After a while, we are all survivors. We know what it means to suffer – to have hard times, or to watch another have hard times. We each have our own stories, our ragged trail of losses and pain and changes we could just barely get through. We are all battle-scarred, tattered, pale with exhaustion. We know what it’s like to be charred by the fire of loss. And even when we push through the storm, we look weathered, cautious. We recognize the signs in each other, too; recognize the wreck, and know what strength it has taken to get to this place. Over time, we have developed our own ways of making it through, and trying to find joy in this odd, tattered life.

In this journey, we can witness each other, if nothing more. We can hold each other up. We can share our ways of surviving, and inch toward thriving again.

Every morning, I make notes that no one will ever read. But it has been such a grateful grace to capture, document, celebrate each splendid and wrenching and plain old every day. Each moment of loving and wondering and mourning and struggling.

This morning, the golden-leaved and orange-berried bittersweet is glorious even as it chokes the old cherry tree to death. And the scarlet-crested woodpecker hides in its tangles, stores food in its hollows that will later be stolen by the squirrel. The rain-damp dog musses the newly-made bed, then slips into dreams. And even though this painful body that so loved moving and stretching and climbing and loving and working, now tilts and bows with infirmity, it is still so deliriously glad to stretch forward into life, determined with whatever resilience it can muster.

I have been here.
I am still here
every single fierce and glorious day.
Amen