Reflections from a midlife journey
Learning to live with death
It’s been quite the month and didn’t turn out at all as I had anticipated. Even though July tends to be a rough month for me, I was looking forward to what lay ahead. Perhaps I was lulled into a false sense of confidence because, last year, July passed with relative ease.
But no. This year, the July funk hit early and hard. The July 4th holiday was one of the most melancholy I’ve experienced. By the 5th, though, the funk already seemed to be passing, much to my relief. That relief was short-lived.
Navigating transition
July was a month of loss. Four souls in my larger circle passed away. I was doing pretty well being with the loss and staying present to my feelings until the news of last death. That one pushed me over the emotional edge and suddenly I was eight years old again. It’s my experience with this loss and the change it affected on my life that established the pattern for how I would handle transitions from then on.