A New Year - such a change

Every time the anniversary of CJ‘s death passes by I ask myself what now? At first it was so hard to face another year of the same painful, birthdays, holidays, and anniversaries.

As the years went on, I learned to control that pain to turn it into memorials memories, and even new memories remembering him in all of it.

This year marking eight years I have done something that has taken me farthur along my journey, but it’s not really about him.

I am running for council.

I ran when he was here and he was so supportive. He helped me campaign. He spread the word. I smile when I see the picture of him with the bilboards tied to him walking the streets.

Now, as I go out on the campaign trail and get immersed in this, I realize that I didn’t want to lose my connection to him. But he’s not here right now I wasn’t quite sure how to do that on this new part of my journey.

Yesterday I was out walking passing out my flyers. As I went house to house, my mind wandered on that very question of where was CJ in this.

And at the last house, just as I was leaving, at the very end of the driveway there was a feather.

It was not there when I walked up the driveway. But it was there when I came back out.

A sign from CJ.

And I realized I had already done the work of including CJ in my journey. He was in my head and my heart. The feather was just a kick in the butt to remind me of that. To remind me it’s OK to move forward.

The next months will be hard. I will have to be careful not to overdue it. But its exciting too. And I can accept that, its okay to be excited and proud of myself for doing this.

CJ would be proud.