#WriteWithMe Reflection: Week 5

Y’all this week…

It is interesting to me how it always works out that around some of the most stressful times of year, there’s a prompt or two that causes me to reflect on the road I have traveled, and the people who influenced and guided me to where I am today. So this year as I was traveling and having in-person meetings, and spending time with family and friends, having something like the prompts from this last week were timely and grounding.

As I reflected on the people who have changed my life, for better or for worse, I found myself recalling people I hadn’t thought about in years. I thought about people whose memory would normally have brought up excruciating and intense emotions, I thought about how their actions changed the trajectory of my life. I thought about the wheels they set in motion, a chain reaction that took me through pathways I had no business going down. I thought about the people I met or encountered along the way, and how their influence saved my life. Even when they didn’t know me at all.

An author, a character in a book, a radio personality, an artist, songwriter, kept me alive and gave me brutal hope where there was none and gave me something to look forward to. A neighbor, a passing stranger, a professor, a boss, a peer, a friend who poured into me a little at a time. The good in the world trying to right the balance, a community of healers offering balm and giving me the time I needed to set myself right.

I wondered, of course, about how far I would have gone if I hadn’t had to overcome the obstacles or climb the mountains that were in my way. I wondered about what I would have encountered, and who I would have become, without those positive drips that kept my cup from going dry. I wondered about whether I would be where I am now, without the trauma, without the little bits of light.

I don’t know.

There was a time when it would have thrown me, over a mental cliff, to think about these things. It’s probably good that I couldn’t take the extra time after my timer went off to keep diving in, or more then likely I would have gone down a rabbit hole. But I had other things to do. And I figured those people who took so much from me didn’t deserve anything else.

So much I do, so much of my life, is not something I have seen modeled before. At least not in whole. I am grateful, so deeply grateful to the people who have given me small bits, positive drips, little glimpses that showed me it was and is possible. I have no idea where or who I would be without them, and I am in a really good place with really good human beings.