My youngest daughter has been dead for a week and a half now. What new starts can even be had? 

I want to unstart, unplug, join her in her pure positive energy, or at least find a way to sleep dreamlessly for the next four or five years until our investments have dramatically increased in value, I’ve lost a few more pounds, and this incessant, throbbing, sneaky pain has abated somewhat

The only TV I can even remotely escape with is watching Bob’s Burgers with our eldest daughter, Charlotte, or reruns of Mary Tyler Moore while sitting on the sofa here in the Vancouver we have been gifted for a few months by a beloved friend, compliments of her deceased 90-something mother, to grieve and howl and heal in as a family-of-three instead of the perfectly equilateral family of four. We’ve gone from a square to a wobbly triangle.

But there’s no way around it. Emily is dead.

As the children’s story about mud goes (and this is some pretty deep sludge): you can’t go under it, you can’t go over it, you can’t go around it – you’ve got to go through it.

Well, fuckity fuck fuck fuck. Ain’t that the truth?

So, through it we are going, with our boots sucking in the mire through each impossible step.

I hope there will be more happiness or at least originality in upcoming posts because this is pretty cliche writing…but if there were ever a time to restart New Start Every Day, this is it.

My new start for today and my advice to all of you who are involved in something tragic that involves much hugging is to hug HEART TO HEART.

I am not a tall gal and my neck and shoulders have been strained with pain for all the compassion people are graciously giving me in the form of physical comfort. I adore a good hug; I believe deep healing or positive energy at the least can be transmuted: a heart-to-heart hug (left breast to left breast) can even further transfer healing, while having the added benefit of reducing neck strain and requiring less Tiger Balm to waft around one’s aura.

That’s what I have for you today. Oh, and a beautiful verse from the Bhagavad Gita that has spoken to me even more than the obnoxious squelchy mud story that I am smack-dab in the middle of while writing:

न जायते म्रियते वा कदाचि

नायं भूत्वा भविता वा न भूय: |

अजो नित्य: शाश्वतोऽयं पुराणो

न हन्यते हन्यमाने शरीरे || 2-20||

The soul is neither born, nor does it ever die; nor having once existed, does it ever cease to be. The soul is without birth, eternal, immortal, and ageless. It is not destroyed when the body is destroyed.