Hope and Inspiration

I have lead a lucky life, but I have seen many hard things. I have seen disease waste away my family, member after member, stealing generations from each other. I have seen poverty rob hope from my clients, one bill and hospital visit at a time. I have watched the remnants of familial abuse leave scars across the psyches of those I love. I have had my own life turned inside out with substance abuse and despair. I have seen my own mother's face slowly taken away, cancerous piece by cancerous piece. I have watched friends and family battle anxiety and depression, finding their own thoughts to be enemies.

I'm no fool. I know that I am lucky, still. For my own reasons. But I know what it means to feel lonely and vulnerable, out of control and a prone subject to disease and circumstance. It's hard to manage that. It's a challenge to acknowledge and accept, on faith, that there may be relief buried deep in your relinquishment of control. That you may, at a point, regain command of your future in some meaningful way. Letting go to find control. The oxymoronic caveat to our emotional lives.

It is rare to experience a moment in one's own life when you realize that balance. Rare and powerful. And when you can see that happen for someone you care about, it resists description. When you see someone relinquish pain and heartache on faith that their instincts about life are right, that they will bear fruit once planted. That, my friends is beauty.

I count Bold as a friend of mine. We've met in person only briefly, but I feel connected to him as a friend. Perhaps that's the commonality of loss, who knows. And when I saw his writing this morning, I found a moment of beauty. This is what life is truly about. This is beautiful and I will be a part of it for the long list of reasons disease has force upon me and my family. I will be a part of it because it gives me hope and purpose.

Please read it. I dare you to not be inspired.