wow...

For the past few days, I have been walking around inside of a black cloud.

In fact, I took the entire (almost all of it, that is) three day weekend to wallow because sometimes you have to actually stew in the disappointments, pain and sadness in order to be able to move through it.

This morning, I finally got to listen to some stories from the weekend that I hadn't gotten to...
here's the one that brought tears to my eyes. Instead of shying away from the emotion, I listened to it three times. Yes, three times. The third time, I actually read along as I listened. Beautiful, truly beautiful.

I was saying to a friend last night, when I emerged from my wallowing long enough to talk to other people about it, that I wasn't going to feel bad about the wallowing. It is not usually something that I like to talk about proudly, but in this case I really needed the simmering time.

In the middle of it, I got to the bottom of the bad feelings. I worked through the anger and the blame and the judgement, so that I could live with the situation.

There are things that I have to do (and I have made at least the first little baby steps) and especially that I don't want to do.

But, yesterday, even though it was cloudy and rainy and the sky was perpetually threatening to take over, for the first time in several weeks, I felt hopeful, lighter and closer to who I want to be.

For months (really, honestly) I have been practicing actively looking for the silver lining. So, Annaliese Jakimides' essay on what she believes and what she has learned from her son's suicide really put this all into perspective.

Thank you, Ms. Jakimides, for being willing to share the darkness and the light.