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Living With Duality

Posted on: May 23, 2018 | Posted by: Alison Miller

Our world is unforgiving of those who grieve,

Those who mourn.

We get a bit of time initially, of course.

Mostly, anyways.

Thankfully.

But, too soon, we hear through words unspoken and spoken,

Through actions of those we know, or don’t know…

That we must be different than we are.

Be this or that,

Something other than what our heart and soul is telling us to allow.

What we must allow, now.

This is not life as it was and learning about life as it is, takes forever and a day.

We are told we must accept the death,

As if we don’t know down to our very DNA that our person is gone, gone, gone.

Those who utter the word acceptance

Skim and slip easily over what they think it means,

Not knowing, really, but accepting what has been told to them,

So, they parrot the word to we who grieve.

I’ve come to realize that acceptance has little to nothing to do with the death of our person,

And everything to do with accepting the craziness of grief, the uncertainty, the inevitability, the fear, the anxiety, the devastation, the day after day waking to without-ness…

The duality of life

That exists whether we wish it or not.

The duality that says we are this AND we are that.

We are not this OR that.

This duality that allows me to live without him,

Each day of this life, each year of this life,

For the rest of my life.

I am this AND I am that.

But always, always, always, his.

Categories: Uncategorized

About Alison Miller

My beloved husband Chuck died while we were full timing on the road. We’d rented a condo for our stay in southern CA, and I had to leave 3 weeks after his death. All I knew at that time was that I had to find a way to continue traveling on my own, because settling down without him made me break into a cold sweat. I knew that the only place I’d find any connection to Chuck again was out on the roads we’d been traveling for our last 4 years together. I knew nobody out on the road, I knew grief was a great isolator, and I knew I had to change the way I traveled without him, to make it more emotionally bearable for me. So I bought a new car, had a shade of pink customized for it, bought a tiny trailer and painted the trim in pink, learned how to tow and camp, and set out alone. My anxiety was through the roof, and all I knew to trust was the Love that Chuck left behind for me. I found Soaring Spirits early on, thank god, and the connections I made through SS helped ground me to some extent. I needed to know that other widow/ers were out there in my world, because I felt so disoriented and dislocated. Through Soaring Spirits, as the miles added up, my rig taking me north, south, east and west, I found community. I found sanity…or at least I learned that if I was bat shit crazy, I was in good company, and realizing that ultimately saved my sanity. PinkMagic, my rig, is covered with hundreds of names of loved ones sent to me by my widowed community, and I know it isn’t visible to the naked eye, but I’ll let you in on a secret…she actually illuminates Love as I drive down the many roads in our country, and I can see it through my side view mirror. Love does, indeed, live on~

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