sprout

this evening after work i went to get a manicure and pedicure in preparation for a very special event this weekend. [the tips of my fingers are sparkling light pink and my toes are gushing deep heart red.] while i sat patiently and obediently, with my hands and feet under dryers, i looked out the window and i experienced myself really seeing what was outside. even more, i experienced myself being a part of it. being a part of the flow of life. connected. grounded. here. alive.

a word came to mind as i walked home to my little nest: sprout. i feel like a little sprout. a sprout even as i grieve a loss unlike any other (bella's death) and as i heal the wounds from all that has come tumbling down in these early decades of my life. i know i will break free (sprout!) from the weight of the concrete and rubble of years and years and years of heartache, loss and sadness.

i've been getting power-full glimpses of this lately. moments when i feel something like hope. something like spring. something like being on the edge of a miracle. something unlike anything (or, at least with a texture unlike anything) i've ever felt. so grateful am i. as i enter this new month. this month of bella's physical death. bella: my great love, my darling babe, my sister, my friend.

i know (intellectually) i will be okay. it is something else entirely to feel that i will be okay, that life and living, that my life and my living will be okay, brilliant, even. it seems, the depth of my grief and brokenness is giving birth to a healing equal in proportion.

before coming here to write tonight i opened up one of my favorite books, The Soul Support Book by Deb Koffman, to a spread with an orange background. at the center of this spread is a panel/series of images of buds. the last panel contains the image of one of these buds bursting open. underneath it all are these words: "Everything happens in its own time." yes, yes. yes, indeed.