life's mush pot

“Deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope”  ― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

i'm up working late on freelance, with an active mind, so taking a break to stop by my blog. it is one of those weeks. it just feels like a lot is going on, almost as if i can feel the physical weight of it. but the week has also been full of the laughter of girlfriends, my daughters' giggles, playdates, folding laundry, making christmas cards, singing christmas songs and celebrating birthdays. good, good things. funny how the older i get the more i realize that life is one big mush pot of moments all thrown in together rather than the black and white of seasons of time where everything is wonderful and then the channel changes abruptly.

friends are going through very different circumstances but really heavy ones, threads of which remind me of my own life a few years ago: the brokenness in my parent's marriage and family, and the very beginning of our journey with m, and then losses i haven't experienced personally but that break my heart. i remember a time years ago, when i was crying to my mom about a boy who had broken my heart and she said, "when you love deeply, you also grieve deeply." hoping that life's bruises have shaped me into a friend who is able to sit in the sad spaces with the people around me and love them well. grateful for those who have sat with me in my own times of loss and hopelessness.