“All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of holding on and letting go.”
Havlock Ellis
2020 began like all New Years with hopes, wishes and dreams for the new beginning and the decade, it has been a difficult month for so many of my dear friends. There has been enormous loss, sudden and unexpected change, serious health issues and a host of challenges that were not in the dream category. I originally wrote this post six years ago and sadly it seems appropriate to reshare now. I do want you all to know that I do have a few amazing interviews in the cue and I promise that February will bring more incredible introductions and inspiration. Somehow they just didn’t feel like the right thing to share right now.
Twelve years ago I had a phone call that changed my life, a car accident, death, and nothing was simply ever the same after that call. A dear friend just received that same call and so it all comes flooding back…the pain, the loss, the heartbreak that feels like it will never end….it is simply too much. There are simply no words….
As I struggle with how to hold up my friend, I find myself thinking about loss and growth. I think many of us feel that growth comes in tiny layers added up over time and that each day’s journey gets us a little closer to inner-growth. I have a different theory.
I believe life is like an earthquake where huge jolts cause cataclysmic shifts like tectonic plates to our souls. In nature, these shifts result in mountains. Inside each of us is a similar experience. When the rocking stops we somehow come out shifted. Our vision becomes clearer, we see what is important for the first time, we learn gratitude in everything and the growth is as monumental as a mountain. It is the growth of our soul.
Joan Didion writes, “we are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. as we were. as we are no longer. as we will one day not be at all.”
When I sat down to write this week about the soul, I had no idea how I would conclude. I certainly didn’t envision this, but as I struggle and question why? I don’t know why an earthquake has leveled a family, I can only pray that the shift will bring the strength, foundation, and the beauty of a mountain to each of them.
These are simply words when there really are none…
Charity Matters.
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