the survival guide.

Thank you Suzi Lahr for inspiring this post.

"Let us not be alone because we are afraid to be who we are, let us be honest and embrace ourselves whole heartedly and fall in love. Lets fall in love with the world. Lets fall in love with ourselves. Then we can love each other the way we were meant to." - Erica Knowles.

There are some things you just need.

And regardless of cost or sacrifice you WILL get those things. They could be completely irrational, like " today I want a to ride a unicorn". But if that is going to get you through the day, strapping a horn to a perfectly normal horse sounds reasonable. Other times it is more simple than that; showering with your favorite shampoo for instance, or getting to your car 5 seconds before the meter maid stuffs a hefty ticket in the windshield. (whew!)

Everyone has a survival guide. The internal book, hundreds of pages thick of the things, places, people, odds and ends that at any point in your life you can whip to make the day a little more bearable. It is hit or miss, however, trial and error; sometimes you have to try a long time to close that book and finally open another, far more interesting and less difficult book to read.

I have met people who have not once had to use this so called survival book. Lucky them, I would say at this stage of my life. I seem to read several pages a day over the course of this past year. And I am not finished. Not for a very long time it would seem.

When you have something as potent as death take hold of every ounce of your life. You start to cling to things. This is the best way to describe the initial stages of survival. Anything that numbs the pain. I imagine this is how addictions are formed if one is not paying close attention. But lets be honest, no one pays attention to themselves when its easier to be sad and angry. The gravitational pull of negative energy will trump happiness every day of the week for as long as you let it. To breed the sadness and anger is easy, its wicked. It's the self-inflicted high stemming from crappy hand the universe has dealt you. And you will kindly give happiness the finger as you walk by.

After an undetermined amount of time, and its different for everyone, you start to consciously decide what is good for you ( this is where irrational unicorn requests come in). And at a snails pace, you will find small things that make days sustainable. You can still be angry, there is no time limitations for any stage of grief, they can linger a life time. But, the important thing is to know in accompaniment with grief, there is also, intermittent laughter. There has to be. And when those brief moments of good energy surface, there should be a humble recognition of such milestones.

I was told on 2 separate occasions that in this such a time, when you lose someone so close to you it is as if a piece of you has died as well, the best thing you can do is to lower the bar. Lower your goals. If showering is all you can muster then you applaud it as if you just climbed Kilimanjaro. Don't actually attempt to climb Kilimanjaro right now, start with the stairs to your front door. The world will not stop, and as many times as you say you wish it would, if it stopped now you would still be in this angry/sad/ survival state of mind. Life is not meant to be cyclical, it is meant to be progressive. One step at a time.

Today, I am writing from a state of mind I haven't known for a while. I felt like writing today. Something I have done for myself, and little for this blog. Maybe this is the next page of my survival guide? Who knows, I am very noncommittal these days, but today...today is a little different.

Included in my survival guide, I would wager that 85% of it is made up people who have made the last year, and more recently with the loss of my sister better than I could have ever tried to navigate this time alone. Both family and friends. And when the storm receded some there was less of a line between the two. The thread that connects your family during something like this only gets pulled tighter, and you receive a magnified version of the love that has always been there to begin with. There are thanks that I will never be able to say because I don't know where to begin. At some point I imagine that one amazingly perfect thing I will be able to say to each person who has helped me or my Mother, Papa, Sydney and Vito. But those words are yet to be invented it would seem. And the same goes for the friends in literally EVERY corner of the world that I could feel wrapping me in some sort of undefinable kind of love. Thank you.

None of us feel "courageous" or strong in this state, although countless people will tell us we are. We feel human. Probably for the first time we understand what that means. When you are forced into a scenario it brings about a reaction that is uncomfortable and you must adapt. You must learn. The last thing it feels is "good". But from an outsiders opinion, someone who has never experienced this before OR someone who has, recognizes that you actually ARE strong and those are the people who you should start clinging too and maybe eventually believe what they say.... someday.

Love and Miss you Erica. Bigger than the Sky.

alou.

**Pictures to come....**