Upon completing my first draft, there were big phone celebrations and celebrations with my husband and daughters. I had completed my first draft despite a meltdown I had the month before. She saw me succumb to mental illness and bounce back to finish what I started.

Watching the graceful heron swoop over the water, wing spanned so majestically. In all these movements in nature, I find peace. Not wanting for more, but consistently surprised by the next regal creature to meet my acquaintance. In the quiet of the evening and the lull of the water, I find peace. I find calm.

Perhaps it is overcompensation, perhaps it is because of the love that comes of it, but most of all, it is because I feel home. The bipolar disorder and all the mood swings are made worth every bit of it. Every year I fight through them to hold on to all that I am gifted.

We started to build a table. We drew up plans and we shopped for the wood and we started building another fucking table. The third one this year.

A soft embrace came over me, as if someone gently stroked my face and my hair. There was a peaceful calm as I saw the white snow over the meadows and farms, a beautiful glistening of the sun on the snow. I wanted answers, I believed in divine forces that keep us on our path.

Do I call myself a writer?

When the pictures in my head differ,

I see men in tweed, cigar and whiskey,

Women in turtlenecks, steaming cup of tea

Comfort, though many a times feels far from reach or even non existent, have come to find me in the most unexpected ways even if in impermanence, those feisty strong women lit a fire in me to live, to will to live in the most opportune and full of ways. ‘I love you’ was not uttered but our brief time together delivered the experience I was lost for.

Unexpected and warm.

I had a friendship with this 70 year old woman that welcomed me genuinely into her space, unwittingly as I was going through such hardship of health and isolation and pain and grief. She blessed me with her love as simply as she handed me a glass of water as she storied in her home.

People talk as if diaper shit is the shit, but let me tell you there is so much more in parenthood, the kind of shit you couldn’t have imagined. Just shit literal and not. There’s no preparation for what is in our future as parents.

Shit happens.