Saturday afternoon we decided to put out an invitation to some of our local friends for today – beach time and a potluck at our place. The weather has been gorgeous and though we’re not 100% settled, the house is presentable. Sometimes last minute invites work best.

As I walked through my house tonight, hearing bits and pieces of conversations, watching children play, noticing smiling faces, I realized this was my coming out party.

I am coming out of hibernation. I am coming out of the intense grief. I am coming out into the sun, able to smile again.

I admired my very pregnant friend’s belly and felt genuine joy for her. I watched the baby who was born three days before Ben died play in her mama’s arms, without the ache that the mere thought of her used to bring.

I had fun.

It was chaotic. It was noisy. It was alive.

The heart is amazing in its ability to hold all that we are, all that we feel.

For the fullness of life, for friends, for the warming sun and ocean air, I am grateful.

* I would love to do a redesign of my site, but I have neither the time nor the expertise. The original image was feeling too stark, so I’ve replaced it. This is a picture I took in December. This is the sun and the ocean and the beach that has helped bring me back to life. For now, it will do.

I am lucky to have a family I adore. My parents and brother, his wife and their children, aunts and uncles and all but a few cousins are people I would chose to spend time with. I married into another group of kind, funny, big-hearted people. My parents and parents-in-law are generous to a fault and love their children and grandchildren without reservation (although they do on occasion question our judgment I’m sure).

Tonight I am particularly grateful for the family I am not related to. The community of kind, gracious, vibrant people that I am privileged to share this life with – in the flesh and virtually. I remember the days when it was a challenge to trust – when my heart was broken over and over by the people I called friend. I remember when I  didn’t believe it possible for women to be kind, supportive, loving friends.

I have changed. Life has changed me.

I am surrounded by grounded, powerful, inspiring, visionary women and men. I am surrounded by love.

When I left my last blog and started writing here, my goal was to capture the little moments of grief and survival, the moments that are gone in an instant, like individual drops of water caught in the torrent that is Niagara Falls. So I write a lot about grief. I write about the hard moments, the sad moments, the life-changing moments. Occasionally I capture the astonishing beauty of my life, the incredible love and joy that goes hand in hand with breathing. I wonder how this reads to people who do not know me outside of the words on their computer screen. I wonder if I seem a sad mess. A comment every now and again will surprise me and I’ll think, I’m okay – don’t you know I’m really okay?

Most of the time.

The moments of devastation are fewer and farther between. The tears come but not as often. He’s been dead longer than he lived inside me and I’m growing used to the world without him.

The grief does not end. It shifts and moves, dancing through me in ways that make the world brighter one moment and more gray the next. Grief is the door that opened and launched me into a new way of being. Grief is the teacher and my life is forever changed.

I am grateful.

Not that my son died, but that his death has propelled my growth. That I am a happier person now than I’ve ever been. That I feel myself coming into greater alignment with the little girl who wrote stories, danced, and dreamed of horses and oceans. That I fight less and allow more.

A former therapist asked me what I was battling and I couldn’t answer. It’s like you’re standing in the middle of a field in a storm, trying to fight off thunder clouds with a lightning rod. He asked me what I’d done so terribly wrong that I didn’t deserve to be happy. I didn’t know.

Because there was no one thing.

I look at my daughter, whose inner light still shines like the sun, and I think, we all come into life that way. We are born with an internal brilliance and our parents, and/or our peers, and/or our schools, and/or our churches, and/or the world somehow convince us that we are not as beautiful or as good or as worthy as we thought. Even with two parents who are doing their conscious best to not dim her light, I can see little moments of unintended shame, or expectation, or the sadness of our household affect her. It shakes me to my core.

The dimming is inescapable. Adult society doesn’t know what to do with a child’s inner shine. We all cut off parts of ourselves in order to be acceptable, to be loved, to be liked. What changes is the degree of the breaking apart and how quickly we return to ourselves.

Ben’s death is bringing me back to myself. This is – and always has been – my journey. I’ve stolen the words from my last blog and brought them here. Because I imagine here is where I will stay. But if I happen to move, these words will follow me. They are what I write about – the journey toward wholeness.

On December 1st, I chose the word I wanted to embody this new year – ease. On December 31st, as I have for the last few years, I added several more. Last year, I prettied them up and stuck them on the kitchen wall. Those words brought me back from the brink of despair more than once. Those words helped me breathe more deeply, they reconnected me with myself, they pulled me out of my head and back into the moment. Through hope and heartbreak, those words kept me firmly anchored to the way I wanted to walk through my life. I fell in love with those words.

When we moved I took them down and I’ve missed them. I haven’t put my new words up on the wall yet. It will be one of the first things I do when we return home from our week in Colorado. These new words are a direct link to my intentions, reminding me of Who I Am and who I want to be in every moment.

I gave up resolutions a long time ago – around the time I abandoned the dream of being a famous film and television actor. Both had become fodder for the illusion that I was a complete and utter failure at life. Since then – and since falling in love with my husband – New Year’s Eve has been a much more enjoyable evening, and January a more compassionately lived month.

This year I made a list of things I’d like to do because the process of accomplishing them would make my soul sing. Everything on the list brings a grin to my face and a burst of excitement to my heart. There are no should’s on this list and I know that each of these will happen in their own time, whether that’s 2011 or 2015. I do not need to force them, or worry about a schedule, or beat myself up for falling behind. When I think about logistics, my mind tends to go into panic mode.  One of my biggest lessons from this year of devastation and growth is that if I hold my intentions in my heart, lightly and with a deep trust in their rightness, I will find a way to bring them to be. The more I worry, the more elusive they become – and the more miserable I am.

I find, in this new decade, that in my moments of deepest connection I am keenly aware of the love I have for myself and my life, and my excited anticipation of what is to come.

And that is an entirely new place for me to be.