Yin and Yang

The last week of my life has been tough, to say the least.  The first two days of the week contained two unexpected, tragic deaths, as well as a divorce.  In addition to this, a girlfriend of mine had a tragedy in her life by losing a nephew to the current heroin epidemic.  Another girlfriend is dealing with a new breast cancer diagnosis while going through a divorce.

We have so many difficult things to get through as life progresses.  I would have loved to spend the week doing nothing other than holding my loved ones in my arms.  But of course, that's not reality.  Reality is going to work every day while life continues to happen around us.  And as Murphy's Law so likes to dictate, it happened to be an extremely stressful week at work as well.

Luckily, there is a yin and yang to life.  And despite all of the extremely difficult happenings of the week, thankfully there were many wonderful things as well.  This week showed me the value of friendship, as I received much support from my friends.  I was also surprised with flowers at work from a friend after I had a difficult day.  I had the pleasure of getting my girls ready for their first high school dance.  I was honored to have a friend share something with me that he has never been able to share with anyone in his life.  He told me he felt freed by telling me and was very grateful.  I was glad I could give him the gift of acceptance and non-judgement.  I gave a hug to an overwhelmed co-worker, which she greatly appreciated (but I have always felt that a hug is a gift to both parties and she has been there much for me in the past).  This week also brought my sister home for a week, before she is off for a second year as a world traveler and volunteer.

In summary, life can be devastatingly heartbreaking as well as breathtakingly beautiful ... all at the same time.  And all we can do is survive it and live our best each day.  Some days will bring more hardships and some days will bring more joys.  Hang on for the ride, My Loves, for those good moments/days make your heart sing.

Yinning and Yanging,

Me


Motivational Moment:

Life can be hard and tragic at times, but it is during those times that you have friends and family to lean on.  And then, during their rough times, you can offer your support.  I urge you to reach out to your friends and/or family when you are experiencing lows in life.  And above all, hang in there, for tomorrow may bring your day of unexpected, yet beautiful joy.

(On a light-hearted side note, when I was looking up the definition of 'yin and yang', I was surprised to see this on dictionary.com: yin: "negative, dark, and feminine"; yang: "positive, bright, and masculine".  Wait ... what?!  Why is feminine equated with negative and dark whereas masculine is equated with positive and bright???  I don't know about you, but most of the cheerleaders of life that I know of are females.)

Love and Hugs,
SG