First sail of the year!
I can’t believe the difference a year makes. Not just in how far the boat has come (It was still locked in ice in Poland this time last year) but just how my life can be taken and shaken and leave me on the floor with a decision to make. And that you really can come back stronger. Not motivational post stronger. But in that you get to choose how to rebuild the very life that fell apart around you.
Because that’s what everything being torn apart around you does. It takes you out at the knees. It makes you wonder if pain can in fact kill you, and then it makes you choose. Do you want to sink deeper or do you want to change? (I keep having Bridget Jones “I won’t be defeated by an American stick insect” going through my head whenever I hit a challenge- only this year was like a giant praying mantis.) I started 2017 wondering if my relationship was over and if we had grown too far apart. Me in motherhood and Patrick in start up world.
And then my little brother died. And in a span of about 2 months I felt like everything I thought I knew wasn’t true. Between May and August last year my brothers and I would’ve been 35, 36 and 37. Suddenly the baby of the family was no longer there.
And this trip we had been planning for years seemed as good as any to figure out if we still had a relationship and to just escape.
2017 kicked my ass. But it’s also where I found me. I learned this year I spent so much time negotiating how to make the past match up to present.
I can’t.
You can’t.
But we can sit with those pains and demons and ask how we got to where we are. And what we need to lose to go further.
And we get to rebuild.
Because as much as that hurricane hurt it makes us realize we didn’t build a house in a safe space.
Getting off the plane on New year’s eve was exciting. This part of the trip is not me negotiating grief and trying to make peace with my relationship.
It’s me being an active participant. I flew my motorcycle off a cliff and got back on. I can do this regular life stuff.
