Start with the first thing. The step you dont want to take
You are not leaving. Even as the light fades quickly now, you are arriving
Anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you
I have gained and lost you a hundred times between darkness and dawn
Are we large enough to hold the joy, and future grief inherent in reciprocated love?
You are a hairsbreadth from loosing everyone you hold dear
What you can plan is too small for you to live
To see and experience despair fully in our body is to begin to see it as a necessary, seasonal visitation, and the first step in letting it have its own life, neither holding it or moving it on before its time. We take the first steps out of despair by taking on its full weight and coming fully to ground in our wish to not be here. We let our bodies and we let our world breathe again. In that place, strangely, despair cannot do anything but change into something else
All friendships of any length are based on a continued, mutual forgiveness. Without tolerance and mercy, all friendships die
The ultimate touchstone in friendship is witness: the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone
Heartbreak begins the moment we are asked to let go but cannot
If heartbreak is inevitable and inescapable, our only choice might be to look for it and make friends with it, to see it as our constant and instructive companion, and even perhaps, in the depth of its impact as well as in its hindsight, to see it as its own reward