Weathering the Storm

B.D. October 2015

During the last few months I’ve felt things that I do not have a name for.

A while ago, I felt the eerie calm before the storm and I didn’t know how to prepare except to keep as calm as possible. When the storm hit me, I never knew something so powerful could exist. It was storm that turned my brightest days into the deepest, darkness nights, void of even the outlines of stars. This storm wreaked havoc on every bit of feeling I had. Its gales tore me apart and I felt so alone in this new void. So alone, but there was one thing that kept me rooted to myself: my loved ones.

I am so lucky to have a people in my life who love me so unconditionally. They were the tree that I held onto while the storm took away everything I had. They had deep-seated belief in me when I couldn’t find my own. I’ve never felt so divinely cared for than during this dark storm of my life. It was a love that was not just expressed in words or actions or touch. It was simply poured it out toward me because that was all there was to do. And in its purest, most uncomplicated form, that love was a force. And I can never repay what these people have given me. Except to live fruitfully, with intention. And to pour out love in return.

 I’ve gone through an immense change and I can’t help but think it feels like a Van Gogh painting in motion. All dark colors and blurred lines and movement.

Very slow movement, but movement.

But this is what I know to be true, that in the worst moments of our lives, good things happen.

That, in fact, the good and bad rush in together, one somersaulting over the other.  And you must be alert enough--awake enough--to look for both. Because storms come and go; that’s how weather works. That’s how life works. And we have to learn how to deeply breathe in the scent of rain. To feel it soak through to our bones. Because nothing is as glorious as the birdsong and the peace that comes after a storm’s baptism of the earth. Of our lives.