Tag: grief

Grief & fierce love

November 2nd, 2025

It’s all about grief.

I don’t think it’s my life message or anything of that but what I’m realizing is so many things in my life are leading back to grief right now.

I’ve been told over and over I need to write a book.

And especially now, in the midst of things that feel bigger than anything I could ever actually handle, I’m realizing it’s still there. That theme: grief.

I was at my church this last week just sitting and hanging out and being where the people were and I realized how much I’ve missed, how a place that I used to be at 6 days a week suddenly became a place I had been gone from for a month.

And I got home and I sobbed.

I sobbed for what I’ve lost, what I’ve missed, what I’m going to miss, what I feel I no longer have.

And I realized it all comes back to grief.

I have to grieve the Meg that was for the Meg that will be.

I have to change the way I see things.

I have to step into something new.

And on the opposite side (to me) of grief is fierce love.

I think of my mom and how much sometimes it hurts so much to not have her on the other side of the phone. And I know that despite our mother-daughterness my mother loved me fiercely and I loved her fiercely and in the absence of that fierce love the grief comes in.

This last month I’m realizing not only how much I love the people in my life fiercely, I’m also realizing how loved I am.

I’m also realizing even amidst all the not good, I was learning to love my life fiercely and now in the absence I feel that grief.

Grief is messy.

It isn’t just based around death or losing someone from your life.

Grief for me, has popped up to remind me of fierce love.

The Meg that was had a lot of fierce love around her; the Meg that is and is becoming is the same.

At the end of the day, my foundation is the same. Who I am, who I’m created to be, who I’m moving towards- that keeps going (so not the same but my DNA hasn’t changed).

So bottom line: I have fierce love, but I have to grieve. I’ve had a really damn hard month. It was scary, I had moments where honestly just didn’t know what was going to happen and times that have just been incredibly lonely.

My grief doesn’t take away from the fierce love around me; it just makes me human.

So, I’m going to grieve, I’m going to cry probably a lot more, I’m going to feel left out because I just need to take care of my body and I’m probably going to question things here and there.

And I’m going to give myself a lot of grace.

That’s where I am today.

Thank you for being with me

With love,

Meg
I’m ready to breathe again.

December 22nd, 2024

I’m ready to breathe again.

I’ve sat here for an hour and half and deleted words, closed documents, switched over to reading books and now I’m back again.

The image that keeps coming into my brain tonight are all the people who moved through the night to see the baby Jesus. Now, I know historically, it wasn’t during December, who knows if it was cold; but all I can see is their breath on the air as the moved through the night to get to the manger.

Their breath moving in front of them, as they walked to meet the baby that would change everything.

And all I can think of our the words I wrote when my mom passed. That even though we were devastated she was gone, she was finally able to breathe again.

I think for the last three years I haven’t been breathing.

I mean I have obviously, been breathing. I’ve been living, moving forward, making choices, trudging through sickness, maneuvering through grief.

But, I’ve realized, that this holiday season I just want to breathe.

It sounds so simple, so cliche’.

People say they want to have breathing room, have space to breathe. That they just need to take a breath.

To me breath is more than space and room.

It’s being alive in a different way than I used to be.

One of the collection of words I deleted simply stated that I feel like I’ve failed this year.

But, really, I think I’ve just been holding my breath in hopes that it would make a difference. That when I came up for air there would be clarity.

And now, this span of time of holidays, I just want to breathe. I want to take deep breathes to my toes.

I know these words don’t feel very holiday. They feel stilted and tired.

These words need to breathe.

So that’s where I am this Sunday before Christmas.

That’s where I am in the last days of 2024.

I’m going to breathe.

I hope you’ll join me.

With love,

Meg
For f*ck’s sake; let’s try hope. Again.

November 10th, 2024

I am not ready for whatever comes at the end of these words.

As I’ve said; again and again, I write to untangle.

I start at the beginning with words, or a phrase or a reference to the labyrinth or something Hannah Brencher wrote or something my pastor said in church (or honestly just during the work week) that pissed me off because I had to agree with it with gritted teeth.

And then I write.

Currently I feel that if I begin to untangle I might lose it all.

I feel, as if I am hanging onto my sanity with an absolute death grip.

That means, for today, it’s Hannah Brencher.

She does a series of notes for every month and there is always one or two that I latch onto.

For lovely words and truth; @ Hannah Brencher

I know that I know that I know I’m supposed to be letting go.

I can physically feel how tightly wound I am, how I’m still terrified at giving hope a chance.

Because if I can’t control it; who will.

(I know I’m freaking digging a deep hole with these words for my week but here we are).

Truthfully, I haven’t been eating really. I haven’t been sleeping.

I’ve been in survival mode for longer than I care to admit.

The bags under my eyes have their own bags and no amount of concealer can help.

(I also know none of this will be surprising to my best friend).

October was rough with ghosts and dates and memories of what once was. Then during nap time at work the day before Halloween, a text that friend had suddenly passed surprised and shocked me, shook me up.

Solidifying to me that nothing good ever happens in octobers.

I realized this morning standing in the cafe at my church that I am legitimately still terrified to hope that good things will happen.

(To me.)

And that controlling the hurt I encounter will make it hurt less.

I haven’t been feeling very brave lately. Or strong.

Or capable.

These words aren’t meant to strike pity or empathy.

They are literally just truth for me to begin to untangle whatever all this is from my clenched fists.

I think (I know) I’ve fallen back onto a pattern in which doing will get me out of being.

When I had to get taken care for a month last year, it was damn hard for me. Even amidst all that I was going through, I was still writing the menus for work, typing out notes for each and every day I was gone even though it physically made me ill to look at my phone.

When it feels like I’ve come so far from this place of doing as a personality trait I’ve realized it’s deeper and deeper.

That month of dizziness and being unable to move was the hardest month I’ve maybe ever had because if I can’t do then what am I.

So, today, I stare at my clenched fist.

I don’t know what to do about it.

I don’t know what I need to un-grip from.

I just know it’s there.

All the things amidst the grief, the pain, the things that don’t feel like hope but actually are.

And I know; none of this feels good.

The words would make my mom call me. Would cause people to feel like I’m worse off than I am.

But you know what; I’m still here.

And I’m choosing these words because right now in this world, this place we need to know that there are other people moving forward with us in the midst.

I never want to be a person who brings others into her distress, grief or pain.

I want you to know that amidst all of that you can live, you can have laughter and joy.

You can support people and make ordering McDonald’s on DoorDash something you do for the plot.

You can still have joy.

Amidst all this I may not have hope but you damn well better believe I have joy.

We have less than 60 days left in this year.

My word for the year was _______ again.

There are so many things I’ve had to do this year; again and again.

And damn it, I think I’m supposed to learn through these last two months of this year to hope again.

To believe that beautiful, bold, unattainably feeling things can happen for me.

Love, grace, bright spots of color.

I don’t know what else I need to un-grip from, but I do know that I’m supposed to un-grip my aggressive hold on hope and let it do its magic.

Hope, in the dictionary, is also a verb.

It’s an action.

So let’s go.

Let’s fucking hope.

For the rest of 2024.

And maybe onward.

With love,

Meghan

(Because why the heck not)
Heal Loudly

October 13th, 2024

Heal loudly.
Simply words in a comment on a TikTok on a video of a woman who got left at the altar.

I had been scrolling the comments because sometimes they are like a mine field and sometimes they provide soil for gardens of hope.
And then I paused on the words: HEAL LOUDLY.

They made my heart stop a bit.
Because there should be no shame in healing so why shouldn’t we heal loudly if that’s what we need to do?

I personally have a lot more shame than I would care to admit about what feels like my inability to heal quietly. The words that flash through my brain more than I would like to admit are that it isn’t a big deal, I’m too weak, I should just get over it and live with it.
And so, instead of speaking up when my heart feels like it’s breaking again, or when my face feels numb or when I would just like to be able to cry out of both eyes; I stay quiet.

I attempt to just heal.
I attempt to tuck away my grief, my physical and emotional pain.

This weekend and the next few days are ridiculously hard for me. I would love to just bury myself under blankets and come out when we’re further into October.
Screw it. Give me november.

But then I remember; heal loudly.
The last 3.5 or so years of my life have been filled with land mines and they actually fucking suck.

And I realize when I give myself the permission to heal loudly, to reach out, to write, to lift some of the debris off my shoulders instead of begrudgingly carrying it around it helps.

It takes courage to heal loudly. I think of people who go through unspeakable trauma and then use their voices to speak on behalf of those who aren’t able to speak.
I think of people who chose to live even when the world keeps pushing them down.

Healing loudly doesn’t look the same for everyone.

But it does look like not being ashamed of the fact that you’re still healing. That you’re still grieving.
That you still struggle to get out of bed but you do anyway.
That’s also healing loudly.

It’s funny when I think about how we put timelines on things. Yes, we know give or take how long a broken bone will take to heal, or when the stitches need to get out.
But, why do we pass that certainity over to all parts of healing?

We need to learn to heal loudly so that we can in fact heal. However that may look for you.
For me, it’s writing. It’s acknowledging in words the break in my heart from my mom dying and the fact that I don’t go a day without thinking of her. It’s acknowleding in words that I might never be able to feel the left side of my face or smile again.

It’s acknowleding how it’s hard to get out of bed most mornings.
But, still getting the fuck out of bed.
That’s healing loudly.

My way of healing loudly is to create spaces for others to do so without shame.
It’s sharing stories and moments and tears and anger. It’s allowing others, every once and awhile, into that 15 percent of my life that I keep behind the curtain so that they know that I in fact am not holding it all together.

I’m healing loudly because it doesn’t matter that it’s been three years since my world shattered more than I thought possible- I just want you to know that it doesn’t matter how long it’s been for you either.

I don’t know what you’re healing from. I don’t know how long it’s been or what happened to you.
I don’t know if you feel shame or if you feel trapped or if you feel guilt.
But I’m here to remind you- remind us.
Let’s heal loudly.
However that looks, however that is.

Heal. Loudly.
With love,
Meg
Fall has receipts

October 9th, 2024

My friend Amanda told me I need to replace my hatred for October with cozy socks.

Well, basically.

I’ve never been a basic fall girl like my best friend Tori whose love for sweaters and spooky season has rubbed off a bit on me in the last nine years of living in Washington. She goes full send into seasons essentially just for herself and that’s something that I absolutely love about her. Her no holds barred ability to show her love of something. Even if that something is just spooky season.

It feels ironic and also kismet that her best friend hates fall.

For me; fall brings all the ghosts out that I tried to keep dormant for too long.

(And not the good ghosts like Devon Sawa as Casper.)

But in the fall the ghosts return full force and cause me to have panic attacks and try to sneak into my brain to tell me all the ways that this is how it always is.

It’s actually kind of funny. There are things to myself that I would absolutely never tell a tiny human. I was talking to my director last week about a few things and I said that the phrase I hate saying to tiny humans and to adults is simply “But you know better”. Because while tiny humans absolutely actually don’t, adults should.

But I still can’t bring myself to say it.

I also can’t ever bring myself to speaking over someone that “this is all there is”.

Myself though?

Fall is that reminder that the lie that says this is all there is might be true.

Fall tells me that the other shoe will drop. That I’m not strong enough.

Fall tells me I’m broken.

Fall has receipts.

That I’ll keep circling back to these ghosts because fall will inevitably create new ones.

But I should love fall.

Honestly.

I’m a whiskey drinker, cozy couch loving, preschool teacher who loves an excuse for product art and a writer.

So what the heck do I do?

I have to remember that I’m still here despite fall telling me I’m broken and alone.

Because I still show up in fall.

Eight days after my mom died I performed on a stage in front of an audience for the first time since high school. I was in a Halloween music review and the next day I got a plane to spend a week in Kingsburg leading up to my mom’s memorial.

There was no way I wasn’t getting on that stage.

I needed fall to be something more than what it was.

I needed something to remind me I could survive fall.

And now, I sit here, with an immensely clenched fist on my emotions, I realized I have survived fall.

Specifically, I have survived fall every year since 2008 when the words in my brain told me the world around me would be lighter without me.

I think sometimes when I write I need to remind myself that I’ve survived the things that I didn’t think I could.

I need to drag myself out of the hole that feels like I can’t do it.

I need to drag myself out of the hole that says this is all there is.

I need to gather the hope the falls before this has created.

I need to lean in to fall.

Because fall has receipts.

With love,

Meg
Hope isn’t a firework

October 3rd, 2024

I’ve lived a lot of life with the persistent fear that I’m letting people down.

And to be completely and utterly honest I’ve lived the last three years mostly with the gut wrenching fear that I’m letting my mom down with every step I take.

That I haven’t been strong enough, smart enough. That I’m not able to take care of myself.

That I’m not making her proud and that she’s be so disappointed in all the ways I’ve failed.

And I know that all sounds so heavy but if we don’t ever let the heavy things out than all we will do is let them continually weigh us down.

I feel as if I have a lot of evidence in my life of all the ways I’ve been chosen last, been written off a list, not been enough for the people I wanted to be enough for.

That I’m literally just right outside the map with no way if knowing how to be apart of the journey again.

When I was in Ecuador on one of the first days of the world race myself and my team of 6 other women were handed a map of how to get to where we needed to go.

The issue was the place we were and the place we were going weren’t actually on the map- the map was the middle.

We just had to choose to go off and get to the middle without actually having the tools.

And right now, in the moment, I feel like that again. Like I’m looking at a map and I have to get to the end without all the information.

And I feel like I’ve already failed.

I know it’s not true.

I know that I’m not always letting people down.

I know I’m not a last choice.

I know that no one actually has a complete map.

Lately, the heavy has been more heavy than I know what to do with.

And hope feels like fireworks in the distance that is gone in a flash.

But, if there is anything I know that is true it’s that we have to choose to face the lies and the words that go against who we are. We have to not be afraid of them.

We have to stare them in the face.

So that’s what I’m doing right now.

Staring the words in the face that become ticker tape on my brain sometimes.

Staring them in the face because the more I do the more I realize they are untrue.

Want to join me?

Want to stare the things in the face that feel so true until you realize they are mirage that flickers off in the distance?

And let’s replace it all with what is true and full of gritty steadfast hope.

That’s all.

With love,

Meg
Smothered Flames

September 15th, 2024

I have no words.

It’s been a really hard place for me to be in. A place where I feel incapable of communicating or saying what I mean, or feel. I’m a writer who has spent most of her life using words that come out of my brain as a place to land. I’ve discovered more than I can even explain via my own writing. I’ve untangled, I’ve stared at words on the screen that I had no clue where they came from but just knew that they were true and real.

I’ve found the end of the rope through my words on more occasions than I can even count.

I’ve found hope in between the lines of my own writing because at the end of the day, when I write it, I know that it’s there. When I write something I know that there is something more in me, something I can grab on too.

Something that is more real than the things that feel dark.

But right now, there is none of that.

It feels like I’m standing in a hole and I have all the pieces to something that will help me out of the hole, but it’s a piece of Ikea furniture and I have no instruction and I don’t have that damn little tool to help me build it.

The only way out of the hole is to build it.

But, instead of building it, I’ve just sat there, not trying because right now it’s easier to stay in the hole than get hurt by the fall again.

Three years ago today I wrote that I was starting to not be afraid of the other shoe dropping.

And then a month later my mom died.

Now, I’m sitting here in this bar, writing these words feeling like I’m just throwing a pity party.

Because I know I’m strong enough to get out of the damn hole.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how my high school youth pastor used to talk about how it was better to be a Christian whose fire was completely out than a lukewarm Christian. I remember, like most things from high school youth group, feeling so incredibly ashamed of that. I remember thinking that I just had to stay “on fire”. I had to do all the things I needed to do. I had to show up, be everything. I needed to sing on the worship team, and go to every bible study.

I couldn’t let the fire die because than I would be less than.

But here I am over 20 years outside of high school youth group and I would like to call bullshit on my youth pastor.

I would much rather have some dying embers of faith than feel as if a wet towel had smothered all the flames.

At the beginning of this I said that I haven’t been able to write; that isn’t completely true. I have been writing.

The words have just all felt completely and utterly devoid of hope.

Which, I know isn’t true.

Because choosing to write is choosing to believe in the hope that there is something at the end of the words.

Choosing to write is choosing to believe I might be able to be a little stronger than I was before I started writing.

Choosing to write is choosing to believe even though I feel incapable of it; I’m still someone who has the ability to stir hope and light.

So, that’s it. That’s me right now.

I guess, that at the end of it all, I’m here with my hands open, being a little more honest than I want.

I feel absolutely unsettled by all of these words and normally that unsettledness would push me to not post them, to shut my computer, maybe to even delete them, but instead I’m choosing for a moment to lean in to the things that don’t feel settled in hopes that the action might help them settle.

Let’s do our best to lean in.

With love,

Meg
Choose your grief

August 26th, 2024

I’ve come to an immense realization today while texting my friend Emily and I’m going to try incredibly hard to articulate it.

I’ve been trying to make peace with myself the last 6 months: that the darkness I feel is not my darkness. That the light I have inside is stronger than the darkness that tries to cover me.

But, I’ve also spent the last 6 months numb to a point. If I’m not around people, if I’m home, if I’m alone it’s almost as if I have no emotions. Like I’m a vampire in Vampire Diaries and I’ve turned the switch off on my emotions and I just feel nothing.

The numbness has made me battle the thing I’ve struggled with and pushed against most of my adult life: that I’m fake. That people think less of me for my inability to push through.

That I’m not strong.

A couple Sundays ago at church I was told about my strength, and I’ve had to listen to it a few times because I just don’t believe it.

I would like to say I know those things aren’t true aren’t actually true. And the things that are: are. But sometimes, it’s hard to believe in things even when you know they aren’t true or are true.

And for as honest as I am in my writing, as honest as I’ve been. As many things as I’ve said that are difficult for me to say, I know that there have been things I haven’t been able to figure out.

I’m realizing today though something I’ve left a bit behind in my grieving: I need to grieve the person that I thought I was going to become at this point in my life as opposed to the person I’ve become because of the circumstances I’ve faced.

On Sunday I cried for her. I cried for all the ways grief and pain have made me motionless. I cried for the ways the burnout changed how I look at life and the ways I look at the profession I feel so confident in.

I cried for the person who was on the brink of coming back home to herself and then had a house dropped on her and she had to start the process again.

I cried for all the things that have broken me and all the ways I feel broken.

And I cried for all the times I couldn’t text or call my mom to tell her any of it.

We don’t just grieve the people that left, or the places that we had to walk away from or even the things that made us feel less than we are.

We have to grieve the person that would have been without all those things.

We have to grieve the person that would be sitting in our place had none of it occurred.

We have to grieve the other path that got left in dust.

We have to grieve the us that would have been.

And I think that I’ve been holding that woman for awhile.

I think yesterday sitting on my couch crying, I stared at her. I looked and wonder who she was now. Where she lived. What her body looked like.

What she was still doing.

I wanted to ask her questions. I wanted to know in my knower that she was strong in all the ways I currently am not.

I want to know she would have been ok, on that other path.

I know I’m ok on this path.

If I wasn’t; not to mince words, I probably just wouldn’t be here anymore.

I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt that all of my houses that have fallen on me over the last 3 years fell in the correct order.

I’m not saying the houses had to happen- like they happened for a reason- but at the end of the day the storm was going to come and the houses were going to drop.

I grieve my mom every day. Sometimes subconsciously, sometimes incredibly consciously.

My grief isn’t always joyous. I just don’t grieve that conversations that could never be, but I grieve the conversations that were, the ones that sliced like a knife.

I grieve the quiet, still moments.

And all along the way I have to grieve the other part of me.

I have to grieve the person who felt like she had a handle on the things that were broken.

And in a way, I have to grieve the person that accepts that they are broken.

It’s weird, but I feel lighter now. Lighter with the knowledge that I’m beginning to realize it isn’t actually me. It’s the ghost of the me that never was.

Almost as if I’m being chased by the thing that I can’t ever be because I have become who I am.

Bottom line:

Grief is a bitch.

It has more twists and turns than we can ever account for.

We don’t just grieve death. We grieve divorce, we grieve what illness takes away. We grieve friendships that took. We grieve jobs that became places we had to walk away from in spite of.

We grieve faith we’ve had to leave behind in pursuit of the truth that heals us.

We grieve the death of things that still follow us around.

I know I’m not going to finish this pour of whiskey and walk out of this bar and be healed.

I know I’m not going to automatically be able to actually fall asleep before 2 am.

(I know I have friends who would yell at me for those statements).

But I do that I am looking in the correct mirror now.

I don’t what you’re grieving.

I don’t know who you’re grieving,

I don’t know what year the person exist in.

I just do know that at some point we have to remember that the paths might never line up again.

And that’s ok.

With love,

Meg
Buried strength

July 14th, 2024

I joked last night that I’m someone who is always going to circle back to the Labyrinth. It usually happens without me even noticing it as I write and then bam David Bowie has found his way into another one of my blogs.

And it seems lately all the words I’ve been writing are scarier than I like to deal with.

Today at church I desperately wanted to run. I felt myself wanting to not show up, to bow out and everything in between. I stayed knowing that normally my desire to run is actually the sign I should stay.

But, as I sat during worship and wrote I once again found myself replaying a scene from the labyrinth. When the main character Sarah at the end of the movie is trying to get her baby brother back finally from the Goblin King. She’s done all the tasks and she’s made it through the Labyrinth and now the Goblin king is toying with her and moving about and she keeps having to move her neck and change positions and try to keep finding him.

She can’t remember the final line of the story and I believe that he thinks he’s bested her.

But she takes a breath and realization fills her face and she says the final words of the story “you have no power over me”.

Normally that’s the place I get too but I realized today in church that I’m currently right before the moment of realization. I’m in a place where it feels like my mind is blank and I have no idea what the words that should come out of my mouth are.

I know that I know them but I can’t piece them together.

I’m a strong human. I’ve always been stronger than I give myself credit for. And today while walking to find a place to clear the cobwebs I had a little conversation with myself about strength.

Sarah in the Labyrinth didn’t realize what strength she had. She didn’t get that her whimsiness and her ability to see beyond what was, was actually strength. That those things and walking in who she was is what got her through the maze.

She was the only one who could have done that journey. And it wasn’t the bad things in her life that made her strong. It wasn’t the things that she went through that were her strength.

It was the things that she chose to keep and protect in spite of what was that were always her strength.

As I was walking here I was thinking about all the worship songs and sermons and what not I’ve heard in my life that strength can only be found in God. That in him my weakness becomes strength.

But what if all the things we thought “made us strong” were just the things that cover up where our real strength is. Where it actually lies.

It’s funny how there are lies and things that have been whispered in our brain for so long start to turn into our own voice.

Sarah was always told to grow up. To stop imagining. Her parents saw it as weakness, but instead it became what saved her. Her ability to dream and imagine.

The thing I hear in my own voice now, as much as I’ve tried to get it away from me is that I am a burden, too much and that I have to be an island.

It’s scary how quickly those things can flood my mind.

But, today pondering Sarah I wonder what strengths those are covering.

I pride myself in my ability to keep fucking going even when I’ve been absolutely inundated with grief and pain and health issues. Even when I can’t smile, I’ve kept moving.

And that’s what I’ve claimed as my strength.

But what if is covering up true strength?

Here’s the deal: there is a lot of evangelical statements that I’m 100% not ok with. But, I think that there are times where we forget we are all uniquely made and equipped; however you believe people came into existence- we are all unique. We all have strengths that have been in us since we were born- it’s just up to us to allow ourselves to find them.

I won’t mince words: my mental health has never bounced back since my mom passed. It was a pummeling of burnout and grief and now for almost a year dealing with this facial paralysis and unsteadiness. I’ve had some of my more scarier lows of my life in the last 5 months.

But, like Sarah, my strength isn’t what it seems.

My strength isn’t my ability to show up, or keep moving forward.

Those are all the reactions of things that have happened to me, that have been done to me, that I’ve had to deal with. I have made them strengths out of survival but they aren’t actually where my strength lies.

The things that have happened to us don’t make us who we are.

I don’t know right now if I’m ready to look at the goblin king and say “you have no power over me”. Right now, I don’t know if I believe it.

I do know this though: I will no longer give the darkness that has shadowed my life the credit for how strong I am. I’m going to choose to find the things that are actually my strengths, not the reactions to the dark things.

I was strong before them, not because of them.

Like I said a while back: when David killed Goliath, he didn’t prove it by carrying his head around.

He was the proof.

But he had the strength in him before he killed him, not just after.

The strength didn’t come from the overcoming. The overcoming came from the strength.

The strength was already there.

Right now, everything in my life feels like it’s covering the strength I need.

I don’t know how to distinguish between what I need to keep or what I don’t need to keep

I do know, it feels like I’m holding a key to a treasure box. Something that’s been covered for so long because I didn’t think it was there,

I thought I could only make diamonds from pressure- not that I contained them from the start.

So here is where I am this week, staring at the Goblin King as I await the words I need to find the strength that was there even before the journey.

I don’t know if you need the reminder that you already had the strength built in you like I did today.

But I do and you do.

With love,

Meg
An anchor change

June 10th, 2024

I have a few defining moments in my relationship with God that I seem to circle back to as an anchor for a season, or an emotion or a theme that seems to continually wind its way around me. And the one that’s come back into my life in recent months that I finally feel out of to talk about is simply the constant image of the nightlight in my life.

I went through the probably the absolute darkest time of my life in 2008-2009. I was on meds, both of my parents had health issues, I had just gotten out of a classroom environment that was not good for me and I was feeling so much more than I was capable of dealing with.

I was thankfully in therapy and trying to do as much as I could.

But, the darkness and the things around me felt like too much.

It was a Sunday morning. It’s one of the images that stay in my brain despite my desire to not remember it so clearly. I was looking at myself in my bathroom mirror and I stared hard at myself and just thought the words “maybe it would just be better if I wasn’t here anymore”.

And then I closed my eyes.

When I closed my eyes I saw myself standing in an incredibly dark room and in the corner of the room I saw it. It was a dim, dim nightlight. It was down at the corner of the wall, where the light socket was. One of those rectangular ones that you get at the dollar store with a yellow light and a flimsy cover.

I will never forget that picture in my brain and how for all of my life since then when I’ve found myself in places of darkness I’ve come back to it. I’ve come back to the reminder that the darkness could not completely snuff out the light.

To be completely and utterly honest in ways I don’t love to be; I needed this image a few months ago. I was trudging. And one night I was in the shower and I sat down and I sobbed and sobbed and let the water engulf me and had the thought crossed my mind about just staying in the water. (Don’t worry mom, I’m ok).

And I sat in my shower sobbing I saw that light again and I got up and I shook it off and I kept (pardon my French) fucking going.

Because, at the end of the day, that’s what I was going to do. I was going to get up no matter what and keep going.

That brings me to today.

I didn’t go to church yesterday because cramps and no sleep but, I listened to church at work this morning to help get me out of a Monday mood.

When we got to the activation at the end, the thing I heard God say while I scooped pasta was “you’re still light”.

In all honesty, I just thought of that nightlight picture and really just believed his light was still there. That the darkness couldn’t drown it out.

That MY darkness couldn’t drown it out.

I knew though, that there was something there, something I needed to untangle.

Something that needed to become undone.

I didn’t realize that the thing the needed to be undone was a narrative I’ve kept close for 15 years.

The narrative being that the nightlight was just God.

The thing that was stronger than the darkness around it. The thing that has still been lit in the rooms that feel devoid of light wasn’t just God.

It was me.

Because no matter how dark my world has felt, no matter how much I wanted to just stop moving;

I’m still light.

Last year when I went through my identity work with my pastor and my people and kind of met myself where I didn’t know I needed too, the picture I saw was one of a home with a candle in the window.

A small, soft light that was always on, welcoming those that need it in.

No matter what I’ve believed about myself the light will always shine through.

That feels more important than I even know how to articulate.

I’ve always been afraid of the things that feel dark in my life. That the darkness is something that can engulf me, that it can dampen the light that I believed was outside of me- not a light that I brought myself. That the darkness was me.

We all bring something to the table. We all have something inside of us that the humans around us need.

And I hope that for all my days the light I am shines on what you bring.

And that I never forget that my ability to keep the darkness at bay.

A narrative in my life changed today over wontons and bubbly and people watching.

Here’s a reminder that no matter how long you’ve held onto something you always have the ability to realize that it’s not what you think it is.

With love,

Meg