My Silver Lining (First Aid Kit)

Since 2008, it has been my custom each January 1 (a so-far-17-year tradition) to ascribe to Christine Kane's concept of choosing a Word of the Year to inspire/motivate/give me direction as to the tone/theme of my upcoming 52 weeks/365 days.  In retrospect, some of my previous words/phrases have been Release, Create, Let It Go, Health, Light, Follow-Through, Contentment, Forward, Stretch, and last year's Sage.

After much pondering (I had it narrowed down to three:  runners-up were Gratitude and Heart/Love), I decided on Now/Be Present for 2024.

If there is anything I have learned since Eric's fatal car accident on September 26, 2023... it is that *Everything* can turn upside-down in the blink of an eye.  Monumentally.  Irrevocably.  Unimaginably.  We think it's a cliche until it happens to us.  In fact, I'd venture to say we go through life thinking that it *won't* happen to us.  Strangers, yes.  Friends of friends, yes.  Sometimes even friends.  But we're still somehow One Degree of Separation from an actual tragedy.  Until it does.  No wouldas/couldas/shouldas.  No what-ifs.  No if-onlys.  Bam.  A family, a couple, a neighborhood, the world... is diminished by one.

For the past 90+ days, I have spiraled through anxious, needy, emotional, worrying, extrapolating, melancholy, self-destructive, desperate, scrambling, hyper-ventilating.  I was a big, fat, f*cking mess... and I had a good reason for being so.  My son is gone and, as many times as I write/say/scream it, that basic fact will not change.  I continue to replay in my head the phone call from his girlfriend (across state lines) that changed my life.  It was visceral.  My stomach flip-flopped.  The tears welled.  I haven't been suicidal, but I needed to figure out how to get out of the loop.

I now wake up every morning, and do my best to talk myself off the proverbial ledge.  I realize I hadn't been taking care of myself as well as I should; everyone else, yes... but not me.  Vowing (and following through) with taking my vitamins/supplements, eating more healthfully, moving my body, muting my phone and setting aside quiet time, maintaining boundaries.  The grief journey (there is no destination) continues, as does the healing.

What's done is done; I can't alter the past, nor can I control the future.  But Right Now, The Present, is within my grasp.  I will do everything in my power to honor E and make him proud of me... one thought, task, day at a time... ⏰

SONG:  My Silver Lining by First Aid Kit (and there is a f*cking owl in the video... 😲)

BOOK:  Be Where Your Feet Are: Seven Principles to Keep You Present, Grounded, and Thriving by Scott O'Neil

POEM(S):  

She walked naked

Into the New Year.

No definite plan.

No vision boards.

No intentions set.

No journals created.

No classes or workshops scheduled.

Only trust in the Great Mystery,

in Goddess,

to provide and direct

her Soul toward its destiny.

Dreaming the visions between

past and future lives,

She listened to the voice

of her Soul

as it called her forward

into love and grace and magnificence.

As it called her deeper into her purpose,

step by step by step.

With only an open heart

and the thrill of the journey,

She walked freely and open

into the coming year.

~ Arlene Bailey

Her Sacred Wild, Re-Membering the Wild Soul Woman 

The Only Prayer by James Crews

Because there was nothing else to do,

and the news frightened me as usual,

I took a walk on my favorite trail

in the woods, and because the snow

began to melt as soon as it fell,

everything was wet—the lichen a bright

lime-green on the bark of each fallen tree,

the leaves beneath my feet deliciously

soft as they squelched and sank back

into the arms of the earth that shaped them. 

I picked up one of the limp, gold-

toned beech leaves, pressed it to my chest 

then left my despair on a mossy trunk,

like placing a lit candle on an altar

and saying the only prayer that matters:

I'm here, I’m here, I’m here.

With Astonishing Tenderness by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

When, in the middle of the night,

you wake with the certainty you’ve

done it all wrong, when you wake

and see clearly all the places you’ve failed,

in that moment, when dreams will not return,

this is the chance for your softest voice—

the one you reserve for those you love most—

to say to you quietly, oh sweetheart,

this is not yet the end of the story.

Sleep will not come, but somehow,

in that wide awake moment there is peace—

the kind of peace that does not need

everything to be right before it arrives.

The peace that comes from not fighting

what is real. The peace that rises

in the dark on its sure dark wings

to meet you exactly as you are.

QUOTE(S):  “There is only one day left, always starting over: it is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre 

"This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls." ~ John Muir

"We are so brief. A one-day dandelion. A seedpod skittering across the ice. We are a feather falling from the wing of a bird. I don’t know why it is given to us to be so mortal and to feel so much. It is a cruel trick, and glorious." ~ Louise Erdrich