Life is Your Story

 I am walking along a path somewhere in the wilderness. I’m alone at first but then I feel someone’s presence, someone who vanished from my life. I think about all the people I have met and loved, yet there was nothing as intense, as omni-powerful as the connection of which I speak. Sometimes I wonder if some people are meant to only visit us once in our lives, because what they hold in their hands, their offering, is so sacred, so special that the moments of time, find it unbearable to hold onto them – to grasp them in their wholeness. So, I am on this walk and I have that feeling in my gut and I come around a bend and there he is, that person who vanished from this earth we walk upon and for whom I have waited to pass to the other side, so he can visit me in my dreams. But this is not a dream. This is not a hologram. This is not an illusion. This is him. This is what I have been waiting for, hoping for because I really never got to say a proper goodbye. I wasn’t there to kiss his...

As we grow older the pool of people we meet and befriend becomes larger and more diversified. Some are just acquaintances while others have been there during the worst crisis of our lives. I have witnessed people truly coming together in support and out of compassion for one another and it is a beautiful thing. I volunteer as a facilitator of support groups for those suffering from mental illness as well as their caregivers. Often the people that attend my groups are living in a psychiatric ward or have just been discharged. Many of the participants were or are admitted at the same time and so they become familiar with one another. This provides them with a common ground and a shared understanding of the pain and daily challenges they all face. They don’t pretend to be someone they are not. They are past the stage of disguises and stories and fake images. They are exhausted but they are fighters and they deal with the very essence of survival in the bleakest of moments. Through t...

People fall apart when they lose a sense of who they are or come to the realization of who they are not. Some people never delve this deep and never really change. They glide through life on a straight line - wax on - wax off. People who lose themselves are also people who look for themselves everywhere and in everyone they meet. They look in all the right places and they lose themselves in all the wrong places. Some of them eventually do find themselves and that allows them to settle down and walk that straight line. While others flip and flop and fly and crash and repeat the process again and again to no avail. They are tired, worn souls and although both they and their loved ones wish they could follow a straight line; they don't know how -mostly because they can't see straight. What makes people fall apart? Well sometimes they feel alone without support, love or empathy and other times they aren’t alone rather they are surrounded by people who care for them deeply; ...

Sometimes when I go for a walk I feel as if I am floating above everyone else. I can see their faces passing me by. I can hear their thoughts and feel their feelings. And as I defy gravity and freeze time, I wonder what weighs heaviest on their minds. What is the source of their pain? If we could all hear one another's thoughts just for a moment on a given day, how much noise would that make? Would we be surprised by the thoughts in the minds of the people we love? What if we all had the chance to bring back one person who had passed? Who would you bring back and if you only had 60 seconds with them, what would you say? What would you do? Do you ever catch yourself in yourself? You are out buying groceries or waiting in line at the bank and you "land" in the purest, clearest form and are able to tap into how you are feeling right there and then. Try floating some time. It's trickier than walking. You have to allow yourself to be suspended in the air - something that y...