I just came in from the grocery. Put them away and ate a peanut butter toast with a cup of tulsi tea. I sighed. Nothing else to do this weekend but relax into what is. And I begin to give thanks….

I was married to a strong handsome man full of principles and drive. We had two beautiful children. The daughter gone at age seven, barely making it through the first grade, dead of cancer. The son, with whom I have lived with the longest of anyone. Our relationship, often stormy and filled with angry and frightened silences, is now bearing the fruits of patience and acceptance. The house we have lived in for 40 years is holding only two of us now but we are happy with it.

I have grown into my writing. It suits me well. I needed to leave all online groups where people ostensibly chatted but ended up savaging each other.

I have stayed true to myself in spite of the odds. My husband accused me of being too abrupt on the phone and I would tell him I refused to waste my time talking to people I didn’t know or didn’t care to keep knowing. He accepted everyone but in his acceptance there was always a distance. He was private to the nth degree and that made for a difficult relationship.

As he was dying, I realized how tired I was, how burnt out and empty of any emotion except sorrow. And I wrote myself out of it line by line by line. Paragraphs turned into essays and they marched through the years. They seeped into people’s hearts and they wept with me and I with them.

Now the laughter is coming through the cracks in my armor. I can sit and laugh deep in my belly. And I can know simply that we are still a family of four and I can laugh and cry at the same time about that.

If you know me, you know I write endlessly about walking the inner path. At some point we give up and sit down wearily. Perhaps it is then that the true healing begins. And that is where I am.

Love,
Vicki