A beginning doesn’t stand alone.
It is connected to something that has ended, just like our first breath in life is linked to our last through the air we breathe.
Some endings bring an immense sense of relief. Others, break our hearts. Regardless of what category they fall into, in between endings and beginnings is a space where the previously unimagined emerges out of the mist. If only we have the courage to see what lies in that place of surreal emptiness.
I’ve been drawn to the world of books ever since I could read: and for as long as I can remember, I’ve created stories in my head. But it never occurred to me to write them down. I was educated in a system that taught imagination was daydreaming, and just not on.
A story came to me in my late fifties that would simply not go away. I did my utmost to ignore it, constructed every barrier. Eventually, I surrendered and followed my tale.
When I turned sixty, I was hundred percent on board. For the first time in my life, I had time to follow my passion, my dreams. However, fate took a turn down a dark alley. My life mate was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Fifteen months later, he passed away. Just as a global pandemic shut the world down, enclosing me in my lockdown world of one. Borders, once an arbitrary line in the landscape, entrapped me, separating me from my entire family. To say the least, my grip on sanity was severely tested.
In this time of intense grief and deep-soul aloneness, where I was free-floating dissociated from all that was once my world, I picked up my tale again. For quite a while, it was the only activity where I could forget my sorrow and find an inkling of joy.
For the next few years, I kept writing and learning; and re-writing, re-writing, re-writing – which is the secret task of writers that generally remains hidden from readers.
Then I became brave enough to call myself a writer.
Make space to follow your heart, at least once in this life.
For, at the end when the time comes for your heart to asks questions,
how will you respond?