I am writing this from Hawai’i, but it won’t publish until after I back home in North Carolina. This trip is, essentially, a reboot for me and the kid. He has taken the bar exam for and waits on the results to find out if he can legally practice law and together we have processed a great deal of the last five years of our lives.

It has been a lot. I really don’t have any other way to explain it all unless I tell the whole story from the beginning and as I recently did that with my new therapist, do not have the energy to tell that tale again.

The kid has told me multiple times that I never left lock down. When his dad was living, I wasn’t able to. Stage IV cancer means masks and every precaution you can take to keep yourself and your patient healthy. The irony of saying healthy when every day of the week he was taking a kinase inhibitor to keep the cancer at bay, as well as sitting for a chemotherapy cocktail every three weeks, amongst a litany of other things we had do to for stasis.

But I stayed in lock down. Grocery stores are too loud and noisy, there are too many people, and I get overwhelmed and cannot function. I have no desire to go into public much at all and have been, essentially, a shut in. Yes, I have traveled, but when I am in say, London, I take walks by myself, I don’t like going into stores, and I only go out for meals if I am with close friends who I trust. Same when I travel to Maryland and Charleston — it’s the must alive I feel because I am with the people I trust with my life.

But here I am, on my first full day in Hawai’i, baring my soul, sitting in my pajamas, listening to the waves from the balcony of my hotel room, and wondering what would it be like to really live again. To walk out on to the beach, which is absolutely covered in people, and play in the water.

I sat with my journal today — several times. And I processed this. What it’s like to really live. I’m in several groups with widows and I know this is a real thing that happens, especially for those of us with college age and adult children. It’s easy to disappear from the world. To live in the shadows.

I find comfort in the shadows. Even though I know it’s not healthy for me. There is no Vitamin Life to be found there. If anything, it is where we slowly die.

According to Hawaiian state law, the Aloha Spirit is a guiding principle described as the “coordination of mind and heart within each person.” It represents a deep-rooted philosophy that influences both locals and visitors, promoting harmony, respect, and goodwill.1

That is part of this trip for me. To step out of the shadows and to coordinate my mind and heart, while being a good steward to all I meet and with all I do.

While writing this, I was reminded that we are called to the light that we are given. What we do with that light is up to us, as part of our humanity. My choice has been to give so much of my own light that I had one filament left, the rest burnt out from overuse and never given time to heal. What my therapist calls a consistent stress overload. My brain does not recognize it as it has been trying to protect me for decades. Which is why I don’t have many childhood memories. Humans do not imprint when they are constantly seeking safety because stressful fear-related memories become consciously inaccessible. But they are still there affecting us.

Simply put, when a person experiences something traumatic, adrenaline and other neurochemicals rush to the brain and print a picture there. The traumatic memory loops in the emotional side of the brain, disconnecting from the part of the brain that conducts reasoning and cognitive processing.2

There are things I am doing daily to help process, which includes a lot of time journaling, prayer, meditation, and getting into my body. It’s amazing how we (yes, the collective we) do not spend time connecting with our bodies. As I take breaks from writing, I stretch all of my body to get out of head.

When I get up from work when I am at home, the first thing I do is a Mountain Pose to Forward Fold. I have vertigo, so I have to be very careful and cannot do this if I am experiencing symptoms of vertigo. These few moments of slow intentional movement helps to get me back into my body before I start walking — which is key for me as I tend to experience careless accidents if I am too deep into my head.

As I sit here on my balcony overlooking the sea, I will remember to take things one step at a time with intention. Moving back into the world when I want to hide is scary. But, it is time.