An excerpt from an email written this morning:
Good morning,
Have a really great time on your trip. I mean, you're there, you may as well ... right?!
Ok, back to me ...
Remember I was telling you about the Michelle Obama book "Becoming" I'm reading, and how I wondered why I was reading it, and how it was blah blah blah (enter my words of yesterday here) ... well, I got to the parts that speak to me. To the part that speaks to where I am right now and to where I want to be headed. There is, of course (and not in a defeatist way - rather in a "that's how life works" sort of way) ... there is of course death in the book and it has a profound effect on Michelle and her thought process and her call to action. I feel it and I hope to keep that feeling. I am motivated to live a life. To live a life, from now on, that I can look back on with joy and contentment. One that I can look back on and think "that was good ..." I am constantly in awe of how, even things as remote as, someone's book can be wholly related to me and just another stepping stone on my yellow-brick path.
Also learning (constantly) and understanding more fully the things / tenets/ ideas Judy has been saying over and over again to me / us. "Sit with it ... Lean in to it" ... or something along those lines. Its ok to have an emotional reaction to an event in life or a thought or any thing else that comes our way. The important thing is to not let that emotional reaction become the only reaction. To not let that first gut wrenching emotional spasm be the basis for the future. Feel it, acknowledge it, understand what it means to each of us individually and then move forward with the lesson of it. Letting those lessons and aches guide us in our next endeavors. Why did we feel that way (love, loss, pain, joy, panic, ?) and given those are all valid, how do we carry their meaning with us. How do we allow them to inform our next decision ... decisions ... today, tomorrow, five years from now.
Joy is mine and I intend to spread it wherever I go, to whomever will listen and also to those who want no part of it.
I am on this.
I am in this.
I am this.
Love you Tess !!
--
Your Sister (this life and all the others)
In Joy
Lucy
