Day 353...

Grief sucks.

ridiculous. lingering. threatening.
tears surprise me; melancholy sweeps in and knocks the wind out of me when I least expect it.

goodbye makes me angry...



This has been a hard post for me. I've been writing bits and pieces and then mulling over them for a week now. Today I decided to just write and let it go where it wants to go.

In July I received a phone call from one of my dearest friends...that one of our dearest friends had passed away.



I'm not okay.

I miss my friend.

I miss him. his handwritten letters. phone calls. emails. texts. I miss the gentle cadence of his voice when he would read his poetry to me. I miss hours of conversation over coffee. I miss his vibrance. his zest. his love of humanity. his desire to learn everything.

He was an incredible human. He was flawed and perfect. he was rebellious. gifted. charming.

Like most of us, he hit rock bottom. a few times. and each time, he rose from the ashes of his past. made himself new...better. stronger.



Last Wednesday, I went to get a new tattoo.  It's something I've wanted for a long time, and now I had a reason. I got together with my tattoo artist and over the course of a couple weeks and several emails, conversations, and tweaks to the piece, she delivered!

My Phoenix. for my Christopher.

Day 317...

There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are messengers of overwhelming grief...and unspeakable love. ~ Washington Irving

it's better to find
your center of gravity
and have it be the place
you radiate out from. ~ Ron Padgett 

…it’s bloody challenging to write something useful about joy when sadness is holding down the fort. ~ Tanya Geisler 

You’re fucking magic... But you’re human magic. Give yourself a break.” ~ Jenny Blake

Day 257...

I've been feeling creatively constipated for a long time now. like all my words have been trapped behind some stupid barricade I can't get around or break through.

It's been frustrating. to say the least.

I've been processing a lot of grief this year...and what I learned today, after spending hours writing a few lines, putting my notebook away, coming back to it, reading what I wrote, editing, writing a bit more, putting it away again...repeat repeat repeat...what I learned is that anger is ridiculously easy to write about...but grief. grief is a bit more elusive.

today, I finally broke through. and wrote the first of many pieces that have been bouncing around in fragments within me.

it is both cathartic and heartbreaking to visit those emotions...to look at them head-on and put them on paper.

but it is better to be writing than not. because I don't feel "normal" when I'm not writing.