A Happy Winter Solstice to everyone!
Todays the day we start the journey back to spring, an end and a beginning in the cycle that we live in. A point for reflection of the past and the future, where we have been and where we have yet to go. Hope its a good day for you all!
@Walan
My thoughts too, earlier today. Spring, the season of awakening (in my eyes, anyway).
We always looked on this day as the one that gave hope for the coming months. Because as we live in the woods, it is quite bleak during winter, since we get no sun until mid January. We are tucked away in a corner of hill side shade, whereas the fields across the way were bathed in the cold winter sun, which can be a little irksome!
As I mentioned elsewhere, the tiniest, most subtle changes in nature we became attuned to. But this year, it will be more noticeable for me, for obvious reasons.
And so it goes, the cycle of life.
@OnlyMe2 For my wife and I, as we worked together, it was our ‘works night out’. A night for merriment & mayhem, then a stroll through the park, smoking a joint, watching the moon through the fingers of trees. One last pub, a good single malt, then chips and gravy on the walk down the road. It’s still there 
I was never partial to a joint but J was. There are no street lights where we are so the moon shines quite brightly through the trees.
that maelstrom of shit came out of nowhere yesterday but today I am calm.
Funny ol’ thing this grief business isn’t it
@Walan
My editing of posts is sadly lacking. Do you still do the walk through the park?
@OnlyMe2 I’ve done it once since my wife died, first anniversary, lots of ghosts but better for it in the end. 2 years for me now. It’s very hard at the start, this site is a very good place help to understand. Yeah this grief business is a laugh alright.
To be honest, it’s going to get a bit more shit from here on in, there will be dark days, weeks, hours, but there will always be a dawn, things will change, it will get easier. Life goes on, the world turns, look to yourself
2 years…. How is it now for you?
11 weeks for me, but given the circumstances I have more or less accepted J’s death; it is what he wanted and nothing me, the professional teams, or anyone else could stop him. That doesn’t mean it makes it any easier, just a bit more accepting of what happened.
I know I will have a ‘new’ or ‘different’ life to what I had, of course I will, and with that in mind I will just suck up all this shit, live through it , roll with it, and hopefully come out the other end with at least some desire to have an ok life for the rest of my days.
Interesting times ahead….
@OnlyMe2 2 years? If I’m honest, things are becoming ok. It’s been a wild ride, but I think maybe I’m out of a tunnel for a while. Concept of time changes, before/after becomes less important. Working out how to carry my wife on with me was the beginning, everything else has come from there. It is interesting times ahead, bleak, beautiful, stopping. And then a glimpse of the other side. In the end, it’s only been 2 years
Agree ref concept of time changes/will change. But then ‘twas ever thus, I suppose, depending on personal circumstances.
Thanks for the posts Walan, I enjoyed reading them. I wish you well.
May the road rise to meet you, the wind be at your back
@Walan Likewise.
It’s funny you know, but since J’s death, I feel more at peace here in the woods. What’s that about? Perhaps because his demons are no more…?
I keep posting too quickly before I have finished my thoughts.
Here’s a Q. Did you find your thought process was screwed up and you struggled to put a coherent sentence together? Or is that just my normal level of incompetence outside of this context!?
@OnlyMe2 I’ve had to try to think back to answer your question, things do fade, even this, but at 11 weeks I was just starting to come out of the initial shock of it all, yeah there was a lot of brain fog and lack of cognitive skills, I guess my head was just taken up with the enormity of it all. It’s different for us all and things come back in different ways and at different times for each of us, but they do come back, very slowly, but you do come back.
I found going into nature really helped from the get go, still does today. I spent much of the first year walking a lot, an awful lot. It took me out of the house and away from triggers, it kept my body occupied and my mind was able to go where it pleased, there was always something to lift it all up. Even in winter life is pushing through all around us. You live in a beautiful place, I hope you get to make the most of it.
Agree ref nature. My window has been a lifesaver, I take loads of photos through it and could probably bore the pants off everyone on this forum with my musings about what I see.
Having some woodland is a lot of work, so I will need to make some decisions in due course of whether I stay here. Not yet, it’s too early, but perhaps later this year/early next.
Interestingly (going off on a tangent now), the past few years have been challenging, and my ‘go to’ place is down in SA in a national park. I travel there alone, no guides etc, just me and my cameras, and I watch the beauty of nature in its most rawest (is that a word?) form. And for a while early mornings, it’s like I am the only person on earth, alongside elephants/big cats etc, It’s a cool feeling.
Some get upset with nature, but it isn’t cruel. It just ‘is’ .
I watch the raptors here take rats and squirrels, and on it goes. I watch corvids take fledgling blue tits etc, but that’s why they have such large clutches. So, nature takes care of herself, and we would do well to take lessons from her.
Today are blue skies, I just hope the strong wind doesn’t take down any more trees.
So on the whole, I think I am quite lucky compared to many others to be so close to nature, living in it, with it. It’s an enormous help.
And here endeth the lesson for today…
Nice lesson
I wish I had more lessons to give, but I am out of everything at the moment. Was doing incredibly well, but taken a huge dive this past few days. I liken it to Snakes and Ladders, and I keep slipping down that damn snake, which on this occasion the snake is the highly venomous Black mamba. 
I need to take a step back, and see the bigger picture. Longer days and new life all around…
@OnlyMe2 It’s shit isn’t it! And unfortunately it doesn’t end, it’s not that it doesnt get easier or different or less painful, but those dark days still come, they get further apart and wane in severity and length but always remain a certain. I can only really speak from my own experience, but now they are often weeks apart, last for a few hours, and drift off as oddly as they arrive. I’ve become better at recognising them, the reasons, the ways to work with them and through them. As I’m sure your sick of hearing it takes time, patience was and is very much the hardest part of all this for me.
For a long time I guess I craved to reach an end point, a new start, a blinding moment of realisation and acceptance, so far that has never come. Instead I’ve come to acknowledge that this will always be an ongoing journey, I’ll never stop missing my wife, that will always hurt, but the emotions around that loss now vary, not so desperate, not so overwhelming, joy in memory has returned, sometimes I even laugh at the absurdity of it all, and that came as a welcome shock.
