today I bumped into an neighbour from our old life, someone who we had seen on a daily basis for three or so years, it was nice to catch up.  She commented that I haven’t been writing much lately and she is correct.  I promised to do better, so here we go.

I have been thinking a lot this last couple of months about strength, about tenacity and about how do we really keep on keeping on.  Even when all seems lost, somehow, from somewhere comes the thought that this too will pass.  So we carry on.  Eventually things settle, life reorders itself and we come to accept what we thought would be impossible to accept.

It seems to me that the ability to see through a situation and beyond is a vital skill, one we develop as life takes us in many different directions and we learn through experience.  In our big move I came across my teenage diaries, kept faithfully every night from thirteen years old to seventeen and a bit, they make for boring reading.  There are a few highlights.  Heartbroken confessions of unrequited love,  the assertion that I will never be able to laugh again, all written by my hand about boys who I loved in the 1970’s.  I do not doubt the pain and hurt the fourteen year old me was feeling, but now, I have no memory of the boys or the agony.  I have laughed often since, this teaches me things.

Last week I had a bit of a down couple of days, worries over hubby and his health, missing friends and family, I took myself for a walk.  You will know how the sea can calm me, I have talked before about the power of the waves, the big sky and how I feel my place on the earth is defined by such places.  Doubtless this comes from my fourteen year old self, who would run to the banks of the Mersey for solace and to speak her anger at the world and all that was unfair.  Then as now I walk back from the beach feeling calmer.  My walk takes me through towards town and there is a path I can follow that leads through the churchyard where the graves, some from two hundred years ago, are on either side of the path.  It is a peaceful, old place, with heavy trees and Welsh slate and stone marking the lives no longer living.

This morning I stopped here and looked around me.  Everywhere there was the evidence of people who were once loved, and for just a while they felt close to me.  They spoke of loving, of sadness, of war and of loss.  They spoke of worries for family, for friends and for themselves.  They spoke of joy and fun and friendships, long gone.  They had all, at one point, been here.  Before they were left here forever, they walked and talked the paths I had taken.

I felt comforted in a way I have never really felt before.  It was an understanding of the true meaning of all things will pass.  All things including us, including me.  At that moment the futility of spending these precious days worrying and being angry was clear.  For no matter how much we fret, this too will one day pass.

Today is one of those days when my old life and my new life collide, and this can sometimes feel unsettling, however I am going to hang on to the lessons learned in the church yard and try hard to get the most out of everything, even the tough stuff, sometimes especially the tough stuff, it is all part of the plan.

So, I hope my neighbour is reading this, I shall endeavour to write regularly and often, it helps so much, to order my thoughts and to recognise the good, for that is what is all around.  I just have to notice it.