Check out  Something to Think About — If You’re Brave, the most recent post to Living in the Mystery at  www.MelodyBeattie.com/blog.  A guest blogger wrote the important story.

When I clicked the link to the guest blog in an e-mail  at 5:30 this (Sunday) morning, what I read jump-started my heart. I didn’t need coffee. It’s a reminder of something I forget: When fully lived, each moment becomes a miracle and a gift.

“When one door closed, another one opened.  Or at least a window did,” a friend wrote to me yesterday. Her real questions — the subtext –  showed in bold print even though she didn’t type them: When and why did that stop happening?

The big secret? Sometimes we stand, walk, crawl through (or sit in) that dark corridor for longer that we thought possible until the first glimmers of light appear. Then we hope that it’s sunshine and not headlamps from a train we didn’t see coming. It may take ten times longer than we thought is should, but eventually a door will open.

As they say in a group I belong too, “More shall be revealed.”

To get to the post, click the link above or on Blog in the column on the left side of this page. See you there later.

Melody Beattie

January 8, 2012

I wasn’t sure where to put this, but I wanted the members in the Grief Club to see it. It’s going to be brief — not my usual “mini-book” blog. But I need to tell you all how proud I am of you. To join a website, to make yourselves vulnerable, to reach out to others and let them reach out to you — it’s more than I could do when I was where you’re at.

I personally think you’re doing great — each one of you. I know some of you (if you’re anything like I was) may not even want to be doing well. (To me, doing good meant getting closer to accepting my son’s death and that was not something I wanted to do.) I don’t know; maybe I thought by not accepting it I could somehow prevent it, or make it not have happened. There’s an old phrase, “insane with grief” and I’m here to say, I was. My thinking wasn’t clear. I couldn’t balance my checkbook. I could look into the face of someone I’d known for years and not recognize who that person was. My short-term memory got blown out. I’ve never been so totally blasted by an event in my life. The biggest difference is that every other time, I accepted a problem as a challenge. I wanted to get back up.

Not this time. Losing my son not only knocked the breath out of me. It made me not want to breathe anymore — for a while.

I feel like a proud mother hen clucking about her ducks (bad metaphor, I know). But I feel so good about how you gals and guys are doing. I just wanted to let you know. I’m not a hugger (unless I know someone). But I’d happily give each of you a warm, genuine hug.

My best,
Melody Beattie