I don't know how to talk about everything that has happened this year, what is still happening, and then the continuing uncertainty.

It's been three years since I left my abuser. That's a thousand days. It seems impossible to think about. But here I am. There are good things in my life that reorder the painful lies and false beliefs that have throttled and suffocated me. It hasn't just been my life, choked out by the fog of war - it has been the lives of my dad, my siblings, my children. 

Is the hope that we will get to have one good day, thousands of days from now? You breathe life into the morning, the day pauses and is still for a moment. You consider what you feel, what you have prepared yourself to do, and also, the spontaneous and unexpected. You don't rush - you don't need to. Anxiety, fear, rejection, dismay, disappointment, entitlement - these are all feelings, they aren't the truth about you or the world that you are a part of. If you can see life for what it is, and you for who you are, in your exquisite imperfection that keeps you interesting and improving (and unexpected - alive), then you can learn the secret magic of our physical reality. 

Come close and I will whisper it to you. I have not mastered it yet; indeed, moments ago it revealed itself to me, the beginnings of my essential truth - because we will die, we can learn to bend time. This is our gift. Our choices, our actions, our inaction, our feelings, our thoughts, the people and places and experiences that we seek out - what is time? It's the rate of change.

If you can see what or who is likely to change, and identify the unchangeable limiting factors and consider these objectively and compassionately, and if you are able to see the shadow that falls between who you want to be and who you are, then you can step into the light. And then? You can perceive the world as it is, look out as far as your eye can see, seek out what you are pulled towards. The wind-song breezes past your cheek and wafts into your mind, the melody of mortality. The music of the spheres.