I love that you are trying (i.e. pronouns) - I am, too! Our youngest kid is nonbinary & for whatever reason using they/them, as well as their new name, is more challenging to me than when our oldest came out transgender. Why it was easier to use she/hers & her new name is a mystery. But I am trying because it’s important 🥰
It is so important! It's hard to break old habits and adapt to things that are new, but it's so easy to just love people in the moment and root for them. Love to you and your fam!
Thank you for acknowledging all the things that feel so heartbreaking and so beautiful. To hold both is so sad and strange and yet hopeful. Yesterday I went to a friend’s new pop-up thrift shop. I bought a candlestick. I decided I needed more candles--more light--as the days get shorter and the world feels so dark...the maple in maple in my neighbors yard is a blaze of red! It’s another reminder to hope.
Oh Shannan, thank you for matching all our feelings with words. And that first footnote, I think there’s purpose in the speed bump it brings to our tongues. It tells us to slow down, to look and see and speak to the person in front of us. We can do it. 💛
Sometimes (all of the times) I'm so addled inside, but can't disseminate it into something useful. I've learned if I wait on her, Shannan will give my feelings words that help me move forward (or give me permission to keep sitting with the tangle). We don't deserve her.
When I wake up from an especially horrific nightmare, it always helps to talk about it out loud. It reorients me to reality. I don't think this is so different. Somehow, I helps to speak of the trouble out loud. 🖤
You're always so good at writing about the tangible, sensual here and now, while letting what is happening "out there" still prick our skin. Thank you.
I wrote something recent about my own wrestling to hold all things. ❤️
I’ve been thinking a lot about the coexistence of grief and joy. It’s something that nobody warned me about, or maybe I just wasn’t listening. The fact that life isn’t all “good” or all “hard,” it’s usually both at the same time. The fact that the warm hand of joy holds the cold hand of grief in what we call life is a mysterious reality that I couldn’t live in without Jesus. I’m still not really comfortable with it, but it’s the only way that I think there’s hope or meaning in life. I struggle not to over romanticize it, but also it’s so dang hard to talk about hard thing without people freaking out. But no, life really IS that good and it is also THAT hard.
My 40s brought me to this exact place. I get unwarned also. I said aloud yesterday “There isn’t a happily ever after on this earth but finally, I can accept that and still celebrate the good and joyful happen right along with horrible grief.”
"I only know the world is screaming. I only know the world is sparkling." I always feel more sane in places where these two truths -- forever inseparable -- are named. Thank you.
I love that you are trying (i.e. pronouns) - I am, too! Our youngest kid is nonbinary & for whatever reason using they/them, as well as their new name, is more challenging to me than when our oldest came out transgender. Why it was easier to use she/hers & her new name is a mystery. But I am trying because it’s important 🥰
It is so important! It's hard to break old habits and adapt to things that are new, but it's so easy to just love people in the moment and root for them. Love to you and your fam!
Thank you, friend!❤️
It gets easier!
Thank you for this, Shannan. I’m sorry about your basil.
I wrote a couple of short poems about grief in 2020. Life seemed simpler and more complicated then...
Grief and hope play here
with our hearts and with our strength.
There is no winner.
and
Grief lives here, but not
quite alone. There are others.
Good companions.
Thank you for understanding about the basil. 🙏🏻
Thank you for acknowledging all the things that feel so heartbreaking and so beautiful. To hold both is so sad and strange and yet hopeful. Yesterday I went to a friend’s new pop-up thrift shop. I bought a candlestick. I decided I needed more candles--more light--as the days get shorter and the world feels so dark...the maple in maple in my neighbors yard is a blaze of red! It’s another reminder to hope.
Yes to more candles! 🕯️
Oh Shannan, thank you for matching all our feelings with words. And that first footnote, I think there’s purpose in the speed bump it brings to our tongues. It tells us to slow down, to look and see and speak to the person in front of us. We can do it. 💛
We can! We are!
You’ve given words to what I’ve been feeling in so many ways. Thank you.
Listening to each other somehow always helps us find our words. Thank you for being here. 🖤
Sometimes (all of the times) I'm so addled inside, but can't disseminate it into something useful. I've learned if I wait on her, Shannan will give my feelings words that help me move forward (or give me permission to keep sitting with the tangle). We don't deserve her.
Shannan, thanks for giving me the words to help process the intensity of this world we’re living in.
When I wake up from an especially horrific nightmare, it always helps to talk about it out loud. It reorients me to reality. I don't think this is so different. Somehow, I helps to speak of the trouble out loud. 🖤
Brilliant. Thank you.
Just stunning. Thank you bright woman.
You're always so good at writing about the tangible, sensual here and now, while letting what is happening "out there" still prick our skin. Thank you.
I wrote something recent about my own wrestling to hold all things. ❤️
https://open.substack.com/pub/janell/p/october-letter?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=2rddb
Beautiful as always.
Thank you for this.🤍
Beautiful. Thank you.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the coexistence of grief and joy. It’s something that nobody warned me about, or maybe I just wasn’t listening. The fact that life isn’t all “good” or all “hard,” it’s usually both at the same time. The fact that the warm hand of joy holds the cold hand of grief in what we call life is a mysterious reality that I couldn’t live in without Jesus. I’m still not really comfortable with it, but it’s the only way that I think there’s hope or meaning in life. I struggle not to over romanticize it, but also it’s so dang hard to talk about hard thing without people freaking out. But no, life really IS that good and it is also THAT hard.
My 40s brought me to this exact place. I get unwarned also. I said aloud yesterday “There isn’t a happily ever after on this earth but finally, I can accept that and still celebrate the good and joyful happen right along with horrible grief.”
Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final
- Rainer Maria Rilke
You know, you can leave those cosmos until spring. If there are seeds, goldfinches will eat them.
"I only know the world is screaming. I only know the world is sparkling." I always feel more sane in places where these two truths -- forever inseparable -- are named. Thank you.
So good.