…walk into a bar…..this fantastic joke starter came from an evening spent with those three other women, exactly when my best friend took her first step to moving on from a life-changing blow she had been dealt.

No, we didn’t write the rest of the joke, but it is the start of…starting over.

I want to write about what I call the season of loss I experienced in 2019, but to do so would mean spilling tea that isn’t mine to spill.  So let me put it this way.  I’m not sorry to see this year drawing to a close.

The situation I am in is of my own design.  As Henley so beautifully worded it in his poem “Invictus”:

I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul

So for good or bad, I have thrown the dice and find myself here. Around me, others’ lives go on, lives that used to twine around me, or even include me. With that is a sense of loss, but worse, far, far worse, are the lives that used to twine around mine that have ceased.

The loss of my marriage

The loss of my best friend’s beloved

My brother-in-law

and worse

Siblings of my peers and coworkers

And still worse, children of my contemporaries.

The damage we carry, the psychic trauma, is both a burden and a privilege. A reminder that I am here, I am still fighting the good fight–or at least, my fight.

We all have our demons, and whether you battle them or befriend them, you still have to make that choice every day to put one foot in front of the other.

Another line from that beautiful poem, my latest tattoo, and blessed reminder: I thank whatever gods may be for my inconquerable soul.