Can I Cry Now or Shall I Wait Until Tomorrow?

One of the hardest things in life is to watch someone you love struggle with the consequences of their own actions...

Many are the moments when emotions buried deep within rise to the surface. I don't always know how to respond to my own heart... Most often the need to cry is stifled and only a few tears leak through. The heart aches, but the  mind and body must keep moving forward. There is no time to wallow in sadness and sorrow even if it feels profoundly necessary.

I wish for this trial to be over, to have emerged unscathed on the other side, but the scars and scathings are what teach us life's biggest and most important lessons. They have the ability to create within a stronger, bolder sense of purpose and direction if not allowed to crush us completely. I am not crushed, but I feel the pressure, sometimes light and tolerable, and at other moments massive and unmanageable. The hardest thing is knowing that each and every member of my family is attempting to navigate their way through this mass of tangles.

The holiday season is beginning and this year, like several previous, we will be struggling to understand all that is before us. It's getting harder and harder to remember the days when family gatherings were filled with only love and laughter, when deep pain did not enter into the mix... I want those days back, except under the smiling, laughing exteriors lay a pain not all of us knew, and so I don't really want them back at all. It is my deepest hope that one day true and lasting healing will come and our family, though scarred from the battle, will be able to gather in love and harmony. It is a lot to ask and so simple at the same time.