When life takes a turn, go with it or hit the guardrail — if there is one. Sometimes it goes so fast you must drift the corners or crash. Bump that guardrail and keep going. Skid to the edge of the cliff but hold on and keep climbing.

Like the late Ken Block roaring up Pikes Peak.

But I can’t drive like him, and even if I could I don’t want to. Now my life is slower, more contemplative. The last five years of speed and sharp corners and sometimes no guardrail forced me to slow down. My husband retired and we moved from our home of thirty years. We didn’t move far physically, about sixty miles. Mentally, emotionally, and spiritually it feels more like six hundred.

There were also six hard losses in those five years. Four family members and two dogs (also family members to me). Moving house and home in the middle of repeated grief was a lot. When I would begin to feel like myself again, there was another one. And another. And they just kept coming.

The most recent two, my dear aunt and my precious Great Dane, Polly, came within a week of each at the end of last October and the beginning of November. That slammed me into the guardrail and I just sat there for a long time.

Death changes perspectives, and we can guide that direction, but I can’t do it with speed. I can’t outrun those feelings, they will eventually shove me off the road with a pit maneuver.

I had to stop, let them catch up, face them, make my peace with them, and then allow myself to climb above them. Not without those I lost, but with them in a new way. They’re still with me, I feel them in my heart. Sometimes they send me little signs — a simple Hi, I’m still here. Or I’ve got your back, it’s all going to be fine. Other times it’s a gift such as a feather, a visit with a butterfly, a familiar smile dressed in a sunrise.

But if I have the accelerator mashed to the floor, I miss those messages. Only when I slow down can I find them.

My writing here and in my books slowed down as well, because it’s far too easy for me to lose myself in those fictional worlds (which is the whole point of fiction in all its glorious forms). But when I use it to avoid things I need to deal with, I’m not helping myself.

I’m back to the writing again. Summer Hope, Book Three of the Hart’s Ghosts series, is well underway. I’ve returned to my blog here. Maybe I’ll get a newsletter out this month, too, but don’t hold your breath. I’m healing and growing and that’s where my focus is. That’s where it should be for me. The slow, steady climb, as long as it takes.

If you’re dealing with a loss, give yourself the gift of time. Watch the sun set behind the mountains, or waves on the beach, or a flower bloom. Slow down to look and listen for the message. It’s there.

And if you truly do find your peace in speed, then by all means go for it like Mr. Block. We all have our own way to reach the summit, fast or slow the only requirement is to keep going up.

I made my way up the peak on the cog train, far slower than Mr. Block’s Mustang. Faster than if I’d hiked; more focused on the mountain itself than if I had driven. None is the better way, they are only different, like our journeys through the peaks and valleys of life.

From the summit I was able to look down on our new home (somewhere near the black star below). It was a good change of perspective. To see how far I’ve come from the place where I started, and yet I remain part of it, as the surrounding landscape is connected to the peak. I’ve climbed a long way in the last five years, and I’m still climbing. I hope you are, too.