Never do you feel more small and delicate when you’re hit with yet another sense of loss. Grief arrives in many forms: loss of loved ones, watching things go in a direction you didn’t them to, being embraced by memories of your former life. And they all sting.

Today that humility arrived in the form of a friend passing on. I can’t help but be angry how Charon keeps paddling across all these wonderful, kind and inherently good people. It’s beyond unfair.

Yet I try to find the purpose and meaning in it all. Sometimes things like this happen cause the Universe is a cruel bitch, but sometimes they’re the Universe slapping you upside the face, kinda like Cher in Moonstruck, “SNAP OUT OF IT!!”

You see, the past 24 hours have been a bit of a mindfuck. I take it back, the past month has. Another round of what feels like dog years, blow after emotional blow where I feel like I cannot come up for air before something else is tying itself to my ankle to sink me back down.

What was that? It’s early February? 2020 is gonna be aces? Shit. I am not throwing in the towel by any means here. Me? But look, I was having a real “woe is me” moment. A “can I catch a break? Because I am fucking exhausted!” pity party moment.

And then I read the news and boy did I feel like such a first world problems BABY. I’m not going to diminish my struggle by any means. It doesn’t mean that some of the things I have had happen to me in the past year aren’t absolute fuckery, cause lord knows they have been. But damn…

Another friend’s heart stopped beating… another set of lungs took their last breath today.

And I am sitting here squandering those moments.

Every day I strive to be a better, stronger, more authentic version of myself. It’s a journey that will always continue because arrival is for people lying to themselves. We are never there.

And yet here is another reminder knocking near my door….
Life is short. Life is fleeting.
Why and what are you waiting for?
Don’t be safe. Be bold. Be brave. Tell fear to go fuck itself.
Want it? Then get it.
Don’t have it? Then ask for it and be ok if it isn’t the answer you hoped for.
Say what you need to say. Be authentic to yourself . Be true.
Answer truthfully when your best friend starts questions with “You need to ask yourself why….”
Allow yourself to be vulnerable and trusting even when both of those things have been absolutely decimated.

Rewiring old thoughts, habits and behaviors are hard as hell.

Recently a close and long time friend said to me…

“Remember, you were the gold Ivonne”