swirly times

I'm terrible with seasonal transitions. I get all out-of-sorts and edgy and I want the next season to just hurry up and BE here. The weather's caught in-between, my wardrobe's caught in-between, and don't even get me started on what retail stores do to me with their summer clearance/Halloween candy/Thanksgiving decor displays all at once.

Right now is one of those transitional times, and things feel, to quote a friend I was with this morning, "swirly." There's a lot in the air. Lots of change, lots of loss, lots of grief, lots of letting go. All around me people are talking about the changes and losses in their lives...in their relationships, their jobs, and their homes, to name a few. And the grief, oh, the grief. It's palpable. People having to say goodbye to their children, their siblings, their pets, their parents, their friends, their jobs, their health, their partners. People facing things they never have before and never should have had to ever face. People missing people and "things" that will fundamentally change them and their lives forever.

But remarkably, here's what else is swirling around me: the amazing resilience of the human spirit. The same people sharing about their tremendous losses are also sharing about their gratitude, their memories, their hopefulness, their courage, their futures, their joy. This juxtaposition of pain and fortitude is what I am holding onto in this swirly time, as well as my immense gratitude for people who are brave enough to talk about all of this and more with honesty, candor, and almost without fail, a sense of humor (again with the resiliency!).

This living thing? It's not for the faint of heart, but we humans are designed to carry on. To forget? No. To stop loving? Absolutely not. To never grieve again? I wish. But to carry on into the next season, whatever that may be, when the time is right? Yes, without a swirly shadow of a doubt.

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