The Box

After my dad made a miraculous recovery and returned home, I opened the box.

You know, the box where you keep all the emotions that aren’t safe to feel during the height of the crisis because you’re so focused on being strong, pragmatic, and hopeful.

I opened the box, and out spilled the grief, terror, and anguish of losing a parent. I know, I didn’t actually lose him, but I couldn’t deny the realness of it all, the reckoning that there will be a time when he won’t come home. I looked this loss in the face, and scared as I was, I let it grip me.

And I let my heart bleed for the world. For the daughters whose dads didn’t make a miraculous recovery. For the wives whose husbands didn’t come home. For the families who weren’t even allowed to visit the hospital, who didn’t get to say goodbye as their beloved took their last breath.

Oh, the box wasn’t done with me yet. Everything I’d been trying to bright-side my way out of since mid-March was waiting for me under the lid.

Out poured heavy disappointment—my travel guide, my 2-year blood-sweat-and-tears project, just happened to launch at a time when travel became instantly unsafe and even kind-of illegal.

Out spilled panic and anxiety—without any Eat Hike Love hiking events this year, my business would need to undergo a complete restructuring to stay alive. Plus, my part-time job was gone, a job I desperately needed to make ends meet, and it wasn’t like I could get a new one.

Out oozed the deep rage that comes along with feeling utterly powerless.

And yet, I still felt like I should somehow be able to figure it all out. Why couldn’t I face this situation with an innovate, can-do attitude? Wasn’t I smart and creative enough to transmute it all into something I wanted?

“Stop shoulding on yourself,” I told myself again and again. But the inner critics and bullies just wouldn’t quit. My life was a mess, they said, I was doing it wrong, and even this grief thing! Dad didn’t die, so buck up and get back out there to fix things already!

It was all too much.

I was not ok.

So I did the only things I could think of. First, I went off the internet and social media. Next, I went outside.

There, in a deep, wild canyon on the banks of an untamed river, I found some relief. The inner critics and bullies could not find me there. Instead, my grief was welcomed by the waving boughs of the trees and the puffy drifting clouds, who gently reminded me that death is life, and life is change.

My wisdom upon societal re-entry?

I don’t actually believe there’s such a thing as “doing it wrong.” But I do know that staying true to myself is a thing. And I know that sometimes that truth, that alignment, it doesn’t look how anyone thought it would look…including me.

So I’m taking some time for myself. To be with my grief. To let myself off the hook to fix anything. To let my vision for 2020 transmute itself into whatever it will be without my anxious, naive meddling.

I’ll be focusing on writing, because it makes me feel whole and it helps me make sense of things that are otherwise unfathomable. And I’ll be prioritizing nature time, of course, for the same reasons. As for everything else…shrug. I just don’t know, man.

My wish for you is that you have something you can do or somewhere you can go when you’re not ok. My wish for you is that this thing or this place brings you back to yourself, to comfort you and reassure you that you are enough.