One Foot In and One Foot Out

The door is opening and I take that first step.

I can feel it in the air. A shift. A beginning. The cloak of grief and struggle feels less like a cloak and more like a cloud that somedays I heavy, but most days, the sun breaks through.

Most of all, it doesn’t hurt as much to breath. I miss my dad. A lot. I don’t think the loss and the missing will ever go away, but the gut punch of the loss…healing is happening. It doesn’t have to be linear and I have spent time with my grief and knowing that no matter how much my dad not being here doesn’t make sense, it is reality. Some days it is a very harsh one, with triggers and tears, and some days, I find so much love in the quiet memories…

Truthfully, I want to shove the door wide open and close this season, but that feels like a major flight response to all of the pain, hurt and being “stuck” I have felt in this past year. I know I need to walk through the door to keep growing in this season, but to close it would be to box it all up…healing doesn’t come when we aren’t willing to work through all the “stuff”.

But I am ready to walk into the next chapter/phase. I am ready to find the balance I felt over a year ago…the leveling of life and knowing where I am going next.

I say one foot in and the other foot out because I know that I as I walk into the new, I still have to finish walking through the old…that means finish cleaning up the piles I allowed to grow in my space. And I am talking literal piles. Being okay with writing maybe not looking and sounding like I want it to, but writing. Organizing and planning and knowing it is okay to stumble. Most of all, on the days that feel heavy, embracing the heavy and letting the people who love me the most walk through it with me. No more hiding. No more “okay” or “fine”.

I need my people. I have learned that there is so much hurt that comes when I don’t allow the people that love me to actually love me. I can’t do it all on my own. I can’t sit with my stuff and allow the darkness and shame of being too much take over…I can’t just keep pushing through until I crash. My people are the best kind of people and I am so thankful for them.

One foot in and one foot out…let’s see where this door takes us.