“I hope you believe that you can still make a beautiful life for yourself
even if you lost many years of it to grief,
or darkness,
or a wound that wouldn’t close.”
Bianca Sparacino

Many things are wondrous to me: love in a cruel world, plants that come back to life after drought, fire, or hail, and people who choose kindness when life has given them every possible excuse to go to the dark side.

This week my wonder has turned inward as I discover that the hope I’ve clung to that life might be good again has deepened into a belief so strong I can feel it in my bones.

I know I’m going to be OK.

I don’t know what it will look like, but that’s alright. For now, I’m just focused on slowly, steadily, and gently building a strong foundation.

I’ve discovered that rebuilding looks a whole lot like cleaning. Sorting through boxes, sheds, and shipping containers, clearing away what no longer suits, carting all the broken, unusable bits to the dump or the burn pile, and donating the good stuff that doesn’t fit my new life, trusting it will bring joy to someone else.

Rebuilding is decidedly non-glamorous and mostly involves days spent covered in dust and cobwebs, my skin an assortment of scrapes and bruises as I remove the old to make room for the new, honouring the old stories and my need to write new ones.

As I clear each shelf, each corner, each patch of earth, I feel an unexpected but most welcome excitement stirring as I envision new uses for those spaces.

I’ve turned the granny flat into a rustic bunkhouse for my loves to stay in when they visit, planted winter gardens full of artichokes, peas, cabbages, lettuces, leeks, garlic, and flowers, and I’ve made steady progress in transforming the sheds into usable spaces for sewing, wood-working, and all the fun foodie things I love to do like brewing, fermenting, and preserving.

For now, it’s mostly solitary work, but, it makes me smile to picture future days with medieval mates hanging out in the woodshop making furniture or shields, clustering around a big table with friends working on crafts of some sort, and gathering with dear ones around the bonfire, visiting for hours and making amazing memories.

Life will always hold challenges, but I’m doing my best to face them with shoulders squared and head held high, looking for ways to make even the hardest days a bit more beautiful and easier to bear. xo