i write, still, from the messy middle

i am still nursing a broken heart. i am still moving, wave after wave, through sad. grieving a dear friend who is no longer a dear friend. for reasons that are far too personal to share but are reason enough to carry such ache, such longing.

the kind of sad that reaches down into my toes and runs all the way up to my hairline. the kind of ache that pauses me mid-sentence and takes all my focus to come back, to come here.

it’s easing a bit. at times. this sad. but it’s full-bodied and far-reaching. like quicksand or swampland.

and in the midst of my sad, the world’s sad. a crumbling world, a fraying world. a world that is saying don’t stay too long in your sad because we need you. not to solve the world but to be present to it.

to not disappear into the small that is my ache because there is the big that is our ache.

so i continue to do what i’ve been doing for over a month. what i do daily. i breathe and i feel. which means i slow and i stay.

it’s so hard this slowing and this staying.

the world we live in says fast and leave. it says distract and get busy. it says anything else but this. except this is why our world is unraveling. because the biggest work is the staying. the feeling. the breathing.

even now, as i stop and breathe and feel, i want to do almost anything else. because the ache tightens my stomach making breathing into pelvis more work than ease. because it makes my eyes water and my heart want to hide.

and it isn’t just the ache of this loss. it’s the ache of being human.

as humans we want to love and be love. we want to know we’re safe and we belong. and yet, to love we need to feel safe, to know we belong. and to feel safe and know we belong, we need to be loved. round and round we spin.

i’ve never wanted to be the teacher on the mountain top. i’ve never wanted to be the one holding the answers. i’ve always wanted to bathe in the questions and find home with my people. to share how i’m living and learn from others how they’re living.

so i write to you from the middle. from the breath and the body that feels more like gravel under bare feet or scalding sun on bare skin.

and still i stay.

because this, this is being human. as we witness what we’re doing to one another in our suffering and our fear, we learn to stay. as we watch the death and destruction, the breaking down and the busting apart, we breathe. as we take in the avarice and the angst, we feel our own greed and scared.

we stay because this, ultimately, is where we are needed.

right here.

in this breath.

in this body.

in this life.

to bear witness, to take action and to learn, from all of it, how to be love so that all of us can, at some future dream date, know we are safe, know we belong.

so that all of us can love.

even with the ache and the sad. because of the ache and the sad.

thank you.

you fear you are not

strong enough to do

the hardest thing

only because you don’t

yet know that doing

the hardest thing

is exactly what will help

you know your strength.

- andrea gibson

you’re words and thoughts mean the world to me. they help me know that we’re all here, doing this life thing, together.