Member-only story
A Woollen Thread
On Grief, Ambiguous Loss, and Loving Children From a Distance
The last year has been the hardest in my life. I have fought every little bit of it, trying to stay above water, but it just keeps on giving. There are light moments, but they are like candles in a grey foggy forest, no colour or shadows, and they don’t last long enough to give me hope. I have realised how fragile life is. How vulnerable we all are, how we live on a woollen thread, laying out a new direction every moment, even in our sleep. The thread gets stuck, tangled up with other threads. It gets coloured, ripped and muddled. Even looping around itself to create knots that you have to leave behind. There is no stopping this, it’s the inner workings of yourself, every cell in your body taking part in laying it out. You can look behind you and see where you have been, but not clearly for very long, because light and distance make it fade. Your glasses might fog up, and it becomes distant and distorted.
You pass other threads, some thick and straight, some light and wispy, and some colourful, crossing your path. With a growing understanding you want to reach out and help them up and to be strong. The unfairness in this world is right there for us to see, life isn’t fair or easy. It never was.
