Saturday, April 26, 2014

On learning to live...differently

"You will lose someone you can’t live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly - that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp."
Anne Lamott
Hardly a day goes by that I don't have one of those moments where something triggers a thought of what once was, of what we've lost. Indeed, who we've lost. The triggers can be anything - something someone says, a scent, a song, a feeling of less-than-full-balance, whatever - and they often hit you when you least expect it.

And yet again I'm reminded that we don't so much recover from trauma as much as we learn the new way of living after the fact. Maybe it's a good thing to have those reminders remain with us. Keeps us human. Reminds us why we still need to be thankful.

1 comment:

sonia a. mascaro said...

Really a great post, Carmi!
Thank you!
The words of Anne Lamott are very inspiring and encouraging. I will send it to my sister.