This year left me breathless, panting for air. But my kids became my oxygen–the very reason I kept gasping, and eventually, I learned how to swim underwater.
This year kicked me around, beat me up, and left me bruised. But I got up again and feel stronger (this is what I tell myself and I’m starting to believe it) because of the fight it gave me.
This year caused me to wander down old country roads and back to old houses, into familiar forests but also into some very choppy and uncharted waters. I kept going back to the familiar as I learned to get my sea legs.
This year was filled with some of my very worst times but then again, there were the blue eyes looking at me like I was everything and the small still-a- boy hand holding my own. There was the chest of the man with the beard who pulled me close like he has for 23 straight years and the support of parents I needed. There were the kittens born in the woods we rescued and the chicks we raised. There were poems and pictures and good books. There were apples and bees and berries and birds. There were old friends and new friends and kindred spirits, too. There was so much love and joy and holy, holy.
This year was a year of loss and gain, pain and joy, disappointments and triumphs. It was filled with life and life isn’t always easy, but oh, how I’m glad to live it. How very blessed am I.
Thanks for Mothering the Divide with me with this, my hardest year to date. I have no real resolutions other than to live and live well and to answer the call no matter how very hard that can be. This year, I shall live.