Complex and Multifaceted

My friend's mother has died, and my heart yearns for her, and all I have to offer is the raw stuff of my own life. I light a candle and my thoughts and prayers go with her. We have shared so much of our lives―and now this too, this too.

Observation and experience with my own mother shows me that mother-daughter relationships are full of wonder and awe. That is, wonderful and awful. Both-and. A "normal" mother-daughter bond (and what's normal?) again and again ties us into the concept of love, that most challenging, marvelous, difficult, many-faced prize of life. 

We go alone and together, marching along, step by step. As we open to others―slowly, petal by petal, shy roses unfolding―those rare and wonderful times happen when we experience ourselves as not alone and also not merged, and in those moments we have the chance to experience something as larger than our skin-contained lives.

I love my spouse and children, my siblings and other extended family, and I love my friends. How blessed I am to be meshed in this complex and multifaceted world of opened, unfolded love. You, too. Don't you know places where you open and share this too? Awful. Wonderful. Love.