purposeful accidents
January 10, 2015 § 5 Comments
Most days I count my blessings before my worries, naming first the companions that lend me strength and nourish hope. It is a preference I learned first from my mother who always guided my mindfulness towards a positive perspective with frustrating refrains of overly cheerful adages and stern reminders of worse misfortunes. In motherhood, my worries are the balance of my children’s joy.
Some days there is a loneliness for the fears that alienate me from the sisterhood of friends whose worries divide us with complicated languages of need. On these occasions, it is a gentler love that offers borrowed strength; a kind smile, shared laughter, or fleeting distraction that helps us tread the water of our worries until we are rested enough to hold our own heads a little further from the threat of drowning.
Some days, the friend is a familiar stranger. Today I am giving thanks for the company of friends who lend us perspective on impossible days.
This morning’s errand to my least favorite grocery store placed me solidly in the path of a woman I know by heart more than name. Our experiences in motherhood have gifted us a language of compassion and courage that inform possibility in the face of exhausting doubts. She is someone who speaks in a subtext of understanding that allows me to drop the armor of false bravery for a more tender authenticity.
To this woman I met by chance in a manner I will forever feel was orchestrated by an architect of fate,
thank you.
scribblechic 
You have such a strong way with words and writing. I love your style!
Thank you. My writing is a work in progress, but a joyful venture.
love your writing. i always look forward to reading your posts! – bgw
Thank you, Brad. I love this familiar company of commenters. Occasionally I imagine we will all gather over a meal and unfurl a great truth, but I think there is something in the privacy of the written word that affords us each a greater measure of bravery as we dare to be more ourselves and less inhibited in our musings; like a pirate ship of poets on an undetermined course.
That’d be so fun to do. A dinner among familiar strangers. Sharing deep and insightful lines of thought.