Dear Jessa:

You wrote: ” I want to pick up, dust off and start climbing again”- maybe there is no picking up and dusting off from where you are. Maybe it takes more than that, maybe it takes examining what is causing that dust before dusting it off, examining the setbacks before the loss that you mentioned. And then there is the carrying of the pain with you, the pain that will not be dusted off.

There are pains I can not or will not want to live to endure, or endure to live and there are pains that I will endure. A line from The Impossible Dream comes to mind: “To bear with unbearable sorrow.”

anita