Thursday thoughts...

“The pain does grow less acute, but the insidious palace lie that we will get over crushing losses means that our emotional GPS can never find true north, as it is based on maps that no longer mention the most important places we have been to”. 

Anne Lamott

Today I am pondering life, which in turn sometimes has me pondering death. December is a difficult grieving month for me, and I have come to understand the cycle of sadness that arrives early in the month and then gradually lifts as the world keeps turning.

Anne Lamott is such an interesting observer and writer - she fits into small spaces of the heart really well.  In this quote I love her phrasing and description of "the insidious palace lie". To me this suggests the unspoken ideas and beliefs we all buy into because it makes it easier for somebody - possibly those in power - to have us think this way.

And death and grieving and mourning and missing and aching and forgetting is a great source for these overarching belief systems to tell us how to behave, and what is basically expected of us I think.

Her description then of how, if we never say their name, if we in fact try to "get over it" "move on" etc we can find it hard to chart the future, because a hugely important part of our lives is being ignored, dismissed or has disappeared from the map we might use, describes things really well I think.

It is a comfort of sorts to understand that our maps have really important bits missing now; and in part the job is to work out our bearings from just the hints or shadows that remain.