This life is so full. This life that I could not quite imagine before, come true. The home, all the comforts, companionship, love, the support, the insight, the inspiration, the energy to carry it all forward.

I don’t always know how to take it all in.

The cold grip of winter came, but then receded. Fall is not done, yet, there are things left to prune. There is collecting and storing left to do.

And we look upon death approaching. We see the coming freeze, we know that soon we will stand still.

I look at how I have been filled.

In the chaos and wonder of this time of our transitions, there has been so much to do. So much time to run through. So many items were touched, sorted, stored carefully, now unwrapped and finding spaces in our new home.

Life taken apart and put back together.

We’ve started school drop offs and pickups. The older two have been fighting a lot more than I would have expected. I’ve been losing my cool a lot more than I would have hoped.

How can there be so much new life, so much joyful expansion, joyful celebration and so much discord, so much discomfort, so much striking out at the same time?

I feel we are stretching, growing past what we knew before. It’s lovely, but it is not always pretty.

We’ve been sick in rounds. The third seems to be starting now, I haven’t felt like we’ve completely mended since the first.

And I find myself wondering why one child is lashing out, seemingly out of control yet starving for acceptance and play.

Wondering why another collapses so often at the slightest discomfort or challenge at times.

And I think I do get it. I start to understand.

For as much as we have shifted, there is a lot to be settled into, now. And for as much as I have wanted a break myself, I know I could be giving these kids more of my own grounding, my own awareness, my own care and time than I have been allowing.

I get embarrassed when I start to crack, when I yell, when I can’t seem to cope. I feel guilty.

But I get that, too. I get that sometimes I need to be clued into myself, too…

So we slow down. We watch the shifting winds bring each leaf to the ground. Each in their own time, none putting up much of a fight, then.

I don’t see the whole picture of how we come to be through this chapter. I think that’s okay.

It’s strange starting something new in the season of endings. But we know that there’s beginning in the endings anyway.

Now we’re setting up and cozying into our new space, just in time to watch the winter blow in.

I’ve been counting my blessings, I guess I am counting my strains among them now, too. It’s all good, it really is. Eventually.

Many thanks for all of you, I hope you have a lot of thanks to give, too.