Just Breathe Out

“I need a little room to breathe” ~ Linkin Park

Or, as defined by my dictionary

Breathe (vb): to exist; be alive

 

I was with my Mum as she took her last breaths. It’s a position as privileged as it is painful; to be able to provide support, comfort, yet at the same time knowing that it is goodbye. A goodbye that is still incalculable, unfathomable, these months down the line and I believe will remain so for some considerable time to come.

It’s the breath that gets us all in the end; coming, going, sustaining us, leaving. We can live long lives without many things but breathing is not one of them.

But to take rich full breaths of life is not a simple matter of just breathing. It is to consciously breathe in life, breathe out what is no longer needed. That breath has to go out to make room for something new.

Yet we hold on so tightly, too tightly, to shallow breaths that do not serve us, that do not allow us the openness that is required to let go, to allow space for what comes next.

Turbine Hall at Tate Modern

Just breathe out, a good friend told me once in a time of emotional hardship. So it is no coincidence my next book is called one hundred breaths. Writing some of these stories has been me breathing out, learning not to hold myself so tightly, letting things go.

A percentage of my profit from these sales will go to Ashgate Hospice who supported my parents and my Mum’s breathing until the end.

 

Princess

one hundred breaths is available to pre-order from Cynefin Road: one hundred breaths

For more information or to support Ashgate Hospice: Ashgate Hospice

For more information on Multiple Sclerosis: MS

Here

“Right here, right now” ~ Fatboy Slim

Or, as defined by my dictionary

Here (adj): in this place; at this point

 

No-one has ever been here before.

Did you miss it? That’s ok. Pause, catch your breath. There’s another here now. It’s here for me as I write this, here for you as you read this, here for the person who saw notification of this blog in their inbox and thought ‘that’s not for me today’. And that’s ok.

Life is a series of moments, of catching breath, reacting, and sometimes pausing to just allow the moment to be here and for you to be aware in it.

Because no matter what we plan for, sometimes you do not know how you will feel or act when something expected comes along. And sometimes we have life planned out and something different happens that can leave us uprooted, drifting. And we definitely can’t plan for those moments.

But in another breath life is different again. It might be so delicate a difference you may be unaware of it but somewhere a leaf will have fallen from a tree, a flower will have unfurled its first petals, shale will have slipped down a mountainside. All in a moment, all making the world different to how it was before.

So just breathe out, gently. Be here, as you are, in this moment right now.

© Ed Browse

 

 

Princess