outrunning my demons

It's funny how small it starts, with just one glance at a freshly-trimmed willow tree. I see my beloved horse Vinny with his dorky bangs that I've just cut straight across, like the hanging limbs of the willow tree. I miss him still - he died in a field over a year ago, alone. I feel the march of grief start its advance toward me, and I gently reach out and touch the future of my mom not being here, and I can't see through my tears. It's instant. Why is it that I can't just let it all be? But I can't, so I breathe, and start to jog, a little slowly at first. It doesn't help that much. I concentrate on my regular breaths, take deeper ones, jog in rhythm to "Every time we Touch" by Cascada. I speed up. I'm not in good shape, my lungs start to burn right away, so I slow down, still tracking my breath. C'mon, little endorphins, kick in with those ol' good feeling chemicals, c'mon, c'mon, ah, that's better. I round the corner on 15th Avenue and feel more steady, more stable.

I decide to call all those who've died into my energy field. Surround me, I say. Let me feel you there. I feel a solidness around me, a denseness, like a warm wall. I thank them and keep walking. I add Mom in there, Dad, too, and all of those people and animals that I keep a home in my heart for, and I think this is all very real, and what I want to keep concentrating on, because otherwise my hearts hurts too much to think of the separation, the endings, all the endings. I tried to outrun my demons, but I think I cannot outrun them, and I think they are not demons after all. They're just a part of my life, a part of the whole picture, they just ARE. If I try to run away from them, I'll be running forever. So I stop running, and slow back down to my walk, breathing, breathing.

I ask for a word of the day for myself, and I hear "fecundity." I know the word, but I remember it having something to do with gardening. I look it up. It comes from the Latin word "fecundus" which means "feminine." It means "prolific, intellecutally productive or inventive to a marked degree, fertile." Fecundity is a noun, so that's probably what it is all about today - fecundity. I will hold that word in my pocket today, and think of how it relates to how I'm feeling, and what today is about.