First, thank you everyone, your messages have meant so much to me . . .

I am doing well enough to believe I am on the other side. Even writing this feels strange, as if I might have made up the difficult and frightening time we just experienced.

I say we because I was not once alone during this time, so much support and thoughtful intentional energy arrived and those closest to me carried me when I was not able to go any further on my own . . .

But there is a strangeness on this side of such a time, something I need and want to acknowledge. I think anyone who has faced a looming diagnosis of death and therefore life might relate to how hard one can struggle to understand what to do with it after it is over, where one is in this strange place where not dying leaves you . . .

Life as I stand and do the dishes is brand new because not so long ago simply standing was a hardship . . .

That I can walk for twenty minutes at a good pace is simply miraculous . . .

And even while realizing these simple pleasures are the gifts of life I still struggle to understand how I am to make sense of this experience. As always, I am questioning, asking why or how or what I am to do about whatever it is I am going through. Analyzing has been my control system for most of my life and now, as I regain strength and energy, after lying helpless and staring at the possible end of my life, I am unsure of how to put myself back together…

How do I shout out how much the breath and the strength of ones’s body counts so large in the quality of being alive and vital and… how do I make my return to normal somehow valuable and perhaps even useful . . . ???

The place after the place is what I am trying to talk about, to articulate . . . that is the struggle below my gratitude and joy . . .

So, I take pleasure in this simple task of doing the dishes and sitting at my table in the studio making connection with my work again and write here and draw in my journal and make space for whatever comes next . . .