"Black & White"

I have been incredibly negligent with my blog for just over a month. And I don't really care, so suck it, blog fans! You know I love all of you who take the time out of their busy day to read my ramblings, so a little abuse now and then will just help add to your need to read me, I hope. That and, "absence lets the heart grow fonder" and all that.
Why have I been away?
Because I have been in a funk. Been low, feeling blue/blah/blech. Although I have had one of the best month's ever, I can't quite shake the constant dark cloud over my head this last month or so. I mostly haven't let it affect me too much, but you know what they say...the blog is the first thing to go !
Also, writing is my rawest form of self expression, and although I can change my thoughts and patterns in the real world to reflect my inner happiness, it's the dark and twisty part that would take over here, my emotional state as translated by my fingertips.
I am in the business of loss/gain. People seek my services as a personal trainer for many reasons, but mostly because they seek one of those two things.
LOSS/GAIN
WIN/LOSE
CONQUER/FAIL
EMPTY/FULL

Lots of black and white in my industry, right? But don't all these things have relevance in our real lives - we generally tend to miss the grey and live at one extreme or another.

We don't remember the epic performance by a Canadian athlete who finishes 31st, do we?

We measure our successes, both Olympian and mundane, in extremes. WE WON! we lost. I LOST 10lbs!
i gained 10lbs. I RAN 10KM! i didn't do it fast enough. I'M HUNGRY! i ate too much.

But at the end of it all, aren't we the same person regardless? So why can't we sit somewhere in the middle and enjoy the whole experience a little bit?

I am dwelling on loss of late, and what it means to me, or indeed, the greater "us". I experienced in short succession, my father experiencing a health incident that led to him being in a permanent vegetative state. Through this situation, I also lost a relationship with my brother, and though we were never close, it stings nonetheless.
On February 19th, 2013 I lost my mother, Angela Faith Jones. Suddenly, as they say in obits, but not completely surprisingly.
I had already lost her in a way, but it didn't dull the ringing ache that took her place in my heart. You see, it was black and white thinking that led us to not be the mother/daughter duo that both of us so fervently desired. I love her with a daughter's love for her mother, and of all the loss I have experienced in my life, the loss of her left the biggest wound I have ever left untended.
Where is the grey area of loss if the opposing action is gain? What do we gain from losing people we love? As positive a person as I am, I'm not ready to contemplate that just yet..but maybe some grey.
If I sit in the moment and try to wrestle with the emotions of loss, I admit that there is some middle ground to be had. Memories to share with my children, funny sayings and mannerisms to giggle about, and lessons to be learned from my parents wisdom, triumphs and failures. Going to the cinema has become a chance to share a film with my Dad again, and watching Patrick Chan skate to Vivaldi's Four Seasons, a chance to cheer him on as my Mum would have. There is middle ground between the two extremes.
So for all that I have lost, I must realize that fundamently I am unchanged.What has physically left us remains in so many ways, whether the loss be person, pet, pound or pride. Nothing of importance fails to leave its mark, but we ourselves continue on, the same person, regardless.

I'm just figuring out this whole thing, so excuse my ramblings. Just a reminder that although life throws us some pretty big extremes - sometimes it's best to be content to sit in the valley and watch it all play out. There's lots to be learned from here.

Find Your CORE

Death is Nothing at All
Death is nothing at all.
I have only slipped away to the next room.
I am I and you are you.
Whatever we were to each other,
That, we still are.

Call me by my old familiar name.
Speak to me in the easy way
which you always used.
Put no difference into your tone.
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.

Laugh as we always laughed
at the little jokes we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me. Pray for me.
Let my name be ever the household word
that it always was.
Let it be spoken without effect.
Without the trace of a shadow on it.

Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same that it ever was.
There is absolute unbroken continuity.
Why should I be out of mind
because I am out of sight?

I am but waiting for you.
For an interval.
Somewhere. Very near.
Just around the corner.

All is well.


Henry Scott Holland