If the above assemblage of photos and images looks a little bleak it's because I assembled them to evoke the feeling a person has when they've lost someone they love and the incredibly isolated feeling you have. You feel as though you're observing the world around you more than actually being in it. The shadows that dance on the side of houses and buildings at sunset that used to stir a feeling of magic in you, now add to the feeling of separation you feel from the world and make the pain even worse.
I've entitled this new section "Passing Through" after the incredibly striking song of the same name from "Citizens Of Boomtown" because I'm struck by how deeply the lyrics and melody capture the feelings I've described. The reason for my creation of this section is to provide a place for anyone going through the wide array of feelings and things you go through in the aftermath of losing someone you love to come to to find some sanctuary. I'm going to be writing things here that have helped me in the aftermath of my Chihuahua, Wilbur (pictured with me in my profile photo), being murdered by a bull terrier while we were walking on March 14th, 2019, and also in the equally painful loss of my Chihuahua, Beakey, who I adopted some time after I lost Wilbur, to pulmonary hypertension on September 5th, 2021. "Passing Through" is one of the only ways I made it through. One of the other things that helped & continues to help me are books by John O'Donohue. I actually discovered his books in much happier times and I'm incredibly grateful that his books were already known to me because I knew to reach for them for understanding and hope. The 1st book of his I was drawn to, I read in the spring of 2014. It's called "Anam Cara, A Book Of Celtic Wisdom". Primarily, it's about soul mates, spanning the full range of what soul mates can be from romantic partners to friends (the title, "Anam Cara" comes from the Gaelic phrase "Mo Anam Cara", meaning " My Soul Friend"). That book, with it's gold, black, & green cover has been at the top of my book shelf ever since. I would tell you it's my favorite of John O'Donohue's books (it's certainly one of my favorite books, period.) but they're all extraordinary and honestly, it doesn't matter what particular thing you're experiencing at the moment from the happiest of happy to despairing ~ reading even just a paragraph from one of his books will make your day ~ and ultimately your life ~ better. Not in a Disneyland way ~ in a very, very real way.
To go back to what I began talking with ~ the reason for the shadows & isolation in the photo panel I made for "Passing Through" ~ those images also evoke for me the feelings of a time period I've always thought of as "The In Between Time" ~ that very uncertain and lost~feeling you have when you've reached the point that you realize the life you knew with the one you love is something you can't go back to. Everything has changed. The things and people around you ~ they look the same but absolutely nothing feels the same. Everything from life as you knew it is now so ill~fitting that it hurts. Your footing at the moment isn't on solid~ground at all. In fact, in a certain sense, you don't know where you are at all. You know LITERALLY where you are but nothing looks or feels the same...because it isn't. Yet you have no idea what the future looks like or how to get there. You can imagine how I felt when I reached for a book of John O'Donohue's called "To Bless The Space Between Us" to discover a poem ~ really, a blessing ("To Bless The Space Between Us" is a collection of blessings that John O'Donohue wrote for every imaginable place in life we can find ourselves) called "For The Interim Time". Just like with "Passing Through", it describes the feelings and experiences you have in the aftermath of losing someone you love exactly how it feels and is. If anyone is going through this now, I hope this blessing will help you. I hope it will always find its way to who needs it. That's my intention for everything I will ever place in Passing Through. It's not just for me to write in, though. Passing Through is for absolutely everyone. Please always feel free to write anything here at all that you would like to. I hope "For The Interim Time" will help you.
Love,
Jennifer 🤍
