Today, I am 39. I’ve safely set foot at the other end of 38, a daunting age that I’ve feared consciously or subconsciously since that day 29 years ago when my 38-year-old father fell and all our lives changed forever.
38 was daunting to approach and, at times, it was daunting to be. Some part of me feared the rug could be pulled out from under me at any moment. And I suppose that’s still true and will always be true. But, 38 sometimes felt like a threat as much as a celebration, loaded with the uncovering of buried memories and the unlocking of hidden feelings and fears.

But, here I am at 39. I’m glad to be here. Grateful to be here. Grateful to know me better. Grateful for the life I have, for the love and trust I have with Ruth, for my family and friends - those that have remained close, those that have become close in more recent years, even those who have grown apart. I am grateful for our time together, all that we’ve shared and all that you’ve taught me. I carry it with me. It’s part of me.

Life in general comes with much uncertainty. I think I’ve always erred on the optimist side and, when in doubt, have hitched my wagon to hope. But, what I’ve learned in my 39 years of uncertainty around the sun is that hope needs help. Hope is the beginning, an emergency tow to pull you out of the sinking darkness. But, at some point, you’ve got to open your eyes to see where you are, grab a tool and help hope help you.

The journey inward can be terrifying, but that little glowing grain of hope is meant to withstand the storm. Hope sits alongside pain. It doesn’t shun it and it doesn’t push pain away. It nestles close and whispers lullabies urging you not to run away but to stay, to trust your pain and feel, feel down to its deepest scariest uncertain-est depth and know that there is something down there for you - an understanding, maybe even a forgiveness.
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And, if you get lost, if you start to sink, hope will be your lifeline.
Thank you for all the love. My love to you.

Something that has continuously surprised me throughout my life (no matter how much I’ve been fully aware or accustomed to this) is that my child-self, the one who experienced much of my trauma and hurt and the engineer behind my defenses, has always been with me. At times, he’s been cowering and shaking, afraid of things my adult self knows I don’t need to be afraid of anymore. But, more often than not, he’s understood things deeper than my adult self. Much deeper. That’s why he built up our defenses in the first place.

My adult self is better at shrugging things off, at pushing pain and fear and distrust down, at swallowing hurt and doing “what needs to be done.” So, it came as a bit of a surprise to me that my adult self could ever understand that the shell that separated the adult me from the child me needed to come down.

The shell was there for a reason, one could even argue a good reason. There was pain, there was loss, there were questions whose only answers were hollow and deeply unsatisfying, “I don’t know” and “because that’s the way it is.” My child self knew enough to know that he wanted to grow and he felt that he couldn’t with all that brokenness. So, he built the shell around the broken parts, around all the unanswered questions. He did his best to let my adult self grow.

My adult self craved freedom, my child self craved security. So, the shell seemed like a good solution and we got a long way with that shell intact. We almost convinced ourselves that it made sense. But, eventually, we (all of me) were stuck. One part of me felt so much and the other felt so little. Neither was happy, neither was whole.

The shell needed to come down. We needed to see each other, we needed to trust each other, we needed to love and hold each other, we needed to be one. My child self needed to find the safety of acceptance in my adult self and my adult self needed to find the freedom to feel in my child self.

So…
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Together, we began to take that shell apart.