Healing

At some unknown point in the recent past, I started to heal. It was a subtle thing at first. A day when I didn't cry too much or when I managed to not think about grief for whole hours at a time.

In January though, life started to come together for me. I took the first week of the year off, sort of my way to use the new year as a new start. One thing I did was go to a chiropractor for the first time ever. She had been at a company health fair the previous month and talked about how chiropractic could help migraines. At that point I was having three or four migraines a month and I thought, what the heck, maybe it will work. For the first time in along time, I was willing to try to feel better. As it turns out, she helped the migraines; she also helped the ankle swelling, the hip pain, and the insomnia and the digestive problems. And my energy level was up and my depression was milder. As I started to physically feel better, suddenly rebuilding my life started to seem possible.

Next step was starting this blog. There were things I needed to express that were hard to just say to someone in person. Holding things inside wasn't helping and when things did come out, they came out in an out-of control cranky, whiny way that I hated. So I decided to write. It helped. I shared the blog address with people I knew and we had some good talks about things I wrote. That helped even more.

I started making more changes to the house. I put in a new door and a new kitchen counter. Well I paid someone to do that. I painted the dining room and filled it with antiques I inherited from my aunt. I hung more pictures of my art on the walls. I worked hard to clean out some parts of the house. It's not done by any means, but it's better. With each change I felt a little lighter and a little closer to building a new life. I decided I needed to be more social and started to go to a photography club and invited friends to dinner. I invited my sister and mom to come visit – I cleaned the house frantically in anticipation.

Then in sorting through some books I came across something I had read earlier but which didn't resonate with me at the time. I started the Artist's Way program (Thank you, Julia Cameron) and started writing morning pages and going on artists dates. I started making fractals again. I worked some on creative writing.

July was my best month in at least five years. I adopted a rescue chihuahua, my family came to visit, I took another vacation, I wrote to my Alma Mater and showed them my fractal art and ended up with getting to have a permanent display of my fractal art in the Math department. I got a promotion and a pay raise. I started painting again. My life is starting to move in positive directions.

About the same time Karl died ,a friend split-up with his wife. We shared our grief and frustrations for two years. He too had a good July, his life is finally moving on as well. I'm happy for him.

In the darkest days, it doesn't seem possible that life will ever be good again. There is that voice telling you there is no point - there can be no future. When you are in that place, hang onto this thought – that voice is lying. There is a future out there, you just have to hang in there to get to it.

To all who are reading this, take care.