Almost 9 months

 

It has been almost nine months. People often ask how I’m doing. It’s kind. It’s human. But also impossible to answer. I don’t really feel like I’m “doing” anything at all. Mostly, I feel like I’m being "done to" by memories, by silence, by this unthinkable absence.

Since Jess died, the map I was using to navigate life just... disappeared. Not just the big-picture plans, but the inner compass I once relied on. The belief that life had a general shape. The idea that love and effort could somehow keep the worst from happening.

I’m still moving. Still upright. And here’s the surprising thing, I’m not shattered in the way people seem to expect. I haven’t fallen to pieces. I still laugh sometimes. I can still make toast. But I’m not intact either.

I feel... altered. Rearranged. Rewritten in a language I don’t fully speak yet.

"Broken open" is phrase that's been circling in my head lately. Maybe I’m just trying it on. But it feels closer to the truth than “holding it together.”

Because whatever I am, I’m not closed.

Since Jess died, everything gets in deeper. A slant of light. A tremble in someone’s voice. A flower growing in a place it shouldn’t survive.

It’s not that the pain has lessened. It hasn’t. But now it shares space with a strange kind of noticing. Noticing beauty. Noticing ache. Noticing everything.

Grief peeled something back I never meant to lose. I miss the ease I once had, but I don’t miss the illusion that everything was certain.

I don’t know exactly who I am now. I do know I’m still here, still paying attention, still showing up in the middle of it all.

And, as I mentioned before, I'll keep you posted!

P.S.

Photo is from the first day of living in Hawaii full time. I didn't know what to expect then either!  Showing up worked out quite well! 💕