All These Places

I have wonderful and caring friends.  I have a small but beautiful family.  I have discovered a new community of likeminded individuals.   And from their eyes, I am forced to see myself as they must see me…a woman who has lost quite a bit in the last six months.  The timing continues to happen like 1-2 punches.  And it sucks.  And I see their sorrow for me.   And I so appreciate the nurturing and the unexpected gifts and the phone calls to check in.  I don’t want any of it to stop when I say this, but:

I am OK. 

I am merely unraveling.  But, this too, is OK.

This morning a beautiful book appeared in the mailbox, a gift from a dear friend.  The pages were soft and a bit shiny, the spine stiff just like a new book should be.  The pages were filled with beautiful photographs and words that were sometime in cursive, sometimes in bold.  I began to thumb through, bending the cover back, hearing that satisfying crack of the book spine; it now belongs to me.

And there, at the beginning, opposite of a page containing a photograph of dogwood blooms, the flower that always reminds me of climbing trees when I was a child, a flower that always makes me think of catching fireflies and sticky popsicles.  There, across from that flower that always leads me home were these words:

Unraveling is not a bad thing.  It’s not coming undone or losing control.  It’s letting go in the best possible way, untangling the knots that hold you back, unwrapping the gifts you’ve hidden for too long, unearthing the potential that’s always been there, finally ditching the labels and the should-haves, and letting yourself be what you were always meant to be.

So that’s why I tell you—my friends, my readers, that I am truly OK.  You may hear me joke that I’m just writing off the year 2012, that the theme of my life is letting go.  You may question my sanity when I tell you that I am doing well.   I saw a friend in Colorado last week and she praised my honesty, my openness.  And I told her that it was all I had at this point in time—that, and a ferocious screaming inside of me that says ‘keep going’, a gentle whisper that says ‘you will get there.’

So it’s from this place of honesty and ferocity and gentleness that I say I am OK.  I am merely unraveling.

The book mentioned in this post is “This I Know: Notes on Unraveling the Heart” by Susannah Conway