For me, the dark spaces in my life are springboards to help me find the light.  Smashing up my arm three weeks ago, has reconnected me to my body in a way that I desperately needed.  After my mum died last year, I felt almost like a ghost walking through my life. I wasn’t really connecting to the people, places and things I loved anymore.  I was falling backwards, losing everything I learned after Laura passed.

Damaging my arm so badly has put me back in my body in a way nothing else has.  Every night I stroke my traumatized arm and hand, rub oils into the huge bruises on my arm and body and try to soothe the pain. In the middle of the night I dance around the living room to shake free the stiffness and aches, until I can sleep again. I see now the magnificence of the body I have been given. It’s amazing agility and its ability to heal so rapidly.  I can already stand on one leg (on my broken foot) and do tai chi moves with my fractured arm. The surgical team are super impressed. As am I.

And there is something else. Losing mum, I lost the lifelong source of nurture, love and safety in my life.  But the accident has shown me that I am still cocooned in love.  There has been such an out pouring of kindness and heroism from friends, family and extraordinarily from people I barely know or don’t know at all – coming to help me, to cook, walk, wash my hair, take me to PT and bring things to make life easier. I’m awed by the kindness and often reduced to tears.  An hour of someone’s time makes my day shimmer and my heart soar. And now that my dear sis, Andrea, (who dropped everything to be here with me) has gone home, I am not all alone. I don’t have only my departed loved ones around me to comfort me.  I have a very real, very amazing, community of people who are holding space for me and keeping me strong.  Bless you all.