DAY 20 

Mantra: “Perseverance is power” 

Writing book three has shown me just how true this is. 

Taking the hardest times of my life and putting them into words is powerful. 

It is teaching me so many lessons that I was still resisting / missing / avoiding. 

It’s hard going against what you know to be true, even when you know that it’s not. 

When Jason died, I fought forever with life. I wanted to yell at someone and make them fix it. I wasn’t going to be okay unless one day I woke up and everything was different. I wasn’t going to be okay until he was back on this earth. 

I knew that wasn’t possible. Death is permanent. There is no fixing it or changing it. There is only acceptance. 

When you refuse acceptance, there is only resistance. It makes every single moment of every single day feel desolate. 

Every single cell in my body told me not to give in. He came to me in vivid dreams where I could touch him, hear him, hug him, kiss him- he was real. 

He talked about being gone- about fighting his way back. He told me not to quit. He was still him and he knew what was happening. 

When I brought my puppy, Penny, home- there he was in my dream. He was feeding her treats and laughing telling me how much he loves her. 

It always felt so real. 

I would be sitting at my computer desk working and all of a sudden – his scent would wrap all around me. 

How do you convince yourself that isn’t real- when it is? 

How could I let go when he was everywhere? 

How do you move forward when every single piece of you says this is where you should stay? 

I also realized that if I moved forward, he might not be able to come with me. 

Dating in the “real world” might mean less of his energy around me. 

Switching my despair into acceptance might take him away from me. 

I couldn’t handle that. 

I kept fighting an invisible field. 

But at the end of every day, there was still nobody to talk to. 

There was still nobody that could change this. 

Nobody could rectify this wrong. 

It left me feeling like I was being torn apart from the inside out. 

I hurt more than I have ever physically hurt in my entire life. 

The internal pain was excruciating. 

It also made me so aware that life could take anyone at any time and there wasn’t a damn thing that I could do about it. 

That awareness left me panicking about who else I could lose. 

It made me want to keep love out of my life so that nothing could destroy me like this again. 

I didn’t know how I was ever going to make it out. 

It felt impossible. I was depleted. 

So many times in my life I have kept pushing through things that I didn’t think I would possibly be able to make it through. 

But like the Bandit said – I’ve “never not made it yet”  

My mom was the one that got me to start letting go. 

Years had gone by and I still wasn’t accepting it. To me, it still felt as strong as the day it happened. 

My mom looked at me and asked me questions that I really needed to hear. 

She said “If the roles were reversed and this is what happened to him- what would that do to you?” 

It would break my heart. 

That’s what it would do. 

She said, “what if you were gone and this is what happened to us, to your son, to anyone that you love? Would you want that?”

I wouldn’t. 

I would want them to celebrate my life. This would make me feel like I was dying all over again every single day. 

I could picture myself resisting what was happening – feeling torn from the inside out trying to get back. 

I imagined that it would feel a lot like it did now and I didn’t wish this on anyone. 

Then she asked me if I thought that he could rest knowing I am here like this? 

I wouldn’t be resting knowing how much everyone was hurting. 

She reminded me how hard things were for him when he was here and told me not to keep him in the hard things in his death. 

If I truly loved him- I had to let him rest. 

I had to let him go. 

He was already off to the next thing, but the dreams were real. 

He was with me. 

He was stuck. 

We had to let go. 

It’s been a long, hard road. 

Every single thing about him changed me. 

I can love him forever. I can feel him all around me. It wasn’t until I stopped resisting the truth and fighting with life that I was able to understand that just because I can’t see him – doesn’t mean he isn’t there. 

The energy is different now. It isn’t panicked, it isn’t resistance – it’s calm. 

I can feel him in the trees, in the air, in every aspect of nature. I hear him in songs, I can close my eyes and picture him- hear his laugh- I can feel his energy. 

Acceptance isn’t being okay with what happened. 

Acceptance is finding a new way to stay connected and still live. 

I have no idea what happens on the other side, but I don’t fear it. I have too many beautiful souls waiting for me on the other side to fear it. 

I am too connected to them still to know that we are never over. 

Life is hard. 

We all go through the things that we don’t know how we will make it through. 

But we do. 

We are all connected. 

It truly is what you do with it. 

Book three is what I am doing with it. 

I’m writing the story that I needed all those years ago.