Me Too

After a strong start to keeping up with my blog entries, I have obviously been off the grid for a while.  The truth is, the last month has taken a lot out of me.  Previously, I wrote about grief as a personal journey.  What I hadn't fully comprehended then is how that journey can effect others or maybe even more so how emotionally charged (or draining) it can be when it crosses paths with another person's grief.

Something that has been helping me process the last few weeks and even the past two years, is a blog I found.  Interestingly I happened upon it a week or two before my stepmom passed.  It is written by the male half of country music duo, Joey & Rory.  I watched them years ago as they came on the music scene trying to win a recording contract on a show called Can You Duet?  (At least I think that was the name.)  They are a married couple, who I don't think won the show, but went on to do good things musically anyway.  Though I hadn't followed what they were up to for years, the article that caught my eye and lead me to Rory's blog was about Joey deciding not to have anymore treatment for cancer.  And while I didn't even know she had been battling cancer, I did know what it was like to get a phone call with the same news.  No more treatment.  The blog gives honest accounts of what it has been like for both of them, holding on to hope under the reality of a terminal diagnosis.  Joey has a bright spirit and though the cancer is taking so much, it hasn't taken her shine.  That is how my stepmom was too.  I call it grace.

Though we'd all like to think that bad stuff doesn't happen to us or our families, the reality is it does.  And when those things do happen, if we are brave enough to honestly share our experiences - like Joey & Rory are doing - it creates a connection.  It allows people sharing in a similar struggle to say, me too.  I know how you feel.  I've been there too.  And in that little moment, when the me too connection is made, it lightens the burden just a little a bit.

Here is the link to Rory's blog:
thislifeilive.com