Sometimes Life Throws You Lemons

Life can be interesting sometimes. And the way you feel about it can change with the events happening to you. In the last two months both my parents have passed away. The family house has passed out of the family.

Bill and Julie Martin 1979

It feels like a way of life has ended. And it has. The way of life that encompasses my childhood, my youth and young adult hood. With the house and people still there it felt like I was someone's little girl, I have that bond and the house to go home to, to comfort when it's needed. But to suddenly lose it all, it's like a sucker punch to the belief system, like I am adrift.

Or at least that is the way that it feels when looking through the goggles of depression and grief. But to turn those glasses around and use them as a tool to re-examine life using the filter of the past to project the good that you want to take forward into the future. And if you leave a few things by the wayside, things and beliefs that don't fit with the current ways of the world or the life we've chosen then so much the better.

And now that our trip looms only two weeks away I realize just how much my love of travel and sense of the world has stemmed from the wanderings of my own parents. Maybe they didn't see the world the way that I do, but they started me on the path of thinking outside the nation state and about global humanity. So cheers mom and dad! I hope that a little bit of your spirits are free to travel with us on our journey. They certainly live on with me and your grandchildren.