Looking for Myself

Some people just have a knack, an inner strength, for thriving during surviving a disaster. I don't know where it comes from, that ability to get up and get on with life. They seem able to put things in perspective, find joy in their lives, in the world as it has changed around them.

I read yesterday on the Compassionate Friends Facebook site that losing a child changes you forever and when well-meaning people want you to get back to your old self, that the comments were all in agreement:  you are never your old self again and you have to find your new normal.

How many other tragedies leave people in this place:  having to find a new normal?

I can only imagine what it would feel like to lose a child. It brings me to tears to think of it - and I've had friends who have lost babies and a sister who lost her son. I have not had it happen to me.

And so many say it is the worst thing that can happen to you.

And still.............. I find myself looking for myself and wondering who I have become. Who is this stranger? I am not who I thought I would become. And the world around me is unrecognizable at times. I can create only so much of it myself, and much is other's doing, and the rest, I suppose is what I didn't do that I could of.

Completely different, I am sure - but still, I wonder:  am I at a crossroads of finding my own new self:  my own new normal.