I can’t often see him, but I can hear him. Beneath his breath he makes the sounds of battle, “psshk, pow, uggh, fsssssshhh”. I imagine him, spinning with deft agility, wielding some deadly weapon, visible only to him, as he slays a bastion of invaders and nay-sayers. He is transformed, no longer Owen, but Ace, with red hair, spiked and dangerous hanging heavy over dark eyes. Once my dark haired boy of near-twelve, he is now a seasoned “ranger” carrying a plethora of weaponry and possessing the skills to use them.
Some days, you just have to forget about ‘healing’. You have to stop trying to feel better, trying to overcome your emotional wounds, or trying to be anywhere other than where you are. You have to embrace the day as it is. And you have to give yourself the most sacred permission of all: To shatter. To break. To be an ugly mess. To lean into a place of utter humility and powerlessness in yourself. To cry out to the heavens, “I can’t do this!” To admit utter defeat in the loss of the life you had imagined. To crumble to the ground, lonely and hopeless and profoundly ruined. To want to die, even. And there, in the darkest places, in the blackness of the underworld, you may begin to rediscover... life. And learn to love the beginnings. A sacred reboot: A single breath. The way the sun warms your face. The sound of a tiny bird singing in the tree over there. The raw simplicity of a single moment of human existence. Hell has been transmuted, thr...

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