“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” -John Lennon

I used to love the above lyric. In 2006, when I was a freshman in college and Facebook was still in its infancy (back in my day, you could only access Facebook with a college email address), I put this on my profile as one of my favorite quotes. The odds are good I had used it as an away message sometimes, back when AOL Instant Messenger, or AIM, was still a thing. Nowadays, though, I think it’s a little convoluted.

Life doesn’t happen to us; it happens in spite of us. Nothing highlights this fact more than the experience of clawing back to recover from the grief of a crushing loss. After the initial shock wears off, when denial and anger bleed into bargaining and depression (more on the stages of grief and my beef with most visual models of that nature another time), you reach a point where you have to pick up the pieces and carry on. When you do so, inevitably it is with a sense of bewilderment. While you’ve had the ground beneath your feet crack open and threaten to swallow you whole, nothing and no one else around you seems to have registered any significant difference at all. In spite of a shattering change that has brought you to stand stock-still, life apparently just…goes on.

If the mere thought of that – of life’s stubborn refusal to acknowledge its impact on you – makes you want to just scream into the void sometimes, well…you’re not alone.

My hope is that this blog gives me a place to scream into the void when I need to – and that maybe readers will draw some strength and encouragement from my screaming.

If, like me, you are a survivor of trauma, toxicity, abuse, grief, loss, and pain…if you have gone through journeys in the dark, or are still going through them…this is a place where you will find validation, support, and understanding. I see you; I hear you. I am with you.