Brave. If you go back in time far enough you'll discover that the word we use to describe someone courageous derives from Latin and Greek words meaning "foreign" or "uncivilized." When I think about the moments in my life when I felt brave, I was often in a foreign land or speaking a foreign tongue or doing something completely new to me. Being brave means embracing uncertainty and sorting through uncomfortable feelings. Brave also involves a degree of savageness. Untamed. Ferocious. This next chapter in my life is about pressing forward, radically accepting, and unabashedly claiming my truth. I hope this new year brings new work, a new home, new relationships, and new adventures. I hope you'll join me.
The title of this post is a bit of a misnomer. Just this morning I said, "I'm having a hard time getting it together right now." I'm in one of those periods when showing up is the best I can offer, and I can't even guarantee that. That said, I just popped on here to share that I'm struggling. I'm dealing with a lot of loss right now. Some of it is easy to spot. Some of it I've tucked away because it's either terribly painful or terribly embarrassing--at least to me. Some of it was inevitable. Some of it was a surprise. All of it rises up into the center of my chest and begs me to stop for a moment to acknowledge it. It's doing that right now even as I type this. I'm having a hard time getting it together right now.