FLM Monday

Friday came and went.

But Monday still has alliteration. Mike Monday :)

So here is a Monday thought.

Adrift

Everything is beautiful and I am so sad. This is how the heart makes a duet of wonder and grief. The light spraying through the lace of the fern is as delicate as the fibers of memory forming their web around the knot in my throat. The breeze makes the birds move from branch to branch as this ache makes me look for those I've lost in the next room, in the next song, in the laugh of the next stranger. In the very center, under it all, what we have that no one can take away and all that we've lost face each other. It is there that I'm adrift, feeling punctured by a holiness that exists inside everything. I am so sad and everything is beautiful.

By Mark Nepo

I shared this once before in my fightlikemike emails.

A dear friend shared this with me and I find a helpful reminder on days I feel especially sad.

Another dear friend told me last week, that some one told him that.... the best time to show up for an AA meeting is when you don't feel like going.

Although I have felt sad, I took his advice and showed up to visit someone in the basement days, only a week out of transplant. I showed up even though I didn't think my heart could take it. Even though I was sad and cried on the way there and home.Even though the webs of those memories still haunt me too.

I heard my friends voice in my head.

You see , grief, it is similar to addiction. In that you are fighting it daily. Yet , I think if we allow ourselves to grieve the "right way" as another friend puts it. We surrender to the power greater than us. Whether addiction or grief. We cry. We scream. We admit we are in pain and suffering.

I showed up for the meeting and my heart's cracks let the light of another human help heal it.

Thats why we need support groups and other humans.

We can not walk this life alone.

This same friend who told me about showing up when I don't want to also has many other wise words to share.

He said-

Show up , because someone else needs to see you.

Show up like the life of a butterfly landing on your shoe. Butterflies know we need to see them

So I show up for you,

Keep swimming friends-

Lindsey