Family

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Island Blog – Feelings Left Behind

We can lose years of feelings, yet remember moments burgeoning with them. When someone died, or was born, we know the date, but have quite forgot the feelings around that event. We get a glimpse of joy, of sorrow, of relief, of anger, of being there, as a person, remembering, perhaps, what we wore and who was there. Feelings flitter away. The sense of presence, of engagement, of inclusion, seem, to me, to float into the already past of such events. It thinks me.

How many of us can accurately come up with a date, when asked, one which includes lockdowns? Not me for sure. I start off answering a question, one that requires a datal fix, and I founder. It was four years. No, that cannot be. ok, 6 years. No again. And. I trawl, literally trawl as through a whole expanse of ocean, sky, time. I can feel my arms reaching back, lifting as I try to gather in an answer, wanting so much to gain a hold on ‘that time’, but I cannot. Then, when some semblance of datal knowledge (did I just invent a word there) arrives between you and me, I find myself alien to the facts, because I cannot find the feelings. This happened. I know it did. You just told me it did. But i am not there without feelings, so, basically, I am not there at all, although I was. I did get a glimpse (stupid word btw) of a sudden rush of something, but it was gone in a second, and I couldn’t hold it back.

There are so many memories I want to haul in like a fisherman, to pull ( with my own strength) into the boat I am now captain of, and to spend time bobbing in the salt, the wind, the sun, the storm, picking through those times, feeling them in my fingers, remembering them as I was then, as everyone was then. A memory bank, like other ocean banks where living is visceral and immediate, and time is but an illusion.

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Island Blog – Happy to Wash Up

Work today was wonderful. I spent many hours washing up, and I loved it. This task, the behemoth of cups and plates and tea infusers and cutlery and so much more, was my empire. It was my bag, to a large degree. I chose this task. I am, after all, the granny in the mix. Here, behind the dishwasher racks, the queen in charge of two deep sinks, the one in control of the water mix, I am calm as Yoda. When asked to step out of that safety, I felt a frisson of fear. It isn’t that I have a single problem about stepping out. You can put me behind a microphone, on stage, and before hundreds, and I will talk, sing, engage, easy. But this is different. It thinks me.

This bag is not mine. The young couple who have begun their own beginning in this beach cafe are my leaders. Perhaps there’s a thing in that. Years ago I ran a hotel, many guests, many dinners, many dishes, much baking, but I am not that woman now. That was another time, and that time has taken from me a load of skills and even more confidence. I am happy washing up. And that thinks me too. No, two and a half, if not three.

I remember, and clearly, the moment I decided to risk myself out there again. It was helped through observations of others at my time of life who appeared to accept their end game. I want to shout and yell and dance in the face of that. A wee walk a day. A visit now and then with a friend. A load of hours wishing the (very busy) kids will call, the grandchildren too; the hardly knowing who anyone looks like – it’s been, what months, since…….

I think the fight for the me in me is vital. I know it, hence my search for work, for c……connectivity, competence, confidence, connection, there’ll be others. I know that to collapse into the olding is an inevitable slide. I may be sliding, but, if I am, it will not never be because I let my old wrinkly self become my focus. Oh, no. My focus is out there, where life lives on and, btw, everyone needs a granny and someone who is more than happy to wash up.

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Island Blog – A Puckered Life

We all live one of those, times when the material beneath our feet is straight, taught as Oliver before Fagan. Others when the ripples and concrete risers trip us up until, despite our best intentions, we fall, smack, face down, bruised and bloody. Some pretend they didn’t fall, tending towards a fluff of tissue, many dabs, a flappy hand, I’m fine. I don’t buy into that flappy thing, the ‘fine’ thing, not when the fall is mahousive, even as I do get it when the fall is a nothing much. In which case, why bother mentioning it at all?……hallo old age. Back to the point.

I witnessed last week a tsunami of grief, was there, stood beside it, kept close. This is a real fall. Standing witness to such a mahousive time-blast was like standing in a storm on a cliff with no clothes on, the tilt-wind pushing overness into a done thing. I could feel the fall, smell it, touch it, even hear the music of it, the angst singing through every moment. I am glad I was there. (I’m currently looking for an alternative to the word ‘glad’. It’s so slamdunk, so, well, concrete.)

There was a big crowd, There were singers, solo and choir, readers, vicars with spice and pink hair. There was line after pew line of those who valued this woman’s life. In short, there was a tribute which blew me away. Today, at a very happy meet of friends around a table, all of us crafting something or other over coffee and cake, we talked of what we might like to be said at our own funeral. We spoke of where and how we might be buried. We laughed, obviously (gallows humour) about what we might want to wear once our spirit had left us like a butterfly. We also shared times in our long lives which had tried to trip us up, and failed.

Life is beautiful, and I just took it for granted. Oh, I’ve met the puckers a lot, and often, but I had the feet to run, the body to lift over any ruts, the strong arms to gather up my children, the mind to accommodate, and the resilience to, not just survive, but to make magic in the present for those I love. One big life is gone. What do I owe her?

To live on. To bring magic, as she did. To welcome everyone, to lift when I can, any stumbler over this puckered life.

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Island Blog – Thinkscape

I’ve done a few things today. In an elemental olding, I am guessing a few things amount to much. It thinks me. Some, no many, don’t get this far and there are times I wish I hadn’t. Not many, though, to be honest. I meet and greet young people, and I see my own young life, the way nobody can take this away thing. I love to see the tipsy don’t-care attitude. I remember it. Nobody should ever tamp out that flame.

What I have learned, through copious reading in a zillion genres, in talking to others, has taught me fire. I meet, and daily, awful stuff in my age group. I see, and did today, in a short, happy conversation with a woman who dressed so sassy, so wild, so beautiful, that I could not guess her years nor that she is facing a lot of something. We lit a fire between us, like we were young again and checking each other out. It was a few minutes, but I saw her and she saw me.

In the waiting, the olding, there are a lot of Thinks. Time rolls slow, or it can. Those of us previously agile and in some way compromised and let me say this out loud, and as a challenge to them, youneed to stretch more, to reach more, to find more, to do more. It is so easy to sit and to give up, ‘bring me this, get me that’. If the ‘more’ is not an option, that’s good enough. It has to be enough for me in a day when I am doing little else. And the reason for this doolittle, not-much bollix? Ah, now there’s a thinkscape . A tinder burn of a long life, a fire burn of memories, of dances on sand, under moonlight, with a band who never knew when to stop; when the morning arose long before me and brought a ferry in to lift me over a bumpy tidal flow, when i honestly thought this would go on forever. I like the Thinkscape. Takes me above land, under sky, halted for a few moments in memories.

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Island Blog – Travelling in Light

Last full day, today, under an African sun, and, although I am (always) sad to leave this beautiful country, I am ready to fly back through space and time, to land in my own country, my own life. Visits to Africa heal me, help me move forward in renewed hope, and also allow me, by some magic, to let go of whatever gave me ants in my pants during the year before. This time, I had some tough shit to go through, the legacy of which rippled on through my body and affected my mind in ways that surprised me. I was, I thought, quite in order with myself. Then, when I fell very ill, and cancer was discovered, I still felt in order with myself. I am strong, a warrior, I can overcome this, or so I thought, and, to a high degree and with the assistance of an excellent surgeon and tremendous medical support and expertise, I did, or we did. But the body holds the score, as we all know, so that, even when a mind is made up to survive and thence to thrive, the body lags behind. In turn, this lagging thing affects a mind, so that, although I had moved on, I was constantly reminded of a new frailty. And a new strength. It was confusing, as if a fight was on between body and mind. No matter how clear I was on my decision to move on after such a trauma, I was often reminded that a new compromise was required.

This visit, around family, under sun, inside adventures and conversations, I rise. Not by mental force alone, but with a gentling of body and mind, as if they now move together and as one. I said I knew myself before, but was still aware of anxieties and hesitations around my new limits. Now, I work with those limitations as if they aren’t limitations at all, but just who I am now. And I have learned from this change, this rather strange pretence that I can force a collusion between mind and body, regardless of trauma, as if it was nothing much and blow it away on the winds. That doesn’t work, I know it now, even if that determination has held me up and bright in 2024. What I needed was time to heal and the patience to accept that truth, to walk with it, open and humble, until all of me finally got together again.

We have had many wonderful adventures, all the while sharing ideas and jokes, plans and observations. We have watched the wild Atlantic and swum in the warm Indian Ocean. We have seen humpbacks breach, dolphins burst the waves wide open, colourful birds flying overhead; we have dined and wined and picnicked and walked through Fynbos, Fleis, and across miles of white sand ,peppered with an array of spectacular shells I never see back home. We have seen the sun set the ocean on fire, stayed with friends who live between mountains so high as to disappear into cloud. We have wandered among shops in Capetown, laughed at the terrible driving whenever it rains, and stood in awed silence beneath the upside down stars. And all the while, I could feel the gentle hand of a natural healing.

I know I fly back into winter, but there will always be a winter. I know I don’t have enough warm clothing. I know I will have to drive back to the ferry through tricky weather and that the ferry may not sail through gale force winds. I also know my wee home awaits me, the wood burner, the candles, my friends, my community. I return as me, but renewed, re-jigged, at peace with my life, because I have travelled in light, one that is strong and sustainable, one that tells me who I am, and who I am is just fine with me.

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Island Blog – A Spangled Lacuna

In every life a little rain must fall. The trouble is that we, as negatively wired humans, tend to collect up all those rain days until the sunny ones get tired of shining, and all but disappear. Folk around us can say ‘Look on the bright side’ until our ears deafen, but it makes little difference. They can also suggest that we focus on the positives, but blind inside our fog or darkness, we just cannot find them. Am I a ‘glass half full’ person, ‘glass half empty’ or ‘no glass at all’ person? Oh please…….too much platitudinosity! In truth, we are all three of those, at times, all of us, even the ones who exhaust us with bounce, their faces always lifted, the lie a cloud in their eyes. None of us are Either, nor Or, Black nor White, for we are both at times. A million colours and a million greys at others. And to feel disallowed when wallowing in black is to feel corrected, fixed and re-routed which does little, if anything at all, to help. We long to be heard, listened to, accepted, befriended, our injuries noticed and respected, and only then can we decide to lift our heads from the ground. It is not easy to find such support outside of a counsellor’s cocoon, because, bizarrely, we all feel the need to elevate a ‘fallen’ one, seeing it as encouragement and inspiration when, in truth, it only serves to highlight the state they are currently in, stuck in mud, pale and lost, beaten down by life.

When I, rarely, flip through social media, I notice there are a gazillion ways to lift my spirits, wisely worded, some ancient, some contemporary, and they all make perfect sense. To my mind, that is. But this is for others, surely, not for me down here in the oubliette. I can see the daylight, yes, long for it to surround me as it seems to surround everyone else in this whole coloured-up world, but I cannot reach it. I am unworthy of this light, obviously. The platitudes and uplifting phrases are as irritating as bluebottles around my head, buzzing out my failure to keep above ground. Until, that is, my eyes adjust to the dark, until I can smell my own decay. I might look back on my life already lived and recall a flash of rainbow, a shift of perspective, and remind myself that I played a leading part, and I played it to the very best of my ability. It was I who made that choice, that decision, took that first step, activated a change. Nobody else did. It was all mine, and still is. Yes, I made mistakes, some ghastly, but I made something happen from nothing. My head lifts as the sun glides overhead and I feel the warmth brush my face. My shoulders soften, my mind gentles, the tanglewire now compromised. Yes, I have been weakened by this decline, but I am stronger too, because I am done with this darkness, and it is I who found my way here, and I who will raise myself up again, with new thoughts, a new energy, singular and vital.

It is precisely because I have become lost in this lacuna, that I have learned just how strong I am, how resilient, how much I want this one life to be all it can be. Others’ lives impact on my own, of course they do, and some have taken all I can possibly give, too much in fact, I gave too much. What was it that led me to give myself away, to believe that, in doing so, I could ‘fix’ all their manifold human problems? We are taught to give, are we not, that to be ‘selfish’ is to be a ‘bad’ person? We are also taught that everything healthy grows from self-love, without which we cannot effectively and wisely love others exactly as they are. If, however, we build ourselves from the amount of love we are given, and that is often lacking, we tell ourselves we don’t deserve it, anyway. We are easily hurt, put down, can feel judged and misunderstood, awkward, unseen, unimportant, invisible. Just as in the oubliette.

I see a rope, one I hadn’t noticed heretofore. The spangle-light dances off rocks, footholds. I rise and stretch my limbs, turn my face to the sky, and begin to climb.

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Island Blog – See You There

We do what we do, what we can. We step out there every single day, sometimes with the underworld sludging our forward movement, all those doubts and obsolete plans and the damn chatter monkeys that always fill the spaces. But we keep going and that is a very big thing. Being human, we have a strong hold on the life force, even when we might consider letting go. Finding a reason to be cheerful can be a daily frantic search through the dusty dark corners of our capacious minds, but we keep looking anyway, because the alternative is a steady sink into a pit with no footholds, and in the middle of the biggest of Nowheres. Even those around who make out they never feel low, sad, unhappy, depressed, disconnected, doubting, hopeless or desperate, do, believe me. They, perhaps, just see any such admission as a sign of weakness, and, perhaps again, they have managed to build multiple layerings of protection atop any rise of darkness, until even they believe it doesn’t exist.

Although it is over four years since Himself took off to join his mummy and the angels, I have never really mourned for him, at least not in any messy breakdown sort of way, nor into uncontrollable tears that might have rendered my nose blocked, my head pounding and my face a strew map of a continent randomly divided. I don’t want him back, not as he became, anyway. If I miss him, I miss the way he could lift my spirits, comfort, encourage and support; the way, I think, that he showed his love, not being a romancer at heart; the impulsive Shall we go out tonight invitations. Walking just now in the sunshine (how wonderful to even write that word!) I feel a powerful rise of emotion, the roaring in my ears which once would have heralded tears, tears I haven’t been able to shed for many decades. As I bring his face onto centre stage, he is young again and grinning wide, his eyes bright. Do I miss you? I ask him, knowing that I don’t. What I miss is Love, pure and simple and yet not simple at all. I can feel love all around me, from my kids, my sibs, my friends, my fellow islanders, but that love is not the same as one between two people for whom the other is the only other; the only one you don’t mind being stuck with in any situation, like a tailback, a broken down lift, outside a ‘sorry, no tickets left’ venue, anywhere, everywhere. There is always another option because the most important element in any situation is being with that other person, not the stuff around it. What a rare and beautiful thing, and one I realised, saw super clear just now, on a walk I didn’t complete.

So, I am open and honest about feeling deeply sad for myself, for my loneliness, full of self-doubts and confusion in my go-for-it navigation of a world I never wanted to inhabit. As I bounce out there like Tigger every single damn day, grinning, thankful, uplifting others, making friends, cracking jokes, it is my truth because this attitude is a daily choice, not a lucky-for-her gift from birth. Most days, really most of them, I believe in this attitude, and then comes a day when I want to cry me an ocean, never mind a river; when I just want to hide away, to not be seen by anyone, to disappear completely. I know, for sure, that everyone has such days, but that is not my point. To be honest about it, particularly to oneself, is to fully embrace the holistic human state instead of pretending everything is tickety boo all of the time. We all are the drivers in our own lives, and nobody wants to slop around in a cloak of gloom and misery, but it is exhausting to stiff-upper-lip (whatever that means) all of the time. And, it isn’t reality, and I honestly believe that good people who are doing their very best to live life to the full might stop judging themselves so harshly. Accepting down days, admitting loneliness, self-doubt and so on, isn’t comfortable, but it is real and honest and normal and understandable.

Social media is uplifting twaddle a lot of the time, although I have uplifting quotes stuck to the walls of my kitchen, and they do help. The hourly news are about as ghastly as can be. Some days feel just as ghastly. Our culture is all based on couples. Two steaks, two tickets, two, two, two. One to hold the front end, the other, the back; one to check this, the other to check that; one to joke, the other to laugh; come for supper invitations are usually for two, adventures are shared and somehow a tad pointless alone. Going out is always uncomfortable at first as an unwilling single. Do I look ok, is this the right wine, should I mention this, how can we (we) avoid that, or him or her? Somewhere in between, we live on my lonely friends, doing our best, falling, rising, laughing, crying and then doing it all again, over and over again until the wind changes and our candle gutters to the wick, once and for all.

See you there. It’s guaranteed I’ll make you laugh.

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Island Blog – The Beyondicous of Me

They do it all. They use every single minute of their time in their ‘home’, connecting with their roots, roots none of us knew about until fairly recently, and roots which have explained the feeling of being HOME when on this Hebridean island. For them, t’is obvious. They were either born here or came as wee smouts, one still in terry towelling nappies. Good lord they were a struggle to force into anything beyond huge lacy knickers under a skater dress, which tutu-ed no matter how much mother ironed the skirt. Boys (in blue) just looked ridonculous, all bottom and with a bow-legged gait. I digress.

Family have been here. I’m guessing you guessed that. Just a week, but not just a week, because of all the moments they filled with adventure. Come on, let’s go! I heard that many times even if I was just beginning on a bacon roll. Just bring it, just get on, just hurry up. I am, at heart, an adventurer. I love spontaneity, and the let’s go of most things, and this dynamic wondered me and remembered me, the me who experienced this bonkers and, mostly inconvenient, adventureness, and did I go back then? Maybe, but maybe not. I would have been shackled down to dinners and guests and the endless wotwot of hospitality, not that I felt hospitable a lot of the time. Did I miss my children’s rise into the wild, or did I, somehow, by waving them off time after time, with bacon butties or cake or a kiss, teach them what was always in my heart? Go, go, go my beloveds, go, and have the best fun. Perhaps.

This time, those ‘children’ are fathers and mothers, with their own adventurers, and, I am delighted to say, this adventure thing is very encouraged. Seek, Ask, Search, See, don’t just look. Stop, Notice, Challenge boundaries, Find opportunity and connect. Seize the moment, the sunset, the sunrise, the call of the wild, and follow, follow, follow. They’re like wild creatures when they are here, my kids, and they bring their own kids to catch the scent of it, the catch of connection to adventure delivered down the line, colouring the hearts and minds of young absorbers.

They caught the tide and found ‘out there’ beaches for a barbecue. They watched the sun sink into the Long Sea as oystercatchers, curlews, many gulls and whitetails cruised the pinkling sky. They traversed woodland walks, walked the machair, swam, dived, paddle boarded, fished for crabs in the rain, picked blueberries, raspberries and blackcurrants from the lovely community garden. They caught newts and released them. We talked about clouds and rain and colour and sunshine and how steam clouds granny’s glasses when she checks a pizza in the oven. I watched the grand girls, backflip, drive my quad barefoot, show me a better way to do this, and that.

They beyondicous me. And it is a joy.

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Island Blog – Ceilidh Craic In it

Two days ago, I drove the looooong single track drive to the South of the island. To be honest, I wondered if I would ever arrive, or if, instead, I would keep going until I fell off the world altogether. It is only a couple of hours, agreed, but because it is single track for most of the way, and tourist and local traffic is relentless, I got really good at swinging into passing places. Over and over and over again. Most tourists in their wide-hipped or shiny modrun ( a scots word) vehicles with electronic everything, including passengers, acknowledged my swinging thing, allowing them to slide by me without braking, but many didn’t. I thought about that, my smile wide and my warm hand held up in a hallo, you’re welcome, fingers moving like seaweed in gentle tidal flow, but in my belly there was, I confess, a switch from I LOVE THE WORLD AND EVERYONE IN IT, to YOU WERE NOT BROUGHT UP RIGHT. I did say it was a confession, and I am not proud of that switch. It is not how I choose to live. I knew who were the real locals, the farmers, fisherfolk, familial cars bent into unusual shapes and with a pause before I swung into safety, just checking which one of us would initiate a convenience to the other. I also noticed the resident young, and I was young once, in a damn hurry and with my fed right up with all these bloody cars littering a simple and gently winding road to home, to my home, to their home. I allowed their own switch to ‘Roar’ as they buffeted my Pixty mini so that she shook from an intensive rap, finally slowing to a Bob Marley. We breathed together, she and I. And we smiled. The world is going too fast, I said. No, she wiggled her last, not the world, the people innit. I laughed. Innit? You imitating Sacha Baron Cohen? She paused (I’ve now let 5 fast tourists create an almost whirlwind around us, and noticed a stand-off up ahead as the bus sits like a planet, refusing to cowtow to a silver Mercedes opentop). Woodentop, I mutter. What? Sorry, Pixty. Innit? You were about to tell me.

In it, she smirks and if she had eyes, they would roll. I watched the plovers on the scarp beach, the granite rocks shining with salt water, catching the white light, for there is no sun evident. Seaweed lifts and lands, lifts again, and people are here, enjoying a picnic, laughing with family, taking what they so need from this wild and electric place. I wonder if any of them passed me and Pixty, acknowledged, or didn’t, my swinging. I remember tense new journeys, fractious children in the back, dogs panting for escape, my own belly in a twitch. Keep positive, keep positive, not much. further children, nearly there and all that shit. I remember.

The Ceilidh craic was spectacular. A real community fund raising event, and I remember them too. We don’t really have them here, in the north, in the north which (or is it that) has moved into the too fast life. I saw, again, the familial bonds, the inclusion of children at a ceilidh dance, I shared the craic with those, many of whom I didn’t know and some I did, who have stories, valuable stories, precious stories. I loved every minute, working in the kitchen, bringing out cakes, baked by a woman who marvels me. I met sisters of my husband’s carer, who lives nearby, and I could see the likeness long before introduction. I watched young people pipe, fiddle, sing in Gaelic. I saw and heard young life holding on to the stories, their history, the story of Mary Macdonald who wrote the tune, Bunessan, thereafter made famous as Morning Has Broken, the reason for the fundraising ceilidh. Her memorial is crumbling and needs cash to restore and protect.

Songs and dances abounded. Strip the Willow, the Boston Twostep, the Canadian Barn Dance, and more. Bloody Chaos on the floor, very few having a scooby about what steps to take, but up there, anyways. Cakes were consumed along with endless pots of tea. The children kept pace. I watched the smiles, the laughter, the sharing and the bond these folk share, so remote, so many passing places t’ween them and a shop, an ambulance, a surgery, a chemist. And, as I left the next day to homecome, they stayed in my thoughts, because the strength of that community is something that draws me in. In it.

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Island Blog – Lemons, Zest and Loving

I was angry, and anger, in my life has played two roles. One confounds and limits, sinks me. T’other fires me up like a rocket. I have heard so so many people tell me, intelligent people, I thought, who told me any anger is a BAD thing. Much research and even more inner work has taught me this is not the truth. Anything in ‘overdose’ is damaging, yes. Any emotion without reflection, introspection and direction is damaging, yes. But with inner work, intelligent work, and with a heart that does not want to entertain any controller, and certainly not the control of any emotion beyond the timing of its natural flow, anger can turn into a flower garden, a new path snaking through old undergrowth, old limitations, old beliefs, old stuff. Anger is random, sudden, a boom to the gut, the heart. It traverses a whole body and not just then, but perhaps for days, weeks, months, but if what a goodly loving and trusting human being wants are peace, dance, chances and a new path, the latter will reveal itself. It always, always does.

Yesterday, and, if I’m honest, the day before, too, I just wanted to sleep. And so I did. Although Sleep and I will never be easy bedfellows, separating many times during the hours of darkness, whilst the oystercatchers make a right bloody fuss of pretty much everything down on the shore, I could sleep these past two days. Not all the day, but in bits and bobs for it was necessary that anger calmed his boots within me. He is calmed. I went to work today feeling quite the thing, as they say on this lovely island, and I know, now, what I know. I let go, or try to, of self-hatred, of the sting of rejection, the confirmation that I am not the vibrant, exciting and fun-loving woman I believed myself to be for a few short weeks. Well, I try to let them go, tell myself to let them go, insist in fact that they bloody go, and they do for a short while until they curve back to me with renewed energy. It is hard work living alone when that is not what I want. Others have confirmed this belief. In order to be cheerful, I have to start the process. In order to see a friend, it is I who must make the call. In order to laugh, I must pop one into my mouth prior to a visit to the shop or into the harbour town. It is, oftentimes, exhausting, all this DIY living. If I want to build a new life, I must find the tools and get to work, I know this, and, before he came to mess things up, I was actually finding my stride. Now, back at the start, I have to summon up enough get-go to get going all over again, erasing, as best I can, the memories of happily shared days, of conversations, of plans and of companionship.

But, (again) I have fire, yet, in my belly, fire for life, for a good life, for the one I want, and no-one can extinguish that fire, unless I hand over the water bucket. Which I will not do. There is too much zest in my thoughts, my heart, my imagination, my brilliant brain and strong body. I think of others who have been rejected, of children, teens, older women like me, men, boys, those whose sexuality brings in black storm clouds, the marginalised, the unwanted, the extras in this game of life. I am fortunate, indeed, to have so much loving support from family and friends. And, one day, I will laugh at this, at myself, my reaction, my sinking into negativity. I will say, Oh, this happened to me, once, trusting me, loving me, and, believe me, time will heal the cuts. There will be scars, but scars are beautiful things. Scars hold compassion, empathy and understanding. Love your scars because, one day, you too will laugh at this pain, and you too will be quick to hold another who has been rejected.

This is how we love the world.