Storm Season

This Tuesday morning I am up, some time to drink my coffee and indulge the unfocussed urge I have to write…something. I have looked over the list of 'starts' that I have for blog posts but come up empty of inspiration for content for any of them. Titles like "The Invitation', 'On Risk' and 'Homeplaces Part II' sit on my list of unpublished posts asking for content and spark, but I have nothing for them today.

It's not a bad day so far. My legs still a little sore from the skiing I did on the weekend in the first real snow the Island has seen this year. They remember the thick coastal powder of Sunday, like skiing through damp icing sugar, in the lactic acid traces that still remain. My left knee is reminding me of the tweak of another dense ski day a couple of years past. Not quite bending under me the way it used to. There is still a trace of the way the sun tried to push it's glow through the clouds on my nose and cheeks.

I noticed the other day how I have answered the question "how are you?" these days. Certainly in the past few months my answers have most often followed a general theme. It's been a "rough", "crazy", "hard", "sad", "challenging" year. It seems that it has been a year of incessant change, much of it involving some form of grief and loss, at times the kind that is wrenching, difficult or shocking. However I have also reflected that earlier this year, after the death of my father, a split with my long term partner and leaving my job I  had often commented that while it had been full and sad, lots of good had come of the losses. They were kind and right in a way, and though difficult had also brought gifts of connection, love, and clarity. Until August, I would have said in my answer that the sadness and grief had been tempered by a sense of growth and peace.

In the past 5 months there have been a few more challenges, and though also laced with an intense beauty, they have been disorienting, unexpected and gut wrenching. I have spent good portions of time at a loss, incapacitated with grief to some degree, most intensely around the shooting of my dog Piper, but also at other times more recently when things that seemed so clear and right have taken an unexpected turn into murky confusion. It has been a year of visceral extremes, and as I have slowly entered this new year I can sense the beginnings of something I cannot quite wrap up in words.


At times I have had the sense that I am being 'tested', although I tend to believe the universe has better things to worry about than playing invigilator to my personal development. But I have started to notice patterns, repeated invitations into…something. Exactly what that is is still in the process of becoming clear, but my inkling is that it is about things that are long standing and partially buried. Only now being exposed by the record winds and tides of the storm season that was 2013.