Reverse Parades

I am honoring myself.

I am not attending obligations. I am letting the phone ring. I am letting calls go to voicemail. I am responding to messages if and when I feel like it. I am calling in 'sad' to work when I need to be with family. After my last journey through grief I jumped right back into regular life before I was ready for it and it was pretty detrimental for my well-being.

I broke a mirror yesterday. There is a crack in my reflection. There is a long line right down the centre of my own image. We are meant to look deeper at ourselves when we are broken. We need to be brutally honest and confront what we feel, even if it hurts. We need to accept what is, even if we don't like it. We need to display what we are made of, even if we are still figuring it out.

There are many arms outstretched. There are many hearts being offered to fill the piece of mine that is missing. There are tears being shed on my behalf when I've cried out all of my own. My heart is beating in a new rhythm that I am still learning.

In the moment of my breakdown, when it all sunk in, I learned who I wanted to be and how I would become her.
Something in me broke, but not in a bad way. It released things that were being blocked.
It felt like a broken rib, and it hurts with every breath taken until it heals.

In the last month it felt like part of my heart was taken from my chest, reversed, flipped inside out and shown to me. This is what it looks like. This is what you're doing. This is why it hurts.
And then shoved it back in to say "Now deal with it, and have nice day!"

And I have been.