How are you doing? It’s been a difficult couple of years, if I’m being honest… But change is on the wind. Can you feel it?
A few years ago, I brought my sister up to the mountains while she was grappling with her boyfriend’s recent fight with brain cancer and how he’d broken up with her immediately after treatment, to “protect her” from the suffering he would continue to endure.
We stood in those burned up hills, where only a few summers ago, a massive forest fire turned the once lush pine forests into black, charred spires that bristled with the memory of the fire that had laid waste to this place.
“My life is like this forest.” My sister said through tears that had waited all day to come. “The life I was building has burned to the ground.”
And we sat there. Looking at this sorrowful expanse of lost beauty.
But the sun was shining. Clouds moved like cotton crystals against a brilliant blue sky. And there is the sparkling sunshine were new little pine trees. So small. But their green was as vibrant as the sun itself against the blackened backdrop.
Life is always finding a new beginning.
My sister asked me to do a drawing to capture this idea. This awakening to life’s cycles from disaster to growth. I drew this:
And she put this on her arm. I think it’s beautiful:
Much of our world is burning right now. Things are being lost, and some things may never grow back the same. But we will keep growing. We are not incomplete, we are not broken. We are alive, dammit, and life is as beautiful a thing as we are able to experience.
This is a meditation for my work on uncomplication as well. I feel like I have lost a lot this year, but I haven’t. Life is always changing, and the things I think I’ve lost are only the soil for the next things that will grow here.
Here’s a little video post that summarizes some of these ideas. Cheers.