Returning to Crabtree
I’ve been quiet. I’ve contemplated not sharing this update, hiding the pain and grief, pretending everything is okay.
But life isn’t like that for anyone, is it?
I know this will take me a long time to heal from and I’ve only begun to dipped my toe into this pool I wish I never knew existed.
An event happened in my life that has devastated me in ways I’ve never experienced before, and I’m still struggling to process the suddenness, the severity, the feeling of violated trust, and the swiftness with which every promise seemed to be blown out of reality.
The result, as I write this, is that we’ve returned to the farm at Crabtree.
There’s a particular kind of silence that follows heartbreak. Not the peaceful kind. The kind that rattles around inside your ribs and roars loudly in your mind silencing the stillness you are searching for.
While the animals still need feeding, while life keeps tapping you on the shoulder asking, well… what now?
I’ve been quiet. I’ve been trying to exist.
I’m back to this farm that feels like it’s more mocking than comforting to me. I’m back to the hills that have seen me stunned before, though I never expected them to see me this broken. I’m hoping that, in time, I’ll rediscover that this place somehow still knows how to help put me back together and hold me here.
Until I can feel that, I have immense gratitude for the people who have held me while I shift shapes through the weeks it's taken to write this. I feel like wet sand with no structure of bones.
They have kept simply moving with me to keep me in place. I will never be able to repay you. I feel so grateful, so valued. Thank you.
When emotional hurt cuts so deep it becomes physical, and you’re trying to heal a wound while simultaneously moving your body through life, and the whole thing feels counterintuitive. Shouldn’t I listen to the demands of my body and surrender to complete stillness? Give stillness and time to allowing the edges of this wound the chance to come together and knit close.
I yearn to be curled up in a dark room, rocking gently in a corner until the storm passes. Some days, honestly, that’s not far from reality. The darkness can be addictive.
Swallowing down the lump in my throat, blinking the tears that suddenly and unwelcomely appear at the most inappropriate moments while trying to remain composed with those I work with or cross paths with. Life needs to go on in the short term, but I’m sure that I look like someone who has lost a limb.
This pain feels that significant.
In those moments where darkness and tears arrive without warning, I’m reminded that grief is not linear. It loops and twists and doubles back on itself like the old wallaby tracks after heavy rain, down near the creek. The scars across the land where a pathway is forged by life.
One minute I’m functioning, planning, making lists. The next, I am ambushed by the sting of failure and the abrupt shock of a failed future.
What I’m learning is that having a future to believe in matters. Right now, though, I have little motivation to pursue one.
I am trying to feed hope. Eventually, it becomes scaffolding during dark seasons. When the future I spoke about disappears overnight, there’s an enormous emptiness that feels left behind. I’m forced to create space for healing while also accepting a future I never imagined for myself.
I have a new life growing, and in October a little boy will arrive who knows nothing of heartbreak, broken promises or failed futures. He will simply arrive expecting to be loved.
I’ve been thinking deeply about what makes up my life now. What components remain essential. What values deserve protecting. What intentions I want to carry forward into whatever comes next.
It all feels so heavy. So suppressive. So suffocating.
And yet, as always, the farm quietly keeps offering breathing space.
Perhaps rebuilding doesn’t always mean building bigger. Perhaps it means building truer.
This Week I’ve Thought About…
Processing grief is long, not linear, and not for the faint-hearted. Be patient with me. I am not at my best, but I am trying my best.
Some futures disappear overnight, but that doesn't mean there won't be another worth believing in.
I need to keep moving, because right now standing still feels like the world might swallow me whole.