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Ok with my mess

 I have a story, like we all do. My life has involved betrayal, trauma, unexpected joys and surprises, death and life all swirled together.  One day maybe I’ll share more of my story here. But today is not that day.  Today I just felt the need to be transparent about the highs and lows of life.  I would say for the most part, despite having healing to do from my past, I am a fairly happy person, who can find the silver lining in almost any thing. But yesterday, yesterday was a bad day. It’s hard to say what set me off.... was it lack of sleep, or a disobedient child or just too many burdens being piled on me at once? I don’t know... but full disclosure I found myself in the fetal position in my room unable to stop crying.  The weight of the day, the week, the year and all the years pressing on my heart until it just had to come out.  As I lay crying I just allowed myself to feel all the feels from 46 years. Like literally I was just a mess. Michael finally came in to see what was going
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A Covid Christmas and a trip to the zoo

 What a weird few weeks it’s been. I had all these intentions of writing every day for the rest of December. And instead Michael came down with Covid, quickly followed by me and then Jonah. All the week of Christmas. Not exactly what we were planning.  Monday when it wasn’t looking good. I was so thankful for all the thinking on grieving I’d done. I was able to, after a brief moment of anger... allow myself to grieve what I had expected and planned for for Christmas. And I feel like because I had spent a good few days really processing that I didn’t need to grieve long. I was able to shift my attitude and make the best of our new Christmas plan. Which included just the four of us and no fancy food or family time or drinks late at night with my sisters and mom. Most of which we had already decided not to do anyway, but being positive for Covid made it that much more real. Anyway it ended up being a very relaxed and chill Christmas. A lot of the traditions were left behind but you know w
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Is grief piling up?

  Yep still talking about grief.... I know it may seem strange but I feel like I have learned a lot about grief in the past few years. And as I have walked through this season I see how I lack of understanding or lack of value placed on grief has made it hard for some of us to take in all that is going on in the world.  That as things have unfolded, the pandemic, the social unrest, the political environment, the constant bad news... that as all of that has come rushing towards us, we’ve gotten more afraid, more angry, more sad and anxious. But for many of us, we’ve likely not given ourselves space to actually grieve all those things.  For me, when I don’t grieve something or I attempt to just be ok, when I’m not, I end up experiencing a lot of anxiety. And obviously in this season there is a lot of unknowns and a lot of waiting to see how things will turn out which can also cause anxiety. But if we don’t give ourselves an opportunity to cry it out, we may have more anxiety than we need
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The topic of Grief

The other day my friend and I started having a conversation about grief and the conversation just kept going on and on, until we decided to record our chat for her podcast.  When it was done we were both like, that only barely scratches the surface of the topic. And it is still so on my heart that I decided to come here and make some space for it.  In the past few years one of the things that I have said to Michael over and over again is that in many ways it seems as though our society is suffering from some form of global PTSD.  That ever since 9/11 it seems like we don’t know how to behave when there is a tragedy.  And the pandemic just made that even more clear to me.   In college my favorite counseling class was Death and Dying. I know that sounds strange but what I was so fascinated to learn about was how much our society had changed (just in my lifetime)  in how it looks at grieving.  For instance before the end of the 20th Century it was customary to wear black for sometimes a f
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Taking back the ground...

 I sat down today and opened this blog up and was literally shocked at what I wrote at the beginning of 2020. It felt like such a fresh, new idea that I had this week, that I couldn’t believe that apparently I had the SAME idea 11 months ago. Wow. It made me sad and honestly kinda embarrassed that I could say at the end of that blog, I say yes. When obviously I didn’t! LOL. But I can tell you right now I am not going to sit in shame about it or let that stop me. I’m just going to say, I WILL step onto this ground that I've taken before and I will take again.   2020 what a crazy adventure it’s been. Not what I thought it’d be when I sat down 11 months ago to resurrect this blog... no not at all. I can’t say I’m upset, because rather than writing I spent months and months of 2020 reviving my creative side in painting. And I am super proud of that. But as 2020 comes to a close I heard the Lord whisper again... ‘that old blog’, so here I am.  I am starting to have some understanding of
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Today as I sat and reflected on 2020. This OLD blog popped in my head. I felt the Lord prompting me to check it out again. To resurrect it. Way back when I titled this blog a space for my heart, I did so because I wanted to give my heart space. I had told my heart, my inner voice to be quiet for so long, and it needed space. It needed a voice. So I launched my blog. And literally weeks into blogging someone I admire greatly said to me, “don’t blog, it’s so cliche” and that suggestion lingered. It lingered because this was someone I trusted, and still do, actually, you can trust people and they can make mistakes or be wrong. But that lingered still, so I posted on and off but I never allowed this to be my space. The space, that back then, I felt was the Lord’s idea. Today, I heard the Lord say (and not for the first time, if I’m honest) she was wrong. And it’s ok that she was wrong, and it’s Ok that I listened. But it wasn’t ok, to continue to let that opinion keep me from blogging an
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connecting...

I was sitting here listening to a Barenaked Ladies song that is super depressing that I love!! And I was thinking to myself, I really shouldn't love this song, it's so sad. But I realized it's because it touches me. It reached through my logics, my business, my distraction ... whatever... and it speaks to my heart. It makes me feel less alone. And it's not that I am alone in this world. But I do FEEL alone sometimes and clearly other people who are not "alone" feel lonely. And it got me thinking about my blog and how the reason I started blogging was because I wanted my heart to be open to reach out more. Its part of why Barenaked Ladies write the sad songs. It's why poets write poems and it's why I need to blog as much as possible. In a world where bad news is MOST of the news I think after awhile we start to wonder if our hearts even work. You can't be saddened by all the sad news you hear because you would be sad all the time. So we just pick
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