Live While You’re Still Alive

“Let me not die while I am still alive.”

Came across this quote and it gave me goosebumps.

There was a point in early January when I was deep in grief where I remember feeling incredibly stuck. Like it was wrong to move forward and live my life… and even if I wanted or was ready to, I wasn’t sure how to take the first steps.

Christina Rasmussen calls this “the waiting room” in her book Second Firsts (this book was HUGE in my healing journey). You’re no longer the person you were before, but you’re stuck somewhere between the life you had and the life that’s waiting for you on the other side. You’re stagnant, dying inside.

There have been moments in my life when I almost chose to die while still alive. The times when I really felt there was no point or meaning in this life, so why did it matter? The times I was so lost and sad and struggling that I couldn’t remember what happiness actually felt like. The periods where I was so numb inside that the world actually seemed dimmer and darker, even on the sunniest days.

I can tell you from being in some of the darkest depths, life is better when you choose to really live and experience it. Even when it’s hard and challenging and heartbreaking. Even when everything seems to be going wrong and nobody seems to understand. Life is better when you choose to love the shit out of everything and everyone anyways. Life is better when you show up every single day ready for whatever it may bring, even when you’re beyond exhausted from yesterday.

Life is better when you choose to live while you’re still alive.

Because one day, one way or another, you won’t be. Call it morbid if you must, I call it the best awareness and wake up call you can ever have. Cliche as it may sound, so much so that we don’t even register it anymore: LIFE. IS. SHORT.

Yes it’s hard a lot of the time and things go wrong. Yes it’s heartbreaking and full of loss. Yes it’s a struggle and takes everything we have some days. But it’s also miraculous and beautiful and filled with awesome experiences. There’s so much to do and experience and learn. There are so many AMAZING people in this world you haven’t even gotten to know yet… some of whom are probably already in your life, you just haven’t dug beneath the surface.

Don’t stop living and loving and experiencing.