Fermember When. Sadness.

The last few weeks have just kicked my butt, okay, maybe the last few months.  It's not so much that I need to complain or vent about anything going wrong in my life.  I'm just feeling extra raw.  I've always been something of a sponge.  I can easily, way too easily, put myself in other peoples' shoes.  I take on emotions that are not my own, and before I know it I can't separate between what is happening to someone else and what is happening to me.

First I heard that Haregewoin Teferra passed away and she was an Ethiopian Angel that helped so many orphans in Ethiopia and brought awareness of their plight to the world through Melissa Faye Greene's book (which I am reading right now), There Is No Me Without You.

Then I hear of Natasha Richardson's tragic death and this one shakes my core.  I wanted to just crawl in bed and cry for her boys.  She has two sons that are 3 years apart and it just made me think so much about my boys, who are also 3 years apart.

She just radiates beauty, life and happiness.  I mean she hit her head on a beginner's slope, come on!  There are just moments like this, when you can't make sense of such a tragedy, that you question everything.  For a chicken, non dare devil like me, this just doesn't make sense.  Was she jumping out of an airplane? NO.  Was she driving too fast? NO.  Was she rock climbing up a mountain without a harness? NO.  Not that anyone doing these things deserves to die, it's just that you can make more sense out of it.  And I can tell myself that I will never do any of those things so obviously I will be okay....Gotta love that false sense of security!  Of'course what this all comes back to is mortality and how we live our lives.  I don't know her, but I get the feeling she spent a lot of time with her family and spent a lot of time being happy and even though I think it is completely unfair that those adolescent boys do not have their mother to hug every night, I think they had a great mother who wrapped her arms around them enough times that they will always know that they were loved.  So, it took me a while, but after I came out of my fog I tried to figure out what positive message I could take away from this tragedy and this is it: to hug my boys a few more times every night, stop sweating the small stuff, stop being so scared to take risks because no matter how much I try to be safe and keep my family safe I could fall on a bunny hill and it could all be over and then there would be all these things I didn't do because I spent so much time being scared.  Notice the good things, the little things...the hummingbird outside your window that idles just enough that you can see it blink, the dandelion that your little boy sticks in his ear trying to copy mommy's dandelion that is tucked behind her ear, the tough talk that your husband has with you to bring you back to what is really important...being happy, being kind, being present and being together.

p.s. I have no idea how to turn "off" the underlining, spent 20 minutes trying, but that's okay, it's just "the small stuff", GOSH DARN IT!!!!!!!