Night falls on a long day of nothing in particular. A bit of laundry, baking a chocolate cake and making dinner. A few emails for work and some Internet Scrabble with friends across the nation and the world. Mostly it is getting back into the routine that was disrupted with my travels to and from Atlanta to the NAEYC conference. The cats are pleased I'm home. They follow me around and sit close by whenever I seat myself somewhere: at my computer, in the living room, or on the porch. As I look around I notice Oscar and Mimi hunkered down around me here and there in a peaceful sphinx-like pose with eyes mostly closed.
A couple of nights ago I dreamed that I was cut wide open and the pain was unbearable ... but I knew all along that even though it was painful it was for my own good. The dream was powerful, vivid and felt real. It accompanied me during my waking hours these past two days. This evening I experience a sense of gratitude for this past year of grief. Grieving my mother's death, and my childhood pain has been excruciating. And still much of it lingers and rises up from time to time - though, not nearly as intensely as these past summer and early fall months.
And yet I am grateful for it. It has been a release of many pent-up and stifled feelings, and I am thankful for the thousands of tears I have shed. Indeed, my eyes look back at me in mirrors and photographs more clearly than I remember in the past, and I seem to walk with a back straightened, strengthened by newly acquired confidence and feelings of self-worth as a result of processing these emotions.
So, in this second count down to Thanksgiving, I am grateful for having the courage to allow myself to be split wide open.
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