Finding stability in vulnerability

I'm feeling more stable these days. Solid somehow. Enjoying school, enjoying Clark, enjoying my community. Nearly every day, I have a few tears. I got rear-ended yesterday on our way to the beach. Clark and I are fine, and the other party is taking full responsibility. Overall a very benign stressor, but I was shaken, and by the time I got home I just wanted to curl up in someone's - Scott's - arms. Instead, I had a hungry, sandy toddler to take care of. I cried while feeding Clark dinner, and then I had a nice long talk with my sister instead, which helped a lot. I had a moment last Thursday in the cafeteria where I suddenly needed to cry, and one today at the Super Bowl party. I've become adept at grabbing a friend for a bear hug at those moments. I think about Scott and the particular thing about him or our relationship that I'm missing, and I feel very present in my sadness, in my body, in the hug.

Before he died, I only ever cried alone or with Scott, or very occasionally with my therapist. Crying in public makes me feel really vulnerable - but I think having these moments in public is partly why I feel a little more stable and solid these days. When I can be in the moment, in the emotion, I feel like I'm standing on bedrock. I'm not sure what changed, why it's easier to show my tears now. Partly, I think I've learned a lot about my sadness. I can trust myself to go into it and come out of it again. I wonder if it's partly that a lot of the fear about Scott's dying is gone.

I haven't been doing a good job of articulating this, but I've also been experiencing many moments of joy. There are many mornings when my heart swells just walking into the lecture hall - I'm so glad for the opportunity to take my place among my classmates. The other day I was walking outside when a gust of wind blew a flurry of tiny white petals into a small snowstorm. The sunlight was silver coming through the clouds, and everything zoomed out for a few moments, and the scene in front of me, this world, felt like a piece of something more expansive that I'd known before. Last week I had a dream about being at some sort of summer camp for world religions. But it wasn't a place to just learn about different religions; it was an opportunity interact with their Truths in an incredibly tangible way. I don't remember more than a few glimpses from the dream but it was so cool.


Thanks for reading. Writing here is therapeutic for me, a good way to explore some nooks and crannies of my daily experience. It's funny, 95 percent of the time I feel completely normal - just focusing on school, Clark, car repairs, whatever. I don't feel like I'm grieving much at all. But it's helpful to reflect on my grief (or at least the things I choose to throw into the box labeled grief), to synthesize it, find connections within it. Thanks for reflecting things back to me.