I'm so grateful Mollie K. wrote us here at The I'm Okay Collective and shared her stunning piece "On Grieving." Besides being a beautifully-crafted personal essay, it is full of meaningful moments we can all relate to and that Mollie chose to share those with us and invite us to become the speaker in the piece is a deep honor, indeed. More and more, as I age and lose loved ones, I feel this mix of loneliness and wonder at the world that changes around me. People coming into my life, going out of my life; the world contracting and compressing while simultaneously asking me to see new beauties and acknowledge transitions as new horizons to await.

With age does come wisdom and strength - this has been my experience. I love how beautifully Nora depicts this in her poem, "Tenacity."

Many many thanks to Nika in Chicago for this thought-provoking and genre-bending piece. I'm so grateful The I'm Okay Collective can highlight such varying experiences of emotional wellness and ask questions around moral concern, literary greatness, and where one belongs in a fractured world.

A huge welcome to you, Skylar! Thank you for taking that 1st step to begin what I hope will be a beautiful interactive community (one day!). In the meantime, I appreciate what you shared: the idea of comings and goings, giving and receiving, in and out. It makes me think about energy that way and what direction our energy goes. I've heard many metaphors around the topic: putting on one's own mask before anyone else's in an emergency plane landing, giving from an empty bucket being harmful while giving from a full bucket is better, the list goes on. I think I may write a blog entry on the idea of energy directions and how we get caught up in one direction and sometimes miss the necessity of the other. Connection as an antidote to isolation - what a beautiful truth. It sounds so easy, doesn't it? But I know it is no easy feat. So much familiarity and comfort can be found in isolation. No risk is needed; we name our own rules. And connection is an act of trust and courage. Good for you for naming that and stepping forward. I hope more will step forward with you, even if it takes time. You are a wondrous soul who deserves to feel connected to the wider world around you as well as your own marvelous self. And anyone who connects with you is lucky, indeed!

What a wonderful reminder, Mary. Thank you for sharing your experience!

Mary, thank you for sharing! I like what you said about needing to be present to be Okay. I think we often forget the power of being in the present, namely that it teaches the ability to sit with the feelings of the moment which is a hard but wonderful way to feel Okay. So much pressure seems to come at us around needing to be a certain way in the past or future. It makes perfect sense that being Okay in that one particular moment of Now would open the door for a more contented feeling. I really appreciate your comment. Makes me think. 💜🤔👏