Dear Friends,
You have been on my mind and in my heart as February turns to March, as snow turns to sunshine and then back again. I wonder how you are managing the strife that surrounds us all, regardless of which side of the aisle we prefer. I wonder how you are taking care of yourself in this time of change.
I’ve had a lot of time to think about change, as I write about grief’s transformation in my upcoming book. While we all react to the demands of loss differently, each of us must come face to face with change’s unflinching presence in our lives. How do we process that? How do we make sense of our powerlessness?
Rainier Maria Rilke’s words from “Letters to a Young Poet” offer a suggestion:
Have patience with everything that is unsolved in your heart and try to cherish the questions themselves. It is a matter of living everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, one distant day, live right into the answer.
With Rilke’s words in my heart, I sit before the unknown in my journey. There are questions in my story that remain unanswered. There are losses that I grieve. Today I choose to “live the questions,” I do not turn away from the unknown but step into it. I accept my feelings of sadness, fear, or anger, and I welcome the feelings of hope, compassion or love that live alongside. And you know what I’ve discovered? I find myself empowered by this process, seeds of courage have taken root. I have the capacity to live with the both/and of life. I am willing to sit with the unknown and befriend the mystery. I am enough, my friends, and so are you!!
May it be so, Lisa
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