A friend of mine the other day, when expressing his condolences, ask me if everything was back to normal.  I believe he was referring to my schedule, that had been difficult during my Dads illness, but I took it to mean my life in general.  I replied, “no, what is normal?  I have to make a new normal.” There are always changes when loosing someone close to you. Changes that are not a part of normal life for the individual, aka…me.

The day before my coworkers and I had a workshop on trauma and grief. The expert spoke about how grief is always with you and that you never heal.  Correct or not I can’t view my loss that way.  I believe it is a wound.  Some wounds are worse than others and take varying amounts of time to heal.  These particular wounds nearly always leave scars.  Some are visible constantly some are not.  Some wounds cause us to make large life changes and adaptations because of the injury that caused them.  These scars also make us even more unique.  They are signs of our life battles, our experiences, our journey down a difficult path.  They give us empathy, compassion, and they connect us.

It reminds me of an art piece I started about 6 weeks ago. It is a colored pencil drawing on  black illustration board.  The subject is just a bunch of green pipes.  I just keep adding pipes and adding pipes.  It kind of remind of the Microsoft Windows Screensaver.  When finished the board will be full of them connecting and changing directions constantly over the entire surface.  Reminds me of our day to day lives. How people are constantly added and are daily interacting. Some connect while others just pass through.

Take a good look at others. Look at their scars. They are not flaws or defects in beauty but evidence of a life lived.