Photo Credit: Lifehack
I thought that after I wrote my most recent blog, She Won, my period of silence would end. I thought that honoring my friend and sharing my grief would help me find my voice, again. I thought that I would return to writing on a regular basis. I thought that I would be able to gather all of the thoughts swirling in my head into a neat bundle and unwrap them here. I thought and thought and thought, and in the end, I thought wrong.
Even as I sit typing this, with my daughters’ two kittens curled up on my lap, I feel like writing, but the cat’s got my tongue. I have fallen silent, yet my heart and mind are clamoring to be heard. The problem is that I am not sure what they are trying to say. I feel like I am in a foreign country, where I don’t speak the language. I can hear words and detect emotions, but I cannot decipher what the messages are. I am in unchartered territory.
As I continue to grieve the loss of my dear friend and support another great friend in the fight of her life, I find myself taking stock of my own life. I find myself questioning everyone and everything, not in a negative or critical way, but rather in a thoughtful, yet slightly detached, kind of way. I have become an observer of my life, past, present, and future.
A theme has emerged. On a daily basis, I respond to the people, places, and things that I remember, encounter, and contemplate with one question. What does it matter? This question is not voiced with any hint of negativity or angst at all, as it comes from a genuine place seeking genuine answers.
Sometimes, the answers come readily. When I find myself becoming mired down in the mundane annoyances of life or battling my personal insecurities, more and more, instead of giving into them, I pause, and ask myself the question, What does it matter? The vast majority of time, it doesn’t matter. At all.
Shortly after Michelle lost her hair to chemotherapy, she recalled how we used to complain about our hair, and she laughed about it. It really is laughable, but it also is a sobering reminder how much precious time is lost on things that don’t matter.
Other times, the answers don’t come so easily, if at all, which is actually appropriate for life’s grander questions. I find myself examining who is in my life, what I am doing personally and professionally, and the current path I am on and where I am heading. I am asking questions of myself and others, and I am finding that the questions outnumber the answers. And that’s more than okay, for I know that the answers can and will come, when they are ready, and when I am ready.
That’s another story . . .
Categories: That's Another Story
That's Another Story 
Dear Kristi…you haven’t lost your voice.You are just experiencing it in a different more questioning way. Loss and grief have a way of making us question almost everything we believed to be true.I do love the question that you ask yourself, “What does it matter? ” Life is indeed too short to worry about the things we can not change or do not truly matter. I am holding you close in my thoughts as you go down this path of your life . You have so many people who love and care about you, including me. Peace to you my friend.
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Sheila, thank you sharing your wise words with me. I can’t thank you enough for all of the support, peace, and love!
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