Musings Gratitude Day 51

Today I am grateful for grief and mourning.

Grateful for grief and mourning, you say?

Why on earth would you be grateful for going through one of the most heartbreaking experiences of your life?

“We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, ‘Blessed are they that mourn,’ and I accept it. I’ve got nothing that I hadn’t bargained for. Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not imagination.”

― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

I am grateful because:

Grief and mourning cracked my heart wide open. Into a billion pieces. I had to consciously choose who I was going to be as the pieces were slowly put back together.

Therefore, grief and mourning made me the person I am today.

Grief and mourning made me a BADASS.

Grief and mourning made me more empathetic to others.

Grief and mourning made me feel more deeply than I have ever felt in my 59 years on this earth.

“Someday you’re gonna look back on this moment of your life as such a sweet time of grieving. You’ll see that you were in mourning and your heart was broken, but your life was changing…”

― Elizabeth Gilbert

Grief and mourning,

allowing myself be free to mourn,

being fully invested in the process,

unafraid to let every emotion out,

set it free to find the positive,

to walk in the fire

and be burnt to ashes

then rise from those ashes

triumphant

has FREED me

to say “I have suffered enough.”

“And perhaps there is a limit to the grieving that the human heart can do. As when one adds salt to a tumbler of water, there comes a point where simply no more will be absorbed.”

― Sarah Waters, The Little Stranger

Actually saying “I have suffered enough”

out loud

has freed my heart to be happy

to choose peace over pain.

Choosing peace over pain

has opened my heart to

a continued relationship with Larry-

my Love who is still with me.

Listening to the still small voice

that sometimes is not so small,

not so still,

and occasionally hits me

over the head

with a sledgehammer

has provided blessed peace.

“Of course he wasn’t dead. He could never be dead until she herself had finished feeling and thinking. The kiss of his memory made pictures of love and light against the wall. Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see.”

― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

The peace that comes from

my continued relationship

with Larry,

opens my heart wide enough

to consider a future relationship

with the right person-

but only one who can

understand all of the above.

Thinking with my heart

over my head

makes me a kinder, gentler, person

who is unafraid to be alone

who is comfortable with myself

who knows the difference

between need and want

(but can still make a sailor blush).

The badass woman that I have always

distantly admired

is ME.

XO Lisa