Through WordPress and other on and off-line writing communities I have found a double handful of friends I might not have otherwise. They are kind, supportive, perceptive and understanding individuals. They rise above, atop a geyser, relationships I’ve had for a much longer time.

We have been going through a difficult time – not impossible, not lethal, but straining. Life throws punches and we punch back, flailing and dancing around the ring until we are ready. Ready for what? The end of an unruly, unhealthy, situation that felt the right choice, that was supposed to run smoothly, but didn’t. It is the kind of upset that makes you pay attention. It is the kind of upset that imbues your pain with poetic insight.

Life continues to remind us, me, of its inherent impermanence. An idea, a dream, an unhappy present, a well thought-out but doomed future. Perhaps this is the individual’s knowing self steering her boat from jagged rocks we cannot see, or the universe lending a hand with a (supposed) fateful decision that could prove catastrophic to the user.

I believe information comes to us for a reason. Particularly when it screams its presence because we haven’t listened carefully enough. Sometimes what we thought was important, isn’t. The let down in seeing our plans disintegrate before each shaky step is like making our way to the other side through splitting tectonic plates. We are ruffled and excruciatingly alive.

When the disaster ends, we are changed. There is a softening, a humbling, a gentleness that emerges through the debris because we have seen and felt the meaning of life changing. I work to remain open to my present (and not the outcome I choose in advance) because to miss the extraordinary threads of the fabric upon which we stand, is to miss the point of ourselves.