Life went downhill after Wednesday.  I don't have much to say.  I'm sad again.  Really sad.  And I don't really know why.  I hate that.  I like knowing what, where, how, when and then acting on something.  The last time I remember feeling this helpless was in the middle of giving birth to my son.  I wasn't real fond of that either.  But there is no way out but through, so there ya go. 

People come along at odd moments and kind of save me.  Today I couldn't decide what to do, couldn't decide about going to church, couldn't decide about what to eat...who cares about eating anyway?  really?  All I could do was cry.  Then Lulu looked so desperate that I took her for a walk around the farm.  We picked up a lot of ticks in the process, but while we were walking a friend called and wanted to bring her son and another friend by.  Yes, please.  In showing them the house and shop and farm I got my feet back under me and was able to go on with a reasonable picture of a day. 

I am hoping this guy can finish the last project David started.  We designed it and then picked out and planed the wood for a wall unit for the TV and books, but it never got made.  I like his energy, I think it would be good to have him do this work. 

I have a friend who rescues dogs, a lot of dogs, and she got one in this week that needs at least a thousand dollars worth of medical work.  She didn't hesitate to take the dog.  She put the story out there on facebook and in less than 24 hours she had the money.  But I know she would've spent her own money to care for this little pup.

It's such hard work and I am getting tired. Sometimes I just want to have a do-over. I remember feeling that way in labor too. I changed my mind about the whole natural thing, but by the time it felt too hard to go on it was almost over. The nurse told me I could do it and I did. Someone saved me and didn't even know it. And then I had this child and he saved me too, and didn't even know it.

We save each other all the time.  Sometimes we don't even know we are doing it.  Sometimes, we are just a kid wanting to see the farm and suddenly someone can breathe again because we showed up.  Sometimes we say yes to whatever or whoever shows up and life gets a little better.  I get so lost sometimes that I can't bring myself to say yes to anyone or anything.  I appreciate the folks who only let me go so far with it.  And I appreciate the times I take the chance and let someone save me a little. 

For a couple of days now when I get quiet, I feel David's presence and I keep hearing the words, "I gave you roots, the next person will give you wings."  And he feels happy and excited, like he knows something I don't know.  I want to believe this is true.

Today I kept remembering Thomas Merton's quote, "It's impossbile to tell people that they are walking around shining like the sun."  We come from light and to light we return.  We live in light too, but we spend our time here on earth trying to remember that.

When I get sad or angry that David is gone and I am left behind, I forget the thing I know is true.  What I know is true is that we are all one and we are all of the light.  He is not gone, he is not seperate from me.  We are a part of each other, always.  Not just David and I, all of us, everywhere.  We are each other and we are shining like the sun.  It's so easy to forget.

And I forget that time is not really a linear thing.  There is no begining or ending.  Time, light, love are all a sphere that has no middle, so everything is center.  (another Carrie Newcomer line) 

When I can remember these things and live into them I am okay.  Not just okay, I am living in peace. I am happy.  The work is in remembering, opening up the space to remember what is true. 

Today is our wedding anniversary.  It's been a hell of a day.  I knew it would be, I just didn't really believe it would be this hard.  Sobbing on my knees again hard. 

Then Peggy brought the boys by and we went creek walking and threw rocks and found a crawdad and it felt good for a little bit.  Children are saving me these days.  Sometimes I think I should get one of my own. 

Then a friend called and I told her the day was hard and she asked about our story.  So I told her and it helped me smile again.

We got married because my car insurance was due.  We were sitting on the back porch when I opened the bill and David said it would be cheaper if we were on the same policy.  Only, we found out you had to be married to do that.  So we kind of looked at each other and said, "do you want to?"  We had sworn off marriage but money got the better of us, or love did.  Here at the farm it was the middle of Haying Season, the time that waits for no one.  We took off a couple of hours one afternoon in our work clothes; dirty boots, sweaty shirts, cut-offs, and took a ride to Marshall, a small town not far away.  We traced down the right paperwork, found the justice of the peace just at lunch time.  No business happening for an hour, we came back at one o'clock, after lunch.  He looked at us and said, "do you have rings?"  rings?  nope.  "How about witnesses?"  We need witnesses?  nope, none of them either.  He sighed, went across the street to the local bank, and brought back two tellers to witness for us.  Done and done.  We went home to haying.  And we didn't tell anyone for about three months. 

David's brother died and when they asked about how to put us in the obituary David casually mentioned that I was his wife.  Some people have yet to forgive us for the secret.  But we loved it.  It was ours and suited us perfectly.  Occasionally I regret not having any photos, but the image of us that day is so clearly imprinted in my mind that mostly I like it just the way it is. 

Thank you Anna, for asking the question.  It opened a door to happiness that I was not able to do on my own. 

I have spent several nights this week crying in the hammock under the full moon.  I do okay during the day, read a bit at night, turn off the light and then my body and mind betray me.  Or maybe they breathe a sigh of relief that they can finally get on with their work.  I don't even know why I cry, it just comes and lasts until there is nothing left and then I can fall asleep. 

I woke this morning thinking about dying.  How I walked with David through the process until I had to let him go.  I thought of my father, dying this time last year, alone.  With his half moon of whiskey fifths around his recliner.  They took him against his will to the hospital and finally hospice, alone and defiant.  No one should have to die alone. 

Maybe I am crying this week for myself.  Who will take that walk with me?  Who would I even ask to do that?  Someone is always left behind, hoping I suppose, to find someone to walk with them when it is time.  Or do we even think much about it?  Maybe in the dark night when we are afraid and alone.  Maybe then. 

It's a great chain of living and dying, walking with someone and passing on the walking to the next in line.  But I think in this country we break the chain too often.  So many of us die alone, in hospitals or nursing homes, someone we barely know, if we are lucky, walking with us distracted and hurried, doing a job.  I have recently heard of death doulas and I see the need.  Someone to be with us, someone committed to the journey.  But I hate that it's someone we have to pay to be with us. 

It is a truly awesome gift to walk with someone in their final days, and we have lost the awe of it.  Like so many things that are difficult or messy or take time, we push it aside, pretend it isn't there.  Birth, death, raising children, working for our food, truly learning another person's soul.  We let others do this work for us as much as we can.  The rest we numb ourselves from, create distance, try to ignore.  Until in the deep of the night, finally when we can ignore it no more, our bodies and minds breathe their sigh of relief and get on with the work. 

This was in my inbox today:

To believe in the future with someone you love takes courage. None of us has any guarantees. But to say it and to speak it and to create that hope with our love and with our hearts and with our honest truth-telling and our hard work is what makes this life sacred and holy. It is what we were put here for, and the reason why comfort exists in any form.
Today if there is anyone at all in your life you know who might worry about being lost without you, will you say out loud your decision, your holy choice to always be there? Maybe you're getting along with that person, maybe you're not. Maybe they know you love them this much, maybe they don't. But if the truth of your heart is to stay, if that is your honest intention, take a chance and let them know.
Who knows how much suffering is going untended in the world, simply because we did not state what we felt, what we assumed was a given, what we had no idea the other did not fully understand or know.
With love and love and so much more love,Jen (hopefulworld.org)

I've got nothing to add to this, except one thing:  Go...Now.  Tell someone they will not have to live without you, that you love them, that you will stay.  Dont' let them wonder.  Okay, so that was more than one thing, do it anyway.

I walked into the bank today and paid off the mortgage.  It made my stomach hurt.  A lot.  In fact, it scares the hell out of me.  Six years ago I owned one pot, a couple of plates and forks, no computer, no TV, a lot of books and an oldish car.  Now suddenly I own land and a house and a woodshop and two cars and way way too many dishes and pots and pans.  How do people do this?  How do they live with this much responsibility?  I'm so afraid of doing something wrong and messing up. 

I've been getting together with new people too.  I've never been great at making friends, I'm an introvert and it takes a lot of energy to be out there in the world.  I had gotten very comfortable with David and the farm family.  It was more than enough to fill my life.  But I find myself wanting someone to share things with, go places with, explore new ideas with.  So I have been putting some energy into getting to know folks.  It doesn't happen easily, I work with young children and don't have a lot of that easy interaction with adults that happens on many jobs.  People my age are paired up and living the same kind of involved lives that I was living with David.  I tend to work on the farm, hike, swim or practice yoga; none of those things encourage interaction. 

I'd forgotten what it's like getting to know someone.  So much conversation to fill someone in on who you are, where you've been, who they are, where they've been.  Finding ways that your lives might intersect, learning easy spaces and hard ones.  When I'm feeling tender and scared and uncertain, as I so often am these days, it can be overwhelming.  When I'm feeling strong and positive it can be wonderful and exciting to open my life to the new...well, everything....that seems to always be right around the corner. 

Six years ago, I could never have imagined who I would be today. If anyone had told me where I would be I would've said they were crazy.  Never in a million years.  So...I wish I could peak ahead to the next six years, just for a second.  But because I can't, I'm gonna go with:  It will be great.   Way opens, life changes.  All will be well and all manner of things will be well.   In the meantime, I will try to see the gifts in these new experiences and breathe deeply.

Last year this time I was receiving a phone call from Florida.  My birth father was dying.  I had only met the man three times in my entire adult life.  I didn't even know he existed until I was a teenager.  And now I was the only person to call.  Father's Day has always been hard for me.  I never really had a loving father.  To my biological father I was a throw-away, or so it seemed.  The man who raised me was a sadistic abuser.  As a child I would go to sleep at night and pray, not exactly for him to die, but for him to just not be there any more. 

My son's father, no surprise, was a combination of the two.  A sadistic drug dealer I had to sneak away from in the middle of the night.  He called when my son was a bit older and said he didn't ever want anything to do with us again.  No great loss, as he hadn't had anything to do with us to begin with.  But I had hoped, until that point, that somehow my son would have his father someday.  I didn't want him to grow up as I had, not knowing who his father was. 

To be fair, a dear friend stepped in and became a father figure for my son.  To this day he calls him Dad and his girls think of my son as a brother.  I am grateful for his kindness, generosity, and genuine love for my son. 

I know David was not the father he wished he had been.  I did not know him then but I think he suffered, as so many men of his generation did, with working too much and trying to make a good living for his family, and not being any happier with his choices in those days than women were with theirs. In his old age it was one of his greatest regrets, that he had not been the father he wanted to be. 

I'm melancholy today.  No father, horrible father, father's death, my birthday, David's and my anniversary, all rolled into one great big fat week.  YAY!  I think mostly today, it's never having had a daddy.  And not even knowing how, when I was twenty three, to find someone to fill that role for my child.  I am grateful I learned as I got older, I suppose that is the positive in this.  I wonder what I will feel in a few days when the trifecta hits: boom boom boom:  birthday, father's death, anniversary.  I am planning now to take some good care, but wouldn't it be enough to simply grieve one thing at a time?  It doesn't seem to work that way.  Life is kind of like a tangled necklace, all connected and wrapped around itself.  Patience and deep breathing, when what I really want is to hand it to someone else and say, "here, you do it." 

I've been thinking a lot about the idea of being seen and heard.  As a child of abuse it was not something I experienced growing up, I think it's pretty common among that subset of children.  I also grew up choosing relationships where that did not happen, recreating my past.  Perhaps David's greatest gift to me was that he gave me a relationship where I was seen and heard. 

He saw all the crazy, angry, beautiful, creative things in me and did not turn away, did not try to change any of it.  And in doing so allowed me the space to change some of them for the better.  He heard all the ugly stories, all the crazy crap I had lived through and created for myself and he just let it be.  And in doing so allowed me to let some of it go. 

For someone like me that is an astonishing gift.  I believed in my heart of hearts that most children got that from the start and so had no idea what kind of gift it was.  In reality, I suspect none of us gets that kind of unconditional attention and acceptance as much as we deserve, and so we all wish for it and wonder if it's possible. 

To be seen and heard and loved in all our prickly, terrifying, amazing beauty.  That was David's gift.  Not just to me, I saw him give it to others as well.  Many times they did not even realize what he was doing, I doubt he even realized it. They just knew they liked him, felt safe with him, could relax with him.  They felt loved by him.  And he was almost always surprised by that. 

I think that ability is what I mean when I say that he gentled me.  He smoothed off some of my prickly, scared, rough edges and made a space for the compassionate loving person underneath to come through.  I'm not sure I had enough time to make it permanent, damn it, but perhaps some of it stuck.

The song from the rock opera Tommy keeps going through my head, "See me, hear me, feel me...."  I believe it's all any of us really want, even when it scares us so much we are afraid to acknowledge it, when it scares us so much we fight against it with all our being.  If I can learn to be present with others, seeing and hearing them and loving them in all I see and hear, I will have accomplished a great deal.  If I can learn to be present with others allowing them to see and hear who I am I might have accomplished even more. Maybe it's not even about learning to, maybe it's simply about allowing the gift to come through.  

In some ways writing through this process of David's illness and death has been for me a letting go of the shields.  An act of honoring the gift he gave me.  I was seen and heard and loved so I will continue to allow myself to be seen.  To believe that being seen and heard is worthy of love and compassion and offers the greater gift of allowing others to let me see and hear them.  I think it's kind of working....during this process others have opened their hearts to me in ways they might never have otherwise.  And oh, what a gift that has been. I kind of smile at the idea of this big old spiral of gifts flying around and around and around, one begetting another until we can't really tell where they start or end.  The good life.  All we ever wanted. 

I've been trying to write for a couple of days and keep erasing things.  I don't usually do that, but thoughts haven't been coalescing for some reason.  This morning I realized they are just a bunch of thoughts and awareness's and maybe if I put them all down they will mean something.

I took my ring off last week.  I kept getting this rash under it and it drove me crazy.  Every time it went away and I put the ring back on, the rash came back.  Okay then, I'll leave it off.  And now it feels normal not to be wearing it.

In the midst of great pain, I saw the great blue heron again this week.  Hello dear one.

The pond exploded again.  This time David wasn't here to help but I handled it.  Figured some pieces out.  Things he didn't figure out.  He knew a lot, a hell of a lot, but he didn't know everything. 

I went out with a friend last night for coffee and a play.  It was good to be in downtown Asheville, watching the tourists and the Ashevegas scene again.  I hadn't done that in years. 

A friend posted a poem about letting go today.  How it just happens, no fanfare, no talking, no setting a date.  You just do it. Like a leaf falling from a branch.  Leaves don't drop they just let go.

Every once in a while someone posts a photo of David on facebook and when it pops up in my newsfeed it's like a kick in the chest.  Sometimes I see things in those photos that I'm pretty sure they don't.  The pain he was in at the time, his joy in something, his fear.  And sometimes it's just okay to see.  I smile and move on. 

He was a big presence.  He was the glue that kept a lot of folks together.  I wonder what will happen now. 

 Folks are not checking in as much.  But life keeps pressing forward toward life.  More folks die, babies are born, houses are bought and moves are planned, kids graduate.  My piece of this is different from theirs.  I always knew that, knew that I would live into this in a different way from those others who knew and loved him.  That for a while at least, I would not have the grace of going back to normal after the memorial services. 

I gave up a lot to be with him.  Some of it I did not even notice at the time, some of it I gave up consciously.  I didn't and don't regret it.  What I got in return was well worth anything I gave up.  I suspect he did and felt the same.  We didn't really talk about it.  I know I brought him joy and I know he worked harder than he probably would've liked.  But his last few years where the kind of years he had always wanted, he told me this.  He gentled me.  He SAW me and HEARD me and loved me because of and in spite of what he saw and heard.  He gave me a huge loving family to be a part of. That was all I ever wanted from life.  I would've happily lived the rest of my life there.  But now I am seeing doors opening again; new ones, old forgotten ones.  I'm not sure how I feel about it.  Will I lose the family I gained with him?  I hope not.  Will anyone every see and hear me again?  I hope so. 

Sometimes the hardest thing is realizing that my life will move on without him in it.  He was a part of it and now he isn't.  Sometimes that feels impossible and sometimes it feels exciting.  And all of this I expect is exactly where I am supposed to be in the process.  I suspect that's what the therapist I have been working with would say.  And my response as always is a resigned, slightly cynical YAY!  So maybe what all of these thoughts are about is simply letting go, the spiral of life, little steps forward in the midst of big steps backward.  And me watching myself in this process.  Life for me is moving forward too and I feel relief, fear, joy, anticipation, sadness....everything.

Hiding again from the outdoors.  It's beautiful and so very very overwhelming right now.  So many things to do and fix and work on.  I just want to run very far away.  Leave everything behind and become someone new, someplace new.  Start over.  It's been a move to Australia kind of week. 

My birthday is next week and then three days later our anniversary.  We never made a big deal out of that sort of thing, but it scares me anyway.  One of the first big hurdles.  Then there is family reunion, his birthday, Thanksgiving and Christmas.  I am going to run away for Christmas, I just don't think I can face it this year.  And then the season of his dying.  It all makes me so tired.  If I could take out the tape of my life and insert a new one I think I would.  Maybe not.  But right now it sounds like a grand idea, as good a one as running away. 

It feels as if my life has been one great cycle of grief.  I thought I knew loss before, I thought I understood grieving, how much it hurt to lose what you loved, or to never have what you wished for or deserved.  But this, this one brings me to my knees. 

There is a song I called, "It's Gonna Get Easier."  And the line that fits this day perfectly is this one:  "On my knees, just can't breathe, it's gonna get easier."  The pain and the sure knowledge that it will get easier, all in one sentence.  Living in the center of paradox is the hardest thing we are asked to do.  And I believe that if we live our lives well, that is the only place we can live.  I just don't like it very much today.

I am sitting inside this afternoon, on the computer, hiding from the beauty outside.  Sadness has been a blanket around my shoulders these last two days.  When I tease sadness apart I find alone-ness.  I'm not really lonely, but I am profoundly aware of my alone-ness.  Before David I had gotten to be pretty good friends with alone, I kind of liked it.  In fact, some of the harder work I did in the beginning was to learn to be with another. And now I am missing sharing what I see on my daily walk, hearing and sharing the details of a day well spent, bouncing new thoughts and ideas off another's perspective.  And I realized today that it's been almost four months since I have been touched, really touched. 

Touch is so basic to who I am as a person and it was David's only request.  "If I ever get to the point where I cannot tell you what I want, just remember to touch me.  That's all I want."  I spent all the time I could touching him in those last days. I climbed into that stupid hospital bed with it's high bars and curled myself around him.  I was holding on to him when he died, smoothing his hair back from his forehead.  I don't know if he knew or not, but I was honoring his dearest wish. 

We were well matched, we both spoke through touch.  We never drew away from each other in anger or fear.  In fact, when I was unhappy or frustrated with him I made it a point to touch, to reach out.  It's hard for me to stay unhappy with someone when I touch them.  Connection, energy flows, I remember that we are the same. 

Two Rilke writings came up in my newsfeed today.  My mantras for this day:

Sonnets to Orpheus, Part Two, XII

Want the change. Be inspired by the flame
where everything shines as it disappears.
The artist, when sketching, loves nothing so much
as the curve of the body as it turns away.

What locks itself in sameness has congealed.
Is it safer to be gray and numb?
What turns hard becomes rigid
and is easily shattered.

Pour yourself out like a fountain.
Flow into the knowledge that what you are seeking
finishes often at the start, and, with ending, begins.

Every happiness is the child of a separation
it did not think it could survive. And Daphne, becoming
a laurel,
dares you to become the wind.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~
 

We Move in Infinite Space
by Rainer Maria Rilke

[Listen to Audio!]

It seems to me that almost all our sadnesses
And we don't know what it was. We could easily be made to believe that nothing happened, and yet we have changed, as a house that a guest has entered changes. We can't say who has come, perhaps we will never know, but many signs indicate that the future enters us in this way in order to be transformed in us, long before it happens. And that is why it is so important to be solitary and attentive when one is sad: because the seemingly uneventful and motionless moment when our future steps into us is so much closer to life than that other loud and accidental point of time when it happens to us as if from outside.

The quieter we are, the more patient and open we are in our sadnesses, the more deeply and serenely the new presence can enter us, and the more we can make it our own, the more it becomes our fate; and later on, when it "happens" (that is, steps forth out of us to other people), we will feel related and close to it in our innermost being. And that is necessary. It is necessary - and toward this point our development will move, little by little - that nothing alien happen to us, but only what has long been our own. People have already had to rethink so many concepts of motion; and they will also gradually come to realize that what we call fate does not come into us from the outside, but emerges from us. It is only because so many people have not absorbed and transformed their fates while they were living in them that they have not realized what was emerging from them; it was so alien to them that, in their confusion and fear, they thought it must have entered them at the very moment they became aware of it, for they swore they had never before found anything like that inside them. Just as people for a long time had a wrong idea about the sun's motion, they are even now wrong about the motion of what is to come. The future stands still, dear Mr. Kappus, but we move in infinite space.

-- Rainer Maria Rilke, "Letters to a Young Poet" 

Hard hard day today.  No particular reason.  Just woke up sad and overwhelmed, then little things kept going wrong.  Eventually I worked my way to the part of the day where I was conducting a training for Madison County Literacy volunteers.  This is a project dear to my heart and it brought me a great deal of joy.  I started working on this project last fall before David got sick.  I had to drop my involvement once we got his diagnosis.  The woman who is the force behind this emailed me last week and said she needed me, the training she had organized had fallen through, and was I ready yet?  I was.  If she had asked two weeks ago I might have said no.  Timing is everything. 

I drove home today feeling a mixture of contentment, excitement and sadness.  I love this sort of work with a passion and I was remembering the start of this project and sharing my excitement with David.  One of the hardest things to get used to is not having someone to share my excitement, my concerns, my decision making with.  It's a very lonely place to be and yet there is no cure, it can only be lived with.  Friends can help, family can help, but it's not the same. 

I haven't written in a week....I've been busy and disinclined to focus on the process.  I think that might be progress.  But I also realize paying attention to the process is important, because when I don't I eventually crash.....harder than I would if I had made the process a part of my daily intention.  It's a razor's edge of sorts.  Not of sorts, it is a razor's edge.  This whole grief process is a razor's edge that I walk with reluctance and of necessity. 

Sadness has a way of sneaking up on me and knocking my feet out from under me.  Today I'm having trouble moving into the day.  I sit with my coffee on the deck and think, "this is not the way my life was supposed to go."  I was supposed to be working less, not more.  Sharing dreams and work with someone, not trying to make it alone..again.  It wasn't supposed to go this way, not that thinking like that really does me any good.  But I indulge myself for awhile, feeling very very sorry for myself and crying, thinking if I sink into it deeply enough it will pass. 

In reality I don't think the sadness snuck up so quietly.  It started in church seeing two friends lean into each other and then reach to hold hands, finally filing with Social Security, talking to someone about renting out the shop space, and worrying over the garden and the weeds and the potatoes looking sickly.  Little things just pile up until I find it hard to remember to breathe.  I have to tell myself to breathe in and out, in and out.  I don't want to do anything, can I simply just stop?  Not really, but it's a tempting proposition. 

When friends find me overwhelmed with things, especially the garden; they usually tell me to let it go.  And I usually answer with something along the lines of,   "I simply can't let it all go to hell, it will be too hard to bring it back later."  This morning I realized it is more than that.  It was ours.  It is a piece of us, of him, that I simply cannot let go of yet.  I need it to be there.  I don't know why, I don't even know if it's reasonable, but if there is one thing I am learning it is that reasonable doesn't really matter.  It simply is what it is, it will change, I will change, but it all takes some kind of mysterious "it's own time."  I sometimes feel as if I am simply along for the ride.  Kind of like rafting, there is only so much you can do to master the river, at some point you are simply a part of the river, responding as best you can.

So today I am sad.  I will walk the dog, go to work, and do the best I can.  Breathe in, Breathe out.

I'm okay.  I am starting the process of selling David's wood and shop tools.  With a lot of help from a dear friend.  It's time to sell the wood.  I feel ready for that.  And I'm getting there with the shop.  It's an odd thing, knowing when you are ready.  I have learned to just wait and then one day I know.  Sometimes I have to try something and see how it feels.  But when I pay attention, I know. 

A month ago I could not have thought about selling the shop stuff.  Then I found I was ready to gather info..  Now I can think about selling.  I put his clothes in bags that sat in the bedroom for awhile.  Then it was okay to take them to Goodwill.  At first I couldn't take off my ring, then it felt right to move it to the other hand, now I am thinking about making a new piece of jewelry from both of our rings.  To everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven.

Paying attention, taking one step and then seeing how it feels.  And trusting what I know, what feels true. 

I am very aware that this is excellent advice for life in general.  It's hard to do in "real life."  I think the difference is that I give myself permission when it comes to the grief process.  How much more honest, easy, true life would be if I always gave myself permission to act from my heart.  To wait and see how a step feels.  Why do we feel the need to rush through our lives?  To know, act, do...right now!  To think about things logically but not honor what our heart, our soul tells us too?  I would like to take these lessons to heart.  To use some of what I learn in this process for the rest of my life. 

There is no rush.  Our heart is as important as our mind.  We know, if we honor that part of ourselves that knows.  Be kind, to yourself and others.  Be gentle with yourself.  There is no rush.  That one is important.