Rediscovering Boundaries

I'm working on my next book, which also deals with the loss of one's child, and as such have been spending important and intimately tender time with bereaved parents over the last three months. It has become so clear to me that it is way too easy to lose oneself - confuse those most true compass points - when you walk into someone's profound pain with them. The work is now really kicking my metaphorical butt, so reestablishing my own boundaries for it all has become critical. I've felt myself slipping and sliding over rocks and within shoals that I thought I had already learned to navigate. Obviously a refresher helping me to retrain and move over this type of geography is necessary.

These beautiful and heartbreaking conversations continue to teach me that there is not time, oxygen or energy enough to learn all the things others have to teach me, but I'm meant to try. I believe I'm also meant to continue this difficult and fulfilling work ,and so I will. A few months ago a good friend gifted me a copy of Heather Lende's, Find the Good. This inspiring author's words led me to remember that I can find myself - time and time again; I just needed a reminder and a little rest, before I begin again. ". . . I know some truths, which have been shared with me by people at their most vulnerable. . . . I know that once hands are clasped, it doesn't matter who did the reaching and who responded. The comfort is in the pressure of palm on palm, of heart to heart."

Jane