Category: Personal Journey

Gratitude in a Bottle

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For the past week or so, I’ve been feeling not so great. It’s been a roller coaster of emotions trying to come to terms with the end of a relationship. Although I was the one to ultimately end things, finding out that my ex is definitely in a relationship with someone else made me feel both hollowed out and brimming with pain. But most insidious of all, I felt wholly insufficient. Deep seas of tears were made. Adele was sung.

In sum: things felt painfully unforgiving.

It was in this context that I went on a quick work trip to DC, my old stomping grounds. To say my heart immediately felt lighter would be an understatement. It surprised even me. To return to a place that was familiar and full of memories was exactly what I needed. Even better, I used as much of my limited free time to reconnect with friends that have come to feel like a second home. Friends that continuously inspire me with their intellect, compassion & general bad ass-ness.

I was instantly grateful that this trip landed in my lap when it did. I left home feeling truly beat down and emotionally hollow; I returned feeling like I’d caught gratitude in a bottle for the first time. I was present and appreciative. I was open and engaged. And it felt authentic.

As I walked back to my hotel on my last night there, it was chilly and the city was relatively quiet. With a moment to reflect, I realized how deeply full I felt, for the first time in a long time.

I would like to continue that walk, metaphorically and otherwise.

“I give myself a good cry if I need it, but then I concentrate on all good things still in my life.” ― Morrie Schwartz, Tuesdays with Morrie

Happy New Year?

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For lack of a better word I’ve been feeling this roadblock in fearlessly embracing this new year. A hesitancy. I lost things that were so important to me this past year. Things I never intended to begin a new year without. Things I haven’t started a new year without since they first came into my life. Things that I know are now dead in their original form, but that doesn’t make the mourning any easier. To know something is gone is not the same as deeply accepting and making peace with that concept. At least, not yet.

So as people make these huge proclamations about how incredible this next year will be; how hard they will love; how many people they will celebrate with; the places they’ll travel; the growth they’ll explore; the freeness they’ll feel; and the goals they’ll accomplish – I can’t help but feel…a little sad and hesitant. As if I can’t possibly make those promises yet. I can’t possibly celebrate this new year. Because things still hurt. They are fresh. And things are gone.

Does anyone else feel this way?

I guess instead of seeing this moment in time as a roadblock to living life to the fullest, I will slowly and steadily push step by step. Because it’s not that I don’t think good things are coming for me, or that I don’t trust in the process of letting go and growing.

Its just…

”No one warns you about the amount of mourning in growth.” – Té V. Smith, Shut Up In My Bones

Private Domain

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I’m a private person, to say the least. I’m not big on sharing my inner thoughts, experiences, and concerns beyond a handful of my closest friends. For me, talking about events and ideas are so much easier than talking about what’s going on in my heart. Even social media has become a space for me to share articles on what’s going on in the world and to muse about baby animals. So to share of myself in this way feels terrifying.

But I’ve been reading and meditating more and more these days. And the things that have helped me most through this year of heartbreak, difficulties, and transition, have been reading the words of others who have experienced similar moments, endured them, and became fuller versions of themselves because of it.

So with that, I share myself with this space, in hopes that someone finds a thread of familiarity in my experiences.

This has been a year of endings. The biggest of which are the painful end to a 5 and a half years, on-and-off relationship and the drawn out end to my time in the US, leaving behind incredible friends and a sense of unbounded freedom. Both endings have felt raw, unjust, and unforgiving in their march towards their inevitable conclusion. To say I wished for a different outcome would be an understatement. And yet…here I am. Still standing. My hope for this next stage of my life is to find meaning in those endings, to not be bitter, and to be grateful for beginnings.

I imagine this blog will be many things or perhaps nothing at all. If you keep reading, I’ll probably muse about issues of politics, race and gender, returning back to the Bahamas, heartbreak, letting go of who we thought we were supposed to be, meditation, and the inevitable lost-ness we feel in our mid-twenties (and probably beyond – ugh). It will be a map of where I’ve been and where I hope to go. Feel free to join along for the ride.

Cheers to a year filled with magic & meditation.

Peace,

K

“I had diverged, digressed, wandered, and become wild…even in my darkest days, I saw the power of the darkness. Saw that, in fact, I had strayed and that I was a stray and that from the wild places my straying had brought me, I knew things I couldn’t have known before.” – Cheryl Strayed, Wild