I am exhausted.

I am finally taking everything I’ve been and done in my life, and tying it into one cohesive whole. I am moving toward a future that involves me contributing to the world in a bigger way. I thought I would have a newborn in my arms. I thought I would be consumed by the newness of parenting two children. Instead I was handed the pain and gifts of grief, and the flames of transformation have burned brightly. This has been the hardest time of my life and yet…and yet…

Early on after Ben died, as I struggled to find my feet, the glorious Julie Daley shared her time, experience and healing energy with me. I remember a moment in one of our conversations where I realized that my capacity to hold space for difficult emotions would be part of my contribution to the world. Julie gave me permission to allow it to unfold – to know that I didn’t need to get specific or make decisions yet. She reminded me that I needed to hold myself as gently as I hold my daughter and cry. That process has brought me to this moment and as I work to make dreams reality, I am watching a new unfolding. I am seeing old habits resurface and, with new eyes, I am making room for more growth.

A friend of Steve’s asked him a question the other night, as they sat together at a baseball game. He wondered if my working on something new was getting in the way of my blog and my grieving process. In a sense it is getting in the way of my writing here. Over the last months I’ve gone from writing daily, to every other day and now to three days a week. There are times when it feels like too much. But I am writing elsewhere and much of it will end up here so the answer there is yes, and no. This is still the place where I show up to remind myself of the grief and grace of loss.

Is it getting in the way of my grieving process? No. I shed tears on a regular basis. The fact that July 29, 2011 is in sight is a shock to me. As I close in on a full year since Ben’s death, my grief continues to change – as I imagine it will for the rest of my life. There is no getting over great losses. There is a lightening, a release, a freedom from the weight of it all, but there is no forgetting. That is as it should be. Relationships do not end because a body dies. Love does not turn to ashes with flesh. There can be an end to suffering though, an end to pain. Each of us has our own path there, if we choose it.