goal more efficiently and cheaply, and screw the loss of life. Apparently that’s a renewable commodity.
So here I am, sobbing unconsolably. Pay no mind. I’m grieving the loss of my mother all over again. Being in this horrific blackness, I just want my Mom. I don’t think I’ll ever outgrow that. George Floyd didn’t. You haven’t either, whether you know it or not yet.
If I were to list all the things my subconscious is dredging up these past days, all the harms and grievances I have apparently filed deep inside somewhere over the past 72 years, we’d be here for decades. I’d produce volumes. Suffice it to say that I have not learned how to process grief and anger. I seem to have a lifetime of it stored in every cell of my 187 pound body. I don’t think it will ever be consoled again.
The cruelty of the current political regime in the U.S., and the fact that so many Americans support this, has me right back in my high school mentality of shock. 50 years later. Absolute and utter shock. There is no other way to say it. The blatant disregard for humanity is not something I will ever learn to “process” because I am unequivocally uninterested in processing it. It is wrong.
The way women are treated, and people of any religion other than our own – wrong. There is no other here. The fact that children are being gunned down in school – jesusfuckingchrist. WHO thinks it is alright to live like this?! WHO?!
But let’s pause here a moment and remember something else: I have ALWAYS known right from wrong. I did not need to be taught this awareness. I knew from early childhood that the world does not need guns. Killing has no justification. Neither does the slavery of poverty. None. Period. Do you hear me?! I shall assume that you are also a highly sensitive person or you would not be here reading this blog. So we don’t get it. We’ll never get it. Because it is insane and we are not.
This immense grief that is threatening my way of life, perhaps my life itself, began a month ago with the death of my cat. It’s seems far greater than our brief relationship. But I will not diminish the importance of our devotion. I miss him terribly. I don’t care how silly it sounds that I am grieving the loss of my cat this deeply. He was a magnificent being who graced my life with his companionship.
What happens now? I haven’t a clue. I want the world to change and we both know that isn’t going to happen. I want to find hope among the ruins of my shredded heart. I can’t see it. I want the pressure in my chest to let up. I want to feel love and kindness again. It vaporized. Fuck this “earth school” approach to reconciling trauma. That does not work for me anymore. Don’t come to me, world, with ideas about healing. Not interested in anything about anything.
Do not – I repeat, DO NOT say to me that “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” I have been strong for far too long. I surrender. I only want to be softer. If the world eats me whole, so be it.
Maybe don’t talk to me right now. Pray instead. Stop talking and pray as if our lives depend on it.
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.
With few exceptions family and friends feel as if I have withdrawn from the world, from their lives. It’s true. I don’t reach out much any more. I have (even recently) with a couple of friends, who would likely be shocked to realize that I have simply given up. I inquired as to their health and well being, asked if I could be helpful, maybe even suggested a visit. Invited myself over, or stopped just short of it, not wanting to be rude. While they responded with valid reasoning to postpone an interaction, they also never picked up the phone or texted again…and so, I have left it. I might hear from them again or I might not. I know they’re busy. Life is intense for everyone right now.
What continues to shock me is when I hear from them and they express defensive feelings of being left out of the reporting of my life events. I literally – literally! – maintain a BLOG with regular postings of the goings on in my inner and outer life! And yes, they ALL know about it. They could Google it if they don’t want to subscribe, on any random day or night, and catch up in minutes. I’m living out loud here.
From my perspective they prefer to have their nose out of joint because I didn’t contact them directly, again and again and again. They want me to make an effort to make them feel special. And they ARE! Let’s just say I’m burned out. I imagine everyone is, so there are no hard feelings on my part. I get it.
And right now I am sad. Okay, in fairness, I’ve been sad. For the better part of the past five years, to be honest. But since the pancreatitis a few months ago I have gone off of antidepressant medication. I’m not willing to do anything that will tax my liver and pancreas. I must strive for optimal health as I age.
As the long, grey days of winter begin to set in (it is snowing today) I am also grieving. So please be patient with me as I learn to be patient with myself. I don’t know how to do this.
Let’s choose ourselves over performance. Let’s finally, finally, honor our souls and take a step back and reassess our priorities, our values. We are exhausted. I forgive each and every person who has ever slighted me; I ask the same in return. But let’s make better choices moving forward and choose to be true to ourselves rather than act out of conditioning. I’m not a good girl. I’m not sweet. I’m also not fine anymore, not by a long shot. Sometimes I am not kind, although I’ve only begun to realize the profound importance of that as practice. Thanks for being here.
“Poetry is language against which we have no defenses,” David Whyte tells us. My life must be poetry. It is a question – one big, fat, ugly, precious question right now. The question that I don’t want to ask, the conversation that I don’t want to have. I cannot turn away. I do not know what is true any more. If I try to understand, nothing seems real. No one describes this surreal distortion better than poet philosopher David Whyte. He’s the only person I can stand to listen to at the moment, for he translates grief back into human language. Everybody else just gets on my nerves. I can’t talk to you right now; I don’t know how.
“Sometimes if you move carefully through the forest, breathing like the ones in the old stories who could cross a shimmering bed of leaves without a sound, you come to a place whose only task is to trouble you with tiny but frightening requests, conceived out of nowhere. But this place, beginning to lead everywhere – requests to stop what you are doing right now and to stop what you are becoming while you do it. ”
Stop. Anything you think you are doing at this moment is a performance of who you think you are. Of who you were. You are not that. You do not know who you are. Stop kidding yourself. Stop.
My brother Ward was so much like my Mom. They were terrible worry-warts. Small, wire-y, tenacious, intelligent and hilarious. They used to tell the rest of us, always tired trying to keep up, “sleep is highly overrated; you can sleep when you’re dead.” Which they are now. Both dead. Bright stars who burned out far too fast. I do not know how to live without them.
But the grief that has me paralyzed today is the loss of my cat, Chewy. Many – maybe most of you, might think, “a cat? Really? And you’re devastated?” Yes. I am. Devastated. It has been almost 2 weeks and still I can hardly breathe. I cry myself to sleep several times a night. My stomach is in knots. My world is in some time warp that does not allow focus. I can’t seem to get a grip on any semblance of reality, of my life as I knew it. I have changed. Life has changed. I don’t know who I am anymore.
This grief has gripped me in it’s talons like nothing I have ever experienced before. I don’t care that it isn’t logical. I don’t care that I cannot scale it into the size of my life. Perhaps I have lost the plot altogether. I’ve certainly lost my sense of sanity…speaking of something that is highly overrated…And yes, I can explain this deep chasm as an accumulated grief. Loss in my past has always been amongst family and many friends, during my work life, still having other pets to care for, while being busy. Even the loss of my last 2 dogs, elderly and ill, was during the pandemic, and about 6 months apart. Everything was surreal then and nobody thought anything of it. This is more understandable if I want to put it into that context – I don’t. I don’t want to allow myself to think my way through this experience. I don’t want to risk losing one iota of this opportunity to be transformed. And so I must feel my way through it. And I do not know how to do this.
Chewy came to me unexpectedly 8 years ago. I was not looking to adopt a cat. He was being displaced and a friend asked me to foster him temporarily. We had 8 years together, approximately 2,920 precious days. I pretty much wasted about 2,918 of them having no idea what a tremendous and powerful gift he was. Do not expect me to diminish his significance in any way. I will not. In many ways I am only beginning to grasp the scope of this loss.
In this fascinating and insightful interview, David Whyte tells the story of standing on a street corner in Dublin waiting for a bus. A young boy was staring, and finally mustered up the courage to ask him, “Are you Bono?” David paused. And in a prescient moment of absolute presence he responded, “Yes, I am Bono.” A meaningful exchange occurs, and David must admit that he does not know the importance of it. Perhaps that brief moment was why he was here, on the planet. We aren’t given to know all. In that split second he was exactly who the child needed him to be. His spirit was entirely available. He could be generous. It mattered.
And that is the essence of my loss. Chewy was entirely available and generous. His life mattered.
With the recent drop in temps, I asked my son if he is working outside this week. “Outside what? My comfort zone?” “Comfort zone? What’s a comfort zone?” I replied. When was the last time you felt comfortable? I don’t mean in your clothes or bed, of course…I mean with your life. To quote one of my favorite artists, life is so life-y right now. We are reminded not to let our guard down daily, at least in these here United States. We know we are teetering on the precipice of hell; too many are already living in it daily. Don’t look down.
My personal hell revolves around my personal grief right now. I must do the last few chores to prepare the house and yard for winter. Everything was put on hold when the cat became ill. The deck still has its’ outdoor rugs and umbrella. The outdoor iron furniture scoots around in the wind like plastic toys. As the leaves fall the wind becomes a screaming locomotive on top of this sand dune. Bring it on. I’m so angry. I just want to scream back.
For over a decade now I have harped on about how it will ultimately be the artists who save us. They warn us, then they fight for us, then they lead us through our redemption. That’s their job. That and creating beauty from nothing. In case you thought they had a comfort zone, think again.
Unknowingly, but not coincidentally, Florence Welsh wrote me a song. She is the voice of our times. Comfort zone this.
“Here I don’t have to be quiet. Here I don’t have to be kind, extraordinary and normal all at the same time.” – Florence Welsh
Please bear with me; I can’t talk right now. I’m silenced by grief. But I can listen to the mystic Carolyn Myss, because she speaks truth. Truth to power: meaning, to you and me. I’ve had some extraordinary awarenesses come to me as I sit vigil with my dying cat. I cannot articulate them yet.
I cannot yet explain what a powerful influence this little being has bought to my life. It would not make sense to you. None of this makes sense. But my animal body knows the truth of it. I know what I know. I know the enormous, unlimited love he has served my life with, the truth he carried here to bless me with. The healing he facilitated daily. When he could not protect me he called a black bear to patrol in his stead. We have lost his body and by no means his spirit.
What I can share at this time is the truth school of Carolyn Myss. Carolyn Myss is The Hanged Man. The Hanged Man archetype is the embodiment of God knowledge, to the degree that the human body can tolerate it’s force without dis-integrating. Think Dr. Ellie Arroway in the movie Contact – she did not disintegrate traveling through space and time. She returned changed, with knowledge that would serve all of mankind. No one believes her. She must find a way to communicate her knowing. Carolyn Myss is that person – she found a way to get the information across to us “mere mortals.” I don’t where I would be without her, or without the feline revolutionary I knew as Chewy.
Today, because there isn’t much else I can do, I am going to keep listening to this on a loop, praying to God that I just might grok some of it. That maybe, just maybe, I can become better at distinguishing between the lies of tribal conditioning and the Truth of God, of Life. Join me, and just for today, let your credibility be stretched beyond belief. Be honest about what you know, even if you sound crazy to most. Because you can no longer deny truth. Your body recognizes it. And turning honest limits your choices.
Bitch, please…I grew up in Detroit. For those of you who are not familiar, or accept the cultural collective’s jokes and voodoo euphemisms of Detroit, you’re missing out. Detroit is the heart and soul of America. It is fu@king awesome. Go. Stay in the New Center area and spend a couple days at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Drive around and take in some of the most spectacular historical architecture in the United States. You won’t see it all in that time, but enough to enjoy yourself enormously and appreciate it’s beauty and world-class culture.
Then take yourself “up north.” This is where I have lived the past 40 years. Let me tell you a bit about how I came here, and why I stay.
My father grew up on a farm outside of Traverse City, where my Irish ancestors had immigrated and settled during the potato famine. About to enter high school, his father moved the family to Detroit during the automobile boom. And so I grew up in the suburbs of Detroit and often visited my great-grandparents and aunts and uncles on Long Lake, west of Traverse City, in the summer months. By the time I was in my early twenties I would spend as much time as possible here, staying with my great Aunt Edith, my grandfather’s sister, in the old farmhouse out on Cedar Run Road. My young son had baths in the big iron sink after I pumped water from the well and heated it – on the stove I’d built a fire in. I would put on one of my great grandmother’s old house dresses, crank up the Victrola, and dance around the living room…romantically imagining I lived in a simpler time…way back when. Until Aunt Edith became impatient with my immature fantasies and reminded me that we had no trash pick up or mail delivery – and I needed to get my arse in gear. Those errands were not going to do themselves.
I have about a million and thirty stories I could tell that depend on the geography of both places, and all around the Great Lakes. There is nowhere else like Michigan on earth. And while it is great, not all of my childhood was great. I came from a big dysfunctional family that often settled differences with fist fights and spent years stubbornly not speaking to one another, depending on the current offensive issue. This blog is full of many – by no means all, of those stories, from day one, back in 2012. That was when I began to write as though my life depended on it, not knowing how true that was.
The move from Detroit to Traverse City was purposefully to get my child away from my family, and their drug and alcohol-induced violence. To be safe. To start over. It was the naive plan of a young woman suffering from PTSD, not yet aware of her ADHD, her mental and emotional limitations. It didn’t work. Not only did I not escape my own demons, but my family members were inspired by my new life and followed me. Over the course of the next few years they all moved north, too.
We live here now. Now I actually live about 50 miles west of Traverse, near the shore of Lake Michigan. My son grew up here. We have both traveled some; enough to know this is home. But home has come to mean an internal space for me as I age. It’s funny, the name of this blog…a painterly home. I thought it would be about interior design. Little did I know it would be about interior design – as in, my spiritual interior. There are so many more stories to unpack and share. I’m grateful beyond words for this journal and your readership. It continues to save my life on a weekly basis.
Today I am grieving as my sweet familiar, Chewy, is dying. I’m not ready to lose him. Many of you know that I had two elderly dogs I cherished when Chewbacca the cat came to live with us. I was asked if I could please help out a friend and foster him for a couple of months about 8 years ago. What a blessing he has been. He fit right in with the dogs, becoming immediately inseparable from my little beagle, Odie. I’ve written other posts about them, of course (see Sept. 9, 2025, Chew de Monk). I never would have chosen these silly names for these magnificent beings. But they were already displaced and going through enough adjustment to impose any others unnecessarily. For starters, Chewy became known as a catdog. He did not know that he wasn’t a dog. Since we lost Odie in 2020, Chewy has seldom left my side. Like the dogs, he feels it is his duty to be constantly underfoot. He follows me from room to room. He insists on touching while we sleep, just as he did with Odie; he extends one of his back legs and pushes it against my thigh. I will aver that he understands English perfectly. All of it. Only an hour or so ago I mentioned out loud that I would give him a bit more liquid and medicine in the syringe again, hoping he can rally. He begrudgingly pulled himself up and walked the few steps to his water fountain and took the first drink he has had in two or three days.
Yesterday doesn’t count. We spent the day at the emergency clinic while he got IV liquids, a warm enema, pain and diabetes meds, in an attempt to save him. We came home last night exhausted. He has barely moved and still isn’t eating. I haven’t given up. I keep telling him that I won’t ever give up on him, and that if he can pull through this I will do everything in my power to improve the quality of his life. I’ve promised new toys. I also told him that if he is too tired he is free to go. I will miss him every day for the rest of my life, and I will remember daily all the joy he brought. Rejoice at the thought of he and Odie together again. Still in a magnificently beautiful place, with all the loves that I don’t know how to live without.
“I’m restless. Things are calling me away. My hair is being pulled by the stars again.” – Anais Nin
If you would please be patient, I’ve been a bit manic this week. Got a bee buzzin’ in my bonnet. Change is afoot, and I’m not sure what it’s about yet…it’s a feeling, a sense. When I’m not busy painting the house and all the furniture in it, I’ve been reading and working through the exercises in The Prism, just out from Laura Day. It is changing me; it couldn’t not. And my world is beginning to shift like a glitch in the matrix. Reality is a little wobbly. I have had these experiences every so often throughout my life – enough to trust that I’m in exactly the right place at the right time. I’m safe, protected. Spirit has got my attention.
Awake in the early morning hours as usual, I was sitting up in bed reading just before dawn. A strange woman walked right through my dimly lit kitchen, clearly visible through my bedroom door. I looked straight at her, knowing she wasn’t “real,” or at least solid (I’d have heard her come in.) I must have startled her. She saw me, stopped, and backed up. Like, “oops, she can see me…” I laughed out loud. I have no idea who she was or why she was there. Just passin’ through, I guess. She certainly got my attention.
At the moment I’m not so solid either. My body feels a bit like it’s being pulled in two directions at once. You know the feeling…vertigo comes and goes, you don’t sleep soundly. Heavy foods don’t appeal, but you need some extra protein. So pay attention to self care, be mindful of your diet; keep it clean. No sugar. And do activities that are grounding. Health is a priority right now.
The weird phenomena I’m noticing may be the position of the planets, the effect of 3I/ATLAS, or something in bloom in my garden. I don’t need to understand it. I need to use it to redirect my life, which is obviously going through an adjustment. Don’t resist the adjustment, rather make it a healing. Pay attention – pay attention to intuition. Laura Day is right about it; it is a superpower.
Have you also noticed how differently the wild animals are behaving lately? They are trying to communicate with us. They’re asking for help. They’re also offering. The birds and squirrels are leaving me gifts outside this fall. And trying to get in. Are they offering rent?! One squirrel keeps trying to leap in the window, bouncing off the screen. I’m tempted to rent her a room. Perhaps she came to tell me that Jane Goodall has passed away. A crow came and perched two feet outside my window, looked straight in at me, and talked right at me moments after my friend and neighbor Hal died. I knew exactly what it was saying. He was their friend, too. They know when something has shifted in our world.
And I keep waking with song worms playing in my head. They’re often songs I have not heard in half a century. I’d completely forgotten them. I suddenly smell cigarettes; I’ve never smoked. I hear faint crying when no one is around. A breeze gently rustles the trees outside and my grandmother’s plate falls off the wall at that same instant. I can’t explain any of this; again, I don’t really care to. I do trust it. Let’s just summarize by saying the veil is thin. I’m not quite sure what that means either.
I’m going to look at a house for sale today. I’m in no position to move. But I noticed the little house last week AFTER having dreamt about it. No idea what that is about. But I do know enough about intuition and how it works to ACT ON IT when you get it, because you never know where it will lead.
My dear Mother used to play the guitar and sing. This was one of her favorite songs; it woke me this morning. What is she trying to tell me? What is this song about? Well, it’s time for a change. It’s about equity. Remember equity? Justice? Compassion? These are all values my Mother taught me. They are certainly being pressed into use these days. At any rate, she’s singing to me. She’s reminding me that I have a hammer, I have a bell, and I have a song to sing. I DO clearly know what that means. It means I am a powerful, creative being. I have agency. Everything I think and everything I do effects my life and the world around me.
Remember, you heard it here first: Ultimately, it will be the artists who save us. It always has been. It always will be.
Oh my goodness, it is the perfect fall morning. The sun is just beginning to dissipate the fog and whiffs of smoke-like dew slide across the valley to my east. Everything glistens. I love this time of year. I’ve taken a little break from writing because I’ve had a friend visiting from out of town. She usually spends much of the summer here, just a mile down the road from me, in her little cottage on the lake. But this year she has not been able to come all summer. Because life has been hard. We are at a certain age. We lose our parents and their siblings, the aunts and uncles of our childhood. We lose siblings. We lose friends. We have health challenges.
I myself am going through another health challenge – physical and mental. As part of a routine check-up my doctor noticed I was a little out of breath. Well, I flunked the pulmonary function test she ordered. Now I will go through pulmonary rehab, which is a good thing. I will gladly work for any improvement in lung capacity I can get.
Louise Hay, who wrote You Can Heal Your Body decades ago and provided a list of all the emotional causes behind common physical symptoms, tells me that lung issues are grief. Yeah yeah yeah…I’ve had asthma and lung problems much of my life, almost as long as I’ve lived with my invisible friend Grief.
And for a combination of reasons, I am conscious of the grief I am feeling now, again. It isn’t new; we’re familiar. We know how to be sad. In fact, I welcome sadness these days. It seems an appropriate response to much of what is going on around and within me. And it means that I am feeling (and not repressing) the truth I am acutely aware of. I don’t want to live with any denial if I can help it; that leads to depression. And depression is harder to manage in winter. The light of summer is fading fast. Hello darkness, my old friend…
…I’ve come to talk with you again. I told my friend that I look forward to winter, and I do, increasingly as I age. I love the quiet. The complete and enveloping quiet you can only know in the middle of a dark, snowy afternoon. With my friend I have talked and cried and laughed and cried some more this week. We have covered a lot of ground. She will leave in a few days. Hopefully life will be a bit kinder to her and we can meet again next summer. It triggers a lot of fear – will life be kinder again? Is that realistic as we get older?
The summer residents and tourists crowd my area – the trails, the beaches, the roads, from May through October. They come from all around the world. We will wait in line at every restaurant and at the post office, the library and the gas station. Life is less convenient six months of the year, but I won’t complain. They’re the reason we have our choice of good restaurants in a rural village. Strangers often share a table in a restaurant during the crowded months, and that is how I met my friend. She and her daughter, visiting from their home in Kansas, were waiting in line in a tiny restaurant.
I was out for breakfast that morning with a family member, and invited the two women to sit with us. We briefly introduced ourselves and slightly scooted away, not wanting to be intrusive. But these friendly people started a conversation. They had flown in the night before and come to the little obscure restaurant for coffee and warmth, as they hadn’t time to grocery shop yet and were quite cold. I asked them if they needed anything (blankets? hats and gloves?) and my new acquaintance, obviously around my age, answered, “just emotional support.” Instant new best friend! Upon leaving I handed her a piece of scrap paper with my phone number, address, and an invitation to lunch at my home the next day, quipping, “and here’s hoping none of us are ax murderers!” Her daughter shot back, “we’re about to find out.” Invitation accepted.
This morning she and I went back to that little restaurant. Meandering across the narrows we saw a pair of great blue herons wading. Two sandhill cranes flew overhead and called out to let us know…to let us know…we are here…we are alive. We see you. I sent them silent prayers for a safe journey . After breakfast we went to a gorgeous show of local art and photographs at Oliver Art Center. I needed that little shot of inspiration to remind me to make some art. Lack of creativity is surely part of why I’m sad….maybe a big part. Could my lack of inspire-ation have something to do with pulmonary stress? Breathe out…breathe in…
“Some people don’t get to live soft lives. We get handed chaos, grief, betrayal, and we have to learn how to bloom anyway. We become the ones who know how to carry others when their world falls apart because we remember what it was like when no one showed up for us. We’re not here because it was easy. We’re here because we didn’t give up.” – unknown
A Painterly Home 