a little perspective

14 months on I have been thinking about the ways grief has played a hand in my decision making.

All the big choices I have made with it as a compass.

Sometimes I hate it, more than I ever have anything before, but on days that don’t feel so heavy I find gratitude for the way losing mum has influenced so many of the decisions I have made and how they have led me further towards a life I love.

When you have grief as a yardstick for hard, difficult things don’t hold as much weight as they once did.

When you make it through to the ‘other side, every day, new normal now world’, you gain an opportunity to meet a side of yourself that wants to take risk and be uncomfortable, that wasn’t there before.

When you feel deep pain, it spotlights how good it is to feel deep joy, and once the big cloud lifts a little you start to follow that instead of the hurt.

14 months on, I am starting to find some perspective for all of the things I wouldn’t have been brave enough to do if it didn’t happen. The kind of woman I would be if I wasn’t gifted a chance to become a new version of myself, layered and connected.

I am, more often than not, stopping in the middle of moments to soak them in now, holding them in the present; and it feels like an exhale of relief to know every time I do, I am living a life worth holding time for. The even more aligned part of doing that, is my new understanding of who I want to spend the worth holding time for moments.

She taught me a lifetime's worth of lessons while she was here, but she’s taught me how to live the life I want since she left; and that really does feel like the good in the grief.