The Brilliance of Resilience

I was in the middle of writing a post about the Foo Fighters when I found out that Andy had died last week. Andy's son posted a brief message on Facebook and everyone that has posted about Andy since  then understands exactly what happened. When someone dies in a way that isn't easy to understand, a lot of words aren't going to clarify and the platitudes aren't going to heal. Andy was troubled and treating, but sometimes it is just not enough. Andy left that grown son as well as three school-aged children and their lives are irrevocably changed in a way that none of us will anticipate: whether it is peace in knowing that their mother is not suffering or the agony of knowing that their existence was not enough for Andy to keep fighting...or perhaps both. Andy and I knew each other through email only, but we shared stories about our lives. We shared music and what we did that day, and the struggle that she had just to exist came through in her words. Sometimes, I compar...

I've broken the thirty pound mark for weight loss since my reboot of my cognizance of the fact that I need to do something about myself. When I stepped on the scale at the doctor's office this past Autumn, I was the heaviest I had ever been. Like, the number that I never thought would be on the scale. Like, the pivotal number that I yell at people on television about when they're six-hundred pounds in a pre-gastric bypass video and they're crying about being enabled and helpless as someone bathes them. When I read the scale, I was literally shocked. I knew I had gained weight in the last year, and I knew that I had soothed with food after a pretty shit year, but that number is literally burned into my brain as the place where I knew that if I didn't do something that I would be six-hundred pounds crying about my helplessness and my enablers. So, November 2 was the pivotal moment that I got it together and started really thinking about how I wanted to spend the next ...

I am incredibly disappointed in myself for not writing a letter in this blog since June of last year. Admittedly, I was on some kind of metaphysical high from all of the changes that had gone on in my life, and I was absolutely delirious with the possibilities that awaited me after a marriage-ending, a retreat back to my childhood home and a realization about the fact that I was genuinely starting over. From June through the present, I've gotten a little less dreamy about what is going on in my life, and a little more understanding about the fact that people can, in fact, be infatuated with the idea of reinventing themselves in every conceivable way. That "Eat, Pray, Love" woman forgot to mention that you still need to make your car payment, hand wash your bras and figure out how to get through the holidays without drinking and eating yourself into oblivion. The truth is is that I am still reeling from the way that my marriage ended. I am at fault for not handling this ...