What if we aren’t ready to start again?

What if we wanted to continue on the familiar path; 

That this new direction feels scary and obscure?

What if we are still not ready to set off?

What if our bag isn’t ready to be packed,

still full of things that aren’t ours to carry any more?

Just let us sit here for a while.

We know we can’t stay in this place forever

Its cold and growing dark

There is no solace here but we cant go back.

There is no there, there.

Lets rest for a while my love

Rage and cry and remember the good

Unpack the heavy items and keep the treasures

Tuck the bitter lessons into a corner to be taken out

and examined in sunlight

Now is not the time.

Now is the time to rest until restless

Then bravely stand up on wobbly, new life legs

Take a step, and then another.

So often when a big life change comes people aren’t well equipped to deal with sitting with someone while they are in pain. There are times when this would have been me. Gentle encouragements to get back on the horse etc. As I’ve become less scared by my own huge, deep emotions I find myself more able to cope with the storms of being a parent to teenagers. I’m definitely not nailing it by any measure. It’s so hard to watch your child try to make sense of the pieces of their heart broken on the ground for the first time. So we sit. We sit and gaze over the wreckage until we can’t sit any more and have to get up and move. Only now I’m not pressing on. We are just resting until we can go again.