Both Sides Now

I wrote a few letters this morning. One, to a friend of my mother, and another to my daughter. It's her birthday today, and I've noticed that on her birthday I think about where I was and what I was doing at the age she is now. Sometimes I tell her about it, and sometimes I write her a note or a letter. Or a letter on a note card, as I did today. 

I had a few insights when I was writing. Sometimes I notice that our lives swing out on a wide arc of experience and sometimes they come close and the same threads run through them. This is one of those close years. I also like to tell her something about the day she was born, little somethings that I remember as I am thinking about her.

While writing to my mother's friend I had an interesting insight about life -- this idea that we come to a certain age and we notice that we collect losses like flowers in a basket, and that we transform that awareness into understanding something wonderful about life. 

Each loss has another side to it. The wonder of what we had, what it gave us, what it taught us, how it blessed us, and the invitation to transmute the energy into something new that becomes grace for us even through the loss. 

Creating Space: Three Months of Showing Up for What's Showing Up is a daily writing practice. Turns out that a lot of this writing explores the landscape of grief. My mother died shortly before I began this writing, and this is what I'm thinking about most of the time these days.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.