so stay!
Provided, inspired and quoted from Glennon Doyle, This is Us, and the little messages that came my way and led me here:
“I have entered the place I thought was death and it has turned out to be life itself. I entered this Ache alone, but inside it I have found everyone. In surrendering to the Ache of loneliness I have discovered un-loneliness. Right here, inside the Ache, with everyone who has welcomed a child or held the hand or said goodbye to a dying loved one. I am here, with all of them. ... Inside the ache is “We.” We can do hard things like be alive and love deep and lose it all, because we do these hard things alongside everyone who has ever walked the Earth with her arms, eyes, and heart wide open. The Ache is not a flaw. It’s our meeting place. It’s the clubhouse of the brave. All the lovers are there. It is where you go alone to meet the world. The ache is love. The ache was never warning me “this ends, so leave.” it was saying “this ends, so stay.” -Glennon Doyle
“I really wish I had spent more time appreciating it when it was happening instead of worrying about when it would all end.”- This is Us
"The way I see it, if something makes you sad when it ends, it must have been pretty wonderful when it was happening. Truth be told, I always felt it a bit lazy to just think of the world as sad, because so much of it is. Because everything ends. Everything dies. But if you step back, if you step back and look at the whole picture, if you're brave enough to allow yourself the gift of a really wide perspective, if you do that, you'll see that the end is not sad, Rebecca. It's just the start of the next incredibly beautiful thing." - This is Us
My note to all of this….Life is full of ups and downs. It will hit us in ways we aren’t prepared for. I have spent too much time, especially the last few years after loss, with crazy anxiety in all the ways in which things could go wrong and all the ways in which endings will inevitably happen. I know I am not the only one, I know that creeping thought/ache/worry happens to all of us. We leave the present moment, worrying over the loss of that moment or a future moment that we can’t control.
So, more or less, “This ends. So stay!” is a reminder to myself everything ends and everything is infinite too, especially love, especially anything that is real and true, either way, feel the ache and remind yourself when that worry/anxiety creeps in…”We can do hard things!” I would rather feel this love, this joy, this moment than to never have this moment at all. “This ends. So stay!”
*this post is In memory of my papa, six years ago this month (9/06/2016) life hit me hard in a way I wasn’t prepared for. However painful loss is, I realized that I would rather have a moment, those 29 years of moments, time, life, wisdom and memories with my dad, than to never have those moments at all. I am so grateful to call to my papa, forever and always. I carry your heart, I carry it in my heart.
*this post is also In honor and memory of my aunt, Diane Marie Hordzwick, who died 44 years ago (09/10/1978). Also this month. I wish I could have met you on earth but I have always known you. I carry your heart , I carry it in my heart, I carry it through my dad’s heart.