I wish I could tell you that your life will all be ok. That there is a beautiful plan unfolding, like petals on a flower bud arriving perfectly on the planet while a bluebird sings on your shoulder and we all hold hands with family and friends singing Kumbaya into the sunset….

Nope. Not going to happen.

What I will tell you this: Every single emotion in your life will be picked, pinched, assaulted, scathed, and twisted out of you. Like blood being gouged from your cells and your soul. You’ll lose lovers, friends, jobs, and sense of reality. You’ll be pissed on and get pissed off. Like blood-boiling-knife-sharpening-plate-throwing-where-to-hide-the-body-pissed-off-rage. You’ll hold tight to regrets and let go of life-long dreams. You’ll make rash decisions that fuck everything up and everything will get fucked up even when you’ve made all the right decisions. You’ll have addictions, convictions, and dissatisfaction. You’ll lose faith, find revenge, and seek forgiveness. You’ll be diagnosed, misunderstood, and gutted in the most humiliating of ways. And some days you will barely survive on your steady diet of loneliness and heartbreak. You’ll see more than your fair share of emergency rooms, funeral homes, and bruised and broken souls. And at several points, you will be an asshole – if not more. And just when you can stand up on both feet and move forward again, life will sucker-punch you, in the face, hard, again.

I promise.

But here is the worst of it all: So will everybody else. E.V.E.R.Y.B.O.DY.

But the world always pulses on: Atoms. Cells. Blood. Thoughts. Bodies. Ocean. Earth. Galaxies.

So what’s my point? It is not that shit happens. It is that LIFE happens. Grief. Pain. Sorrow. Loss. Love. Joy. Happiness. Ecstasy. The whole delicate-disturbing-glorious-wonderful-show happens. All the time. Everywhere.

So what do we do amid the horror, unhappiness or heartbreak? We keep moving. Slowly. Step by step. Cell by cell. Like we did in the womb. We just keep moving.

Grieve. Cry. Stop the bleeding. Lick the wounds. Pick at the scabs. Mend the break. Call a friend. Show the scars. Scream. Yell. Cuss your brains out. Pour a drink. Take a nap. Rest.

Then?

We LOVE. Because Love? Is what moves us back to life.

Start small. Love your shower, the dust suspended in sunlight, the pillow on your bed. Love your coffee in the morning. Love the quote on a wall. Love the cold floor you lay on after puking your guts out. Love your dreams. Love your lover. Love a book. Just love anything and everything you can. From the smallest chocolate morsel to the starriest sky above. Just Love. LOVE the moment. Love your breath. Love yourself. Love the shining moon above. And soon? We will LOVE ourselves back to life.

And a funny thing happens when we let LOVE light the darkness…. We begin to LOVE our LIFE again. The whole crazy-orgasmic-soul-shredding-paper-cutting-beautiful-tender-and-tragic-crazy-magical-circus-show-of-a-life.

And then one day, just when you’re not looking, you will find yourself having a damn good time on the planet again. And when that happens? You’ll silently nod and salute to the stars because the front row of your life is the only place you’ll ever want to be: sorrow, shit-show, Kumbaya and all. Because the greatest show on earth? Is YOUR LIFE, lived. Cheers! (*clink*)