Pottery class

A friend sent me an email whose author conveyed her thoughts in a much more pragmatic way than this blog, a way that inspired people outside of appeasing herself through her writing. It was beautiful, a short essay in which she laid out intentions of living each day in a way that includes creating, connecting, and consuming.

In other words, my personal words, that would mean writing, spending time outside, and reading. Different for some, the same for others. Create. Connect. Consume.

: the act of carving out time for important things that water the spirit. 

The author's husband had recently died in a freak accident in Australia. The new widow went on a trip to Napa to practice these three tributes, and I presume, to find something about or within herself to help lift her away from the tragedy that encompassed her. Encompasses her. 

Present tense; because one thing I have learned this year is that grief is not a season you walk through. Grief changes a person, meets you when you least expect it and humbles you as you stand naked in a doorway. Grief does not ask, it intrudes upon your life and strips you. And no person is alone in that experience, though it takes on a different sculpture for us all. This year it is the very real possibility that I could remain unable to carry a child. It is letting go of my deep-rooted passion to be pregnant. It is losing any control I thought I had over us starting a family, it is trusting my husband's words that even without kids I am enough for him. It is knowing some days will be good; deep and rich and full of laughter. And some days will have triggers around their corners. 

But I think this thing of doing - of creating, connecting, and consuming - heals us. We can contribute to the world, sit in the world, and embrace it, too. We are not alone.

Our grievances will not isolate us.

We are not alone.