In Search of the Very
Just searching for the good stuff .
Let’s Not Focus on the Door When We Can Focus on the Window
Sometimes in the first moments I’m awake, if I straighten my wrists “just so” and slide them palms down under my pillow …and if I press my belly into the mattress and give the slightest curve to my back, I feel no pain. I savor those moments. No movement, just stillness and silence, until the gears of the day begin to wind themselves up. I chase that feeling through daylight hours and into the night again.
That’s the story of chronic, relentless pain. But I have another story too. One of lingering, persistent joy. To know that my body holds these two things simultanously is a beautiful reminder that I have choices. And that out of these choices, I can build perspective.
A friend recently wrote me about the surprise and disappointment that can happen when our “idea” of how we imagined our lives, turns to vapor. It feels like we are left with only “what is” … but in reality, that’s all we ever had. All we have now. And so be that simple truth.
To be “sheltered in place” is a gift. It isn’t a sentence, but rather an opportunity to step fully into a collective and loving act of solidarity. Let’s not focus on the door when we can focus on the window. I am hopeful that so many of these stories of ours will find their way to a page. Same picture, different frame. Onward we go through this moment.
4 Comments on “Let’s Not Focus on the Door When We Can Focus on the Window”
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Where I’ve Been
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Bonnie, we haven’t met in “real life” but I just want to say how much I’ve appreciated, loved, cried because of, grown from, held on to, and leaned on your words since I “found” you. I’ve saved your words, shared your words with others, and cried while speaking your words with loved ones.
I think it was on the Facebook group Women of the PNW? that I first came across you last year sometime and followed a link you put there to this blog page.
I’m in NE Oregon, and have immense love of the outdoors and all that inhabit that space – flora and fauna alike – and I crave breathing the same air the lupine, coyotes, great blue herons, mule’s ears, crows, black locusts, eastern cottontails, osprey, grass widows, redwing blackbirds, elk, and so many more share with us. My backyard has been the Umatilla River for twenty years. I am a blessed woman.
I guess all that to say, I see you. I feel you. I recognize the light and joy in you as the same sort in me. I thank you. And from a middle-age woman in Oregon to a retired woman in Washington – as Anne of Green Gables would say, “Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It’s splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world.”
First, thank you.
Secondly, thank you.
Lastly, thank you.
I almost don’t have words for this. What a beautiful response to my little contribution to the world. I’m humbled and grateful.
This is such an extraordinary time to be alive. My lilacs are blooming in the backyard and the catkins are forming on the birch tree in front. I like to think Mt Rainier is my backyard but in these moments that world is gathering itself in, I’m aware of so much growing right where I am. It’s really such a beautiful world. Write me if I can send you a card. It’s the other way I’m connecting in this sheltering time. I so appreciate you writing. I see you now, too Jennie. Kindred spirits all around.
I meant that if you email me an address I’d love to send a card. It’s my sanity these days. My info is in my About section. 😊