Darker Days

Darker days, longer nights. This is a difficult season for people like me who crave sunshine and happiness. And some days knowing that in the darkness is where all new life begins does not seem like enough encouragement. I wonder whether caterpillars feel anything as they move into dissolution before emerging as butterflies? Anything like the terror and emptiness we can feel when our lives and those of people we love are undergoing major transformation? We don’t know how things will turn out. We don’t know for sure that everything will be okay, we have to keep breathing and moving and living as if. As if we had confidence, as if we were not whistling in the dark. We have to trust life to hold us and some days and weeks that seems barely possible.

I wish that adapting and taking new directions could be painless but it is not. Change is simply hard. And yet we do it—we live each day with exactly what we have, not with what we wish we had. We are stronger than we think.

As the world turns toward a colder season I wish you kindness on your journey. I wish for you friends with warm hearts, cups of fragrant tea and open doors. I also wish for you to be those friends with gifts of comfort for others. We are all journeying through darkness but there will be fires and candles to light our way forward.

Bless each other with the gentleness and friendship we all so badly need.

With love for your dark days,

Eileen J Terry