5/10/22
Some days I feel stuck.
Some days I can recall what got me there.
Some days, when I’m feeling less than excited about life, I wonder how long it will take me to get back to joy . . . to choosing joy.
And most days, there’s a window into another wonderful world waiting to be opened.
For me, it usually revolves around dying to one aspect of life & allowing another one to come alive.
Dying has become my ally. There’s a letting go before having hands free to grab onto something new. There’s a fall that the bird learning to fly must go through before it gets to soar.
Some days the neighbor’s barking dog snags my attention. Some days the barking dog gets my anger. Some days the barking dog doesn’t even make it on my radar. Most days, me sending the barking dog some compassion is the answer. And with that thought, the dog literally just stopped barking! 
Who doesn’t need to die to some old part of themselves to start fresh? And who doesn’t have some grief around deaths they’ve been through? I talk to lots of people about it, and tears sometimes follow as they get real about it. We don’t go looking for it. We were just talking about death and truly living life. And in that context we gave permission to the losses and the raw, authentic, human feelings around loss to be felt. There’s just not much space for it in our everyday lives. The realness of feelings around loss gets denied in order to keep things churning. We were just talking about death, our most basic and natural, shared human experience.
The conversation sometimes starts with a vague interest in knowing more about dying. It starts as curiosity. It can start as having more attention on it because someone in life is visibly declining in their health as they naturally age. Sometimes it starts by wondering if you’d be good at this kind of work. Then, it grows into . . . “this stuff seems cool.” Like there’s some sort of key to life and where I’m headed here. And it sometimes starts as, well, “Laura seems excited about it, I wonder why”.
It also starts by noticing feelings wanting to well up each time you think about it, but having stuffed it down for so long, there’s no longer room in your life – to feel it. Or it can start with having experiences that shook your life so profoundly, but that were too raw or earth-shattering when they happened, to actually get words around them to share the story.
There’s a good reason you’re curious, but have ignored the discomfort of it. It can be tough to recruit witnesses. But sharing our stories matters. And moving through it, breathing through it. It doesn’t require analyzing it, just noticing it and remaining curious about it, and
just wanting to dive a little deeper.
Death can be our ultimate way-shower and litmus test on thriving in life.
P.S. I’m offering my class on death & dying starting July 12, 2022! THIS gets me excited about life!
