One Day You'll Do Something Beautiful With Your Pain

You always do, or so they say.

But right now... you be with it, let it crash into you, and try not to let it overtake you. Time doesn't stop for grief. Clocks don't run out of ticks. This, you've learned. Grief swoops in on an ordinary Thursday—your family at the dinner table, laughing and eating breakfast for supper, when you get the phone call you know will change your life.

Grief doesn't care. It doesn't care that you have other plans, or different ways you'd rather spend your time. You have to do it in the midst of living.

Sing to your baby. Plan her first birthday—order dresses and balloon archways for that tiny, revolutionary girl. Touch your lover's face—remember how he cried with you on the bathroom floor. Read Hemingway to your son. Get lost in the Halloween plans, the school calendars, the photo days, the master-lists. Listen to your daughter talk endlessly about fashion and beauty and things that seem so meaningless—even if you don't want to. That's where the life is.

So stay here. Stay present. Breathe through every awful, painful, overwhelming feeling. You know that's the only way.

Everything will shape you—the same way water carves stone, ever so slowly over time.

One day, something beautiful will emerge.

It has to.