The challenge of re-entering the world raises a lot of questions. One being what world am I talking about?

There’s a world that I feel increasingly alienated from. Its values, the ways of being seem far removed. Up until now, I have thought of the way that I operate, the way I perceive the world as somehow lacking. I’ve thought that in order to be validated I had to adapt to a different way of seeing things than my own, and that this was what learning and education was about.

Since Mark’s death I’ve had to go deep into myself and learn to move with a current of grief in a way that no amount of outside knowledge or understanding seemed able to give me. I occupied a different world and had to rely on my own instincts and intuition to navigate the deep currents that swept me along. Having emerged from that experience – and I do think I have – I can no longer deny that I know what I know. I realise that I operate intuitively, that I ‘see’ and perceive things that become more solid as I move towards them. I know that if I listen and pay attention I can begin to gain clarity, and because of that I sometimes I have to wait until a decision about what to do becomes apparent.
In short, I know that navigating the world of grief required understanding that wasn’t simply based on rational, empirical thought, and that a lot of how I operate is based on perceptions and ways of being that don’t get much of a look in.

So often in conversations I feel that a huge part of me is dormant, redundant. Before now I allowed this to happen much more readily, accepted the assertion that my way of seeing wasn’t ‘real’ much more readily. But now I respect this part of me, largely because I know I have had to rely on it for my survival, that this is a deeply rooted part of me that is valuable for life. I know I can’t go back to the old way of being, but I haven’t worked out the new way and what it might pattern yet.