Okay, no comforting or sympathies, just how do you cope. Music, reading, journaling and lots of tears. I find that the unfinished dreams and plans (the ones had together or mine I never shared) are the parts of my soul that take longest to heal. (And that circle back unexpectedly.)

Writing in a journal, bits and pieces of my reading that resonate, even if I don't quite get it right away.... anything that brings me to tears again. And for me the hardest thing is remembering that tears and sorrow are okay. Our culture expects us to "carry on as usual" when the times are anything but usual. I try really hard (not always sucessfully) to cut myself some slack.

This passage comes close to how I attempt to understand and move. It's from Clarissa Pinkola-Estes' Women Who Run With the Wolves

Tears are a river that take you somewhere. Weeping creates a river around the boat that carries your soul-life. Tears lift your boat off the rocks, off dry ground, carrying it downriver to someplace new, someplace better.

There are oceans of tears women have never cried, for they have been trained to carry mother's and father's secrets, men's secreets, society's secrets and their own secrets, to the grave. A woman's crying has been concidered quite dangerous, for it loosens the locks and bolts on the secrets she bears. But in truth, for the sake of a woman's wild soul, it is better to cry. For women, tears are the beginning of initiation into the Scar Clan, that timeless tribe of women of all colors, all nations, all languages, who down through the ages have lived through a great something, and yet who stood proud.


Rustic there's nothing hypocritical about the fact that your life has been irrevocably changed ( and you had no say in the matter) and the very people you turn to to put things back together aren't there. I have absolutely no doubt I'd be pissed as hell at fate for handing me all of that to deal with, and desperately struggling to find a new safe harbor for awhile. Maybe the hardest part of all for me is giving myself permission to deal with "old crap" that comes back up when the soul doors open and everything seems to be playing musical chairs. Patience is not one of my better virtues.

Well, Rebel, I hope this is what you were looking for, it's the best I can do to put words on a journey I long ago gave up understanding.

Hugs,

tinker