It’s A lot

Living is a lot.

If you’re doing it right.

Living day by day, week by week, year by year is a lot.

Jammed packed with emotions and experiences and expectations and empathy.

In every single day

It’s been difficult to write sometimes because I have SO much I want to say, to reflect on, to call attention to, that I get overwhelmed and just don’t write at all.

In the last 36 hours alone was a lot of experience with empathy – as a superpower and as my kryptonite.

A lot of experience with frustration- as an adjective and a verb.

A lot of experience with nurturing – also as an adjective and a verb.

There was joy – the rescue of Israeli hostages

There was contentment – snuggling with my 4 yr old nephew and my daughter watching a movie

There was a-ha moments – reading Dr Seuss to my nephew and realizing if everyone would just read and absorb all those lessons we’d be a much kinder, accepting, self-aware society

Other a-ha moments – the slowing down of my own parents and the shifting dynamics that will eventually lead to caring for them as they once cared for me

There was fatigue – physically, mentally, emotionally

There was self-pity – parts of my body hurt and aren’t working and the things I can no longer do and the fear of a limited, painful future plant the seeds of despair

There was pride – in surviving and now thriving and in building a life worth living by the testimony of wonderfulness of those in it

There was excitement- in planning all the times I will spend, adventures I will have, memories I will make with those people

There was chaos and music and toys and noise and take out dinners and swimming and laundry and bedtime stories and temper tantrums ( from the tween not the 4 yr old) and and and

And then there was this, that came across my feed

Living is a lot.

Living is a lot of loving

If your lucky

And I consider myself very lucky

And blessed

To have a lot of life to live, a lot of love in that life and not a lot of time left until I turn the corner on the next big chapter of that life – one week/7 days.

And I’m ready for it!