It is in the moments of extreme emotional duress that we move inward and begin to search the deepest recesses of our hearts. What that searching shows us about ourselves and about the people involved in our lives is quite sobering. Perhaps a wake up call to guard our hearts more and careful as to whom we allow access to our open hearts.

Everyone processes the chaos of this journey differently. Some are private and closed and react, what seems to my emotional heart, as cold or uncaring but it is simply how they process things, especially uncomfortable issues. I have described myself as emotions with skin on it…possibly an understatement! It has taken most all of my 6 decades to realize when friends or relationships don’t react emotionally as I do…it doesn’t mean they don’t care… just are much calmer and quiet in their way of processing life…just could not wrap my crazy head around that! Still quite puzzling to my spinning hamster wheel 😳

We do learn how many amazingly deep wonderful friends we have and then those who are more superficial friends. Not bad just surface friends…not the deep enduring all of our life’s messiness friends. Arms always outstretched to us hell or high water..agreeing with us or not…always there !! Ready to lift us up..pray with and for us..sit and hold us in our depths of darkness.. laugh with us in life’s joys..share our hearts inside out and upside down!

Having grown up in a small southern town, I am beyond blessed to have such an army of life long friends that I can reach out to at any time and know beyond a shadow of a doubt they ARE always there for me. New friends I have met are equally there now and I’m always blown away by the outpouring of love I receive!!

Most disturbing of all this COVID horror is the isolation it has produced. We cannot live without human contact. It destroys our sense of belonging. Hugs and touch are so necessary to our survival. I am so eternally grateful for my friends and the way they reach out. Even amidst this time of stress they still hug and console and love.

This journey of life can be so stressful and yet so blissful. The ups and downs are much more tolerable with friends who love so deeply. To my armies of friends and relations….I could not possibly be more blessed to have each of you in my life…I love you all dearly ❤️❤️❤️

Always remember…if in doubt…reach out….

It has been said, and the older I get I believe, that in life people cross our paths for different reasons. There have been times that I lamented the decisions I made and the trajectory my life took as a result of what seemed an innocent enough choice…go here or go there…those last minute choices and who precisely crossed my path at that junction in time. It was during those moments of regret for past moves that one of my favorite lines became forever imbedded. From the book, Under The Tuscan Sun, by Frances Mayes, “Any arbitrary turning along the way and I would be elsewhere, I would be different “.

Looking at my amazing grandchildren and my children..I realize that some of my most disastrous decisions led to the most beautiful outcomes. The beautiful friends I have had along this journey of life was also due to those choices.

As I sat with a dear friend I met only 18 months ago. We talked of how tedious life feels at times. Our chance meeting and how our lives have changed in these months.

Some enter our lives to teach us valuable lessons about life and ourselves. Some are here for a season to teach, to love, to receive love and nurturing then to move on. Then there are the ones who are here for the long road….the entire journey of our lives. The ones we cling to when our worlds feel as though they are crumbling all around us and who in turn clings to us when they are in the depths of pain or need to share the euphoria of a blissful moment. Yes, those friends that even if miles separate you physically they are always there to listen, to share and love. The calm in the storms, the riotous laughter in the joys and always always believing in one another.

Mistakes along the way..,definitely….but oh to just stop and count what blessings have arisen from so many of them. To know that even the slightest change in those sudden decisions and our lives would have turned out so differently. We would be elsewhere …we would be different.❤️❤️

There’s a boat across the river churning up a bit of a ripple. Water lapping gently against the shore line and docks creates such a calming sound. Two flags are flapping in the breeze. A dove is cooing close by. The sun is out but not uncomfortably hot on this early June day as the wind is just enough to cool my skin. I am reminded, in my small piece of paradise here by the water, of the simple joys of summer… of all of life actually. These moments that money cannot buy. The scent of my gardenias I just planted nearby is such a sweet scent. Amazingly abundant colors of the flowers makes my heart smile. A summer thunderstorm blew through last night making the flowers that much more vibrant today. That sound of the thunder and rain as I was contemplating sleep made me stay awake longer just to hear the soothing symphony being orchestrated outside my windows.

Yes, there are these serene moments that cannot be bought. A temporary halt to life’s sometimes chaos to just be and breathe it in. Even in all the distressing times of the last couple of months and the fallout ensuing from it all…I am again reminded of how blessed I truly am. God has this …as He always has everything…nothing is a surprise to Him.

So for right now, in the midst of this blissfully sweet summer’s day, I will reflect on the things I am so humbly grateful for in my life. Life’s journey holds so much to be thankful for ..even the darkest days that teach us so much. He is there! In this moment I will be still and quiet to hear all He is showing me..❤️

As the cocoon began to slit open…the emerging butterfly began her fight to push out of her darkness and into the beautiful sunshine of a life full of wonder and adventure and flight …

I have read that if there is help in opening the cocoon, in any way, the butterfly will die. It is difficult to watch those we care about struggling. It’s especially hard when we believe that we could help in some way. Learning to just stand aside and offer advice only when it’s sought rather than just jumping in and trying to fix things is quite an adjustment. What is referred to as enabling always felt like helping. I have come to learn that in actuality it is extremely harmful. There is a crippling effect on the person rather than a freeing effect.

Boundaries that allow others to sort through their own problems and challenges must be put into place. To learn to ask if that person would like to hear what we see that could help them is a step in the right direction. Most humans are wired to want to help; however, there are those of us who cannot seem to understand that some people quite simply do not want our help. Like an obstinate young child determined to do things on their own they need to fall in order to learn to upright themselves and move forward. This is a healthy thing for people to do to find their own way❤️

I am the classic enabler. Intuitively disposed to read people’s hearts and feel their hurts and needs almost personally. Feeling that I know what they need but putting out that boundary that says to just zip it closed and wait. That I just may not know what’s best for another and it’s ok. No longer do I feel like I’ve let someone down because I couldn’t help in some way. To let others be and live their own life without interference is a good thing, Like that butterfly they need to fight out of their darkness and goo to spread those beautiful wings and take flight ….,

This butterfly has finally burst out of the dark and taken flight with wings unfurled …to where I’m not completely sure..and that’s ok too🦋🦋but it is full of wonder, adventure and flight..this freedom to unabashedly soar….

I am light

I am warmth

I am sun

I am calm waters

Sitting by the river….

Sunlight on the water like golden glitter

The calmness of the water mirrors my broken heart—

No longer turbulent just quietly broken

No longer searching just sad

Not engaging – just observing

Sitting with it and observing

Have I given too much away – maybe

Have I loved far too deeply – possibly

Where do I fit and belong – no answers

Should giving from the core of my soul be quelled – remains unanswered

Not engaging – just observing

To finally have loved with my heart’s wild abandon with everything believing all the words and actions that were given and then to have it casually handed back to me with just “No thank you, I’m sorry but no, thank you “

Confused ..crushed ….broken

Do not engage just observe

Heart questions… no answers..no closure

I am lost on this day but somehow content

Not engaging – just observing

Life was not meant to be observed but to be fully engaged

Perhaps in a shattered state ..a time out..observing and letting go

Watching the sadness and brokenness float away down the river

Right now in this moment….

I am light

I am warmth

I am sun

I am calm waters

The birds are engaged in their boisterous melodic songs

Warm wind is whipping my hair

Mallards are squawking

The brokenness and pain feels somehow absorbed out here on the dock into the flow of the river

Perhaps it is in these warm winds promising the coming of the summer sun that the letting go is beginning

Letting go to live once again….

Like the endless flow of the river

Decades of heart pain…flowing away

I am light

I am warmth

I am sun

I am calm waters

It is yours God…it always has been

High tide today came in with a heavy rain and very high winds. Watching the river rise and the neighbors dock be submerged I felt the familiar knot in my stomach and catch in my breathing. How is it I can love the water as I do and yet feel a menacing dread when I see it rising or becoming even somewhat turbulent?

I grew up in a small town in Arkansas, the mid south. The north end of town where I lived flooded a few blocks from my house when heavy rains caused 8-Mile Creek to overflow. When those waters rose it was not uncommon to see someone in a flat bottom boat maneuvering through the waters. Stark fear would grip me at those moments. While in high school one of those heavy spring rains brought flood waters around the school. Cars began to float out of the parking lot. Word was received that there was also a tornado headed in our direction. The National Guard was brought in to rescue all the students and faculty from the flooding buildings. Wet, cold, tired and scared I arrived home that afternoon and within a few days was hospitalized from dehydration and a possible bug I’d picked up in the flood waters. Truthfully it was quite possible it was from the traumatic impact that flood had on me.

Fast forward several years later and living in New Orleans, I faced that city’s rainy Springs with horrendous flooding. I waded chest deep water back to my apartment building one year. Months later I realized how dangerous that was with snakes and the ever present alligators. We lived on the edge of a wooded area and very wet swamp land. Overnight hospital stay again for the same reasons. When my first 2 children were small we watched water rise up to the top of our porch but thankfully not come into the house. Had I lived there during Katrina I’m not sure how I would have handled that terror. A truly resilient people live there.

Water nightmares have plagued me as long as I can remember. Thank heavens I didn’t know about tsunamis as a child. Not surprisingly cruises have never appealed to me. When living in Florida, I worked for a company and as part of my job one year had to be on a cruise to the Bahamas in a PR capacity. I ate Dramamine like M n Ms for the entire cruise. There was never a moment when I allowed myself to see anywhere but right in front of me. I imagined land behind me at all times. Maybe I slept an hour each night. A couple of comatose days followed that work trip but without hospitalization at least 🙄.

With all that said still my perfect day is out on a lake on a pontoon or sunup to sundown on a beach. There’s nothing quite as soothing as the sun on my face by the water….but quiet, calm waters, preferably at low tide with hospitalization not required. 😊🌊

Sitting in my art studio, with windows on 3 sides, I’m listening to the wind whistle and howl around and from across the river. There’s a 180 view of the water on this side of the house which allows a calmness to completely immerse in creative solitude. I love every single thing is this cozy room. The scent of oil paints and mediums, paint brushes, blank canvases and charcoals intermixed with floral supplies and scrapbooks. My paintings are hanging or leaning against the walls with sketches I’ve done. Scattered mementoes of days past..some wonderful to recall and some heartbreaking,…but all a very real part of my life. These nights I can pull back and just observe but not be caught up or pulled down by any of them..just aware….sitting with them…quietly being…

An inviting daybed resides in a corner with lots of pillows and a deep down comforter for the occasional guest or most often a lazy afternoon of snuggling in with a good book and a cup of tea. Or a late night glass of wine and being quiet, like tonight, just listening and being. This “art” of being alone with myself enjoying the smell of patchouli and sandalwood incense filtering across the room mixing with the oils is a new experience for me.

For the first time in my life I am completely alone. There was always a relationship or children still at home to fill any voids. One thing I have truly discovered in these alone months is that there was always a void that never seemed to be filled. That void was me. I never had a time to find or be who I was or am. It took deaths, cancer, a divorce followed by a pandemic to be finally quiet and still long enough to lean in and breathe for the first time in all my life. Quite unsettling I can tell you for absolute certain. Many nights crying myself to sleep wondering why I’m here and what’s the point….maybe that is the point..there isn’t one. Just perhaps being…quietly being…

Time to discover and create who I want to be…..and gently love what emerges from this space in which I find myself ….this beautiful art studio cocoon I have created ❤️❤️❤️that is housing this dark gooey cocoon I’m beginning to finally come out of with wings unfolding🦋🦋🦋…quietly and colorfully being….ready to fly! 😊

Just read a quote in a book…”you are not broken, you are becoming “…interesting thought with my current mindset.

Becoming what? What, if there actually is one, is the point?? Why am I here? I presently see no logic in any of it or anything else for that matter !

5 years ago my soul shattered…..but even before that horrid night…I never felt that I truly belonged anywhere. It was with the death of my son that the search to belong and find myself for the first time began in earnest. In that moment of loss and excruciating pain….the desperate need to belong somewhere, anywhere but where I was became incessant. To be accepted for who I am finally…but to first know myself who that is…

Perhaps the need to belong is really the need to be heard and seen for who we truly are….who we were born to be..that gypsy bohemian artist soul that was squelched as a child because it just wasn’t tidy and proper and like everyone else. That persona is not in keeping with southern acceptance. Messiness just does not work well in that environment. And it can be a messy lot.

Somewhere back in the throes of childhood there must have been a moment in time when I felt connected and worthwhile. That I actually mattered to someone just the way I was. There must have been a time …..

Sifting through years of not so benevolent feelings toward myself it has come to my attention that my inner voice is horribly critical. Critical toward myself but oddly not toward anyone else. Absolute perfection is expected from me at all times. At what point did that inner voice begin to berate and condemn? When subconsciously I knew that gypsy soul would not be tolerated the fight to stuff that essence of my being into a recess so deep that she could not be found began……and continued for so long I lost her along the way. Forgot the dreamer of that soft creative soul. Forgot the outrageous abandoned laughter of that childlike heart. Until now …until now…

But surfacing she is now….and with a roaring vengeance!!! …and not everyone is or will be happy about it……

Here’s to us misfit square pegs in round holes who see the world and it’s colors a bit differently but oh so vividly that we want everyone to see what we see!!

So it IS what I’ve read in reality IS true…grief doesn’t change you it reveals you!!! Hmmmm and I believe I’m finally ok with this ☺️❤️

There you were big as life….hugging me so tightly and not letting go I couldn’t breathe! Then I woke up…and just as quickly could not breathe again! You were still gone……

I have read that it is really them visiting us in our dreams. Whether true or me just needing so desperately to see and feel him that it manifests him in my dream world. Whatever it is the feeling of his arms and tightness of his hug was tangible and real at that moment. I can still feel the warmth of his breath on my neck while he was squeezing me. Harsh reality then leaves such a deep aching emptiness.

There is an emptiness that words can’t adequately define. It’s as if there is no bone structure to support my frame. The skin that is left weighs 500 lbs and is pulling me to the ground. Just bowed over in anguishing grief.

I know I’m supposed to move on…let him go…count my blessings…remember the good times… be thankful I had him the 37 years he was here…but you know only a mother who has buried her child has the right to say those things to me!! Anyone else, well meaning as you are trying to be, you quite frankly cannot begin to understand….. and I pray you never do…this loss is one you simply cannot grasp.

So still I want every single night to retreat into that comforting dreamworld where he still exists and talks to me and hugs me with that sweet hug of my child💔

There is a sadness that defies all reasoning or logic. It’s as if your soul has ceased to be. No matter how many times you tell yourself to just stop..to just be normal again…to breathe….it’s there. There looming up to grasp your throat and squeeze til what little life is left has vanished…vanished as if it never existed at all.

Not being quite sure if this dark grimacing emotion began before my sons death, but certainly at his death it magnified exponentially or if it was there lurking on the perimeter long before I lost him, I can only surmise that there may have always been an underlying sadness in me. My dad had a sadness that ran deep as well. Perhaps it’s a genetic tendency or just a wry twist of fate. Fate can be cumbersome and harsh.

As a society it is not a comfortable subject..sadness. It is a conversation best left behind closed doors and preferably the doors of a therapist. During the last year there were far too many times that I, this ever so strong woman, either sat in my car or stood at the end of my dock with pills in hand and contemplated ending my life. Now there’s an uncomfortable subject. Not only sad but suicidal. Pain and heartache can become so intensely intolerable that there is just no where for it to go. When younger I always believed suicide to be such a selfish act. Now I’ve come to realize that the person has just reached the saturation limit with sadness and can literally not hold another minute ounce anywhere within them.

Sadness needs to be put right out there in the open and dealt with. Above all reach out to anyone that is sad. Don’t ignore it or for God’s sake the person. Belittling or speaking down to someone in the throes of grief and sadness could just push them over the edge. Preaching to or at them will further harm them. Love and support them. There are moments when even the tiniest gesture of care can save their life.

Loss and grief from loss, of any kind, can be debilitating. Just because a person appears strong and together does not mean they are.