Thursday, September 27, 2012

Survive, Emerge...Flourish

It’s been a really long time since I actually posted any actual thoughts on this blog. I was just listening to a friend tell me about how she was feeling about her jiu-jitsu and her current struggle and I remembered an early blog post I had written that I thought would be perfect for her to see. I found it and then read a couple of other posts I had written in...(gulp!) 2006!!! I wondered “How did I get to where am I today?" and then I wondered “Uh...Where AM I today?” So maybe I might have some thoughts to share with the “Blog-OH!-sphere" again...or maybe I won’t. No promises, but today, I’m ramblin...er...I mean...blogging. Where does the time go and where does life take us? I just read some posts from 2007. It was the year of my ADCC, the year of my divorce, the year that changed my life in so many ways, good bad and otherwise. Actually, that last part is a value judgment and there’s really no need for that because it is past and history and “It is what it is.” There’s no judgment needed. I felt a wave of emotional nostalgia as I remember the feeling of my world being a snow globe getting shaken up. I remembered the term “A new normal” and how we have to constantly adjust to what happens to us in life. Usually it’s more the traumatic things that we are more aware of and how we respond, react and just keep plodding down the road of life with the new battle wounds and scars that become a part of what makes up who we are. When I was about 20 in art school, I made a video documenting every scar on my body, it’s size and what it was from. It was my attempt to literalize the metaphorical. 25 years later...there are too many scars, both literal AND metaphorical, to document. Too many come and gone and faded and forgotten. Too calloused - maybe that’s a bad word choice - maybe “developed resilience” is better...resilient to the constant assault of life. Victorious in the daily struggle to survive, emerge and flourish.