A Question Worth Sitting With

A Slow Sunday on grief, repair, and choosing presence while it still counts.

Meet me here on a rare winter morning where the sun insists on being noticed. The kind of day that makes me want to close the laptop early, walk by the bay, and take the gift while it’s being offered.

It’s that time here in the Pacific Northwest, which means endless gray skies and wet air that settles in and stays. But today feels different. Drier. Lighter. I keep peeking up over the edge of my screen to take it in, as if I don’t quite trust it to last. Because it won’t.

I woke this morning with a question I return to often.

Will it matter 100 years from now?

I wrote about it last year, around this same time. By then, the man who asked me that question had already slipped away, dementia slowly erasing his memory of me. The grief came long before his death. It lived in the last moment we shared, in a brief recollection from his most honest view of me. The kind that let me know he really did see me.

I’m grateful for that question he left me with. It continues to call me toward action I might otherwise delay. Toward choices that ask for presence now, while it still counts.

Repairing our relationship. Spending time with him in the years that followed. Those were not small things. They mattered. They still do.

I think about my own life now. The path I’ve walked. The trials and the trauma. The people who have come and gone, and sometimes found their way back again. I think about the care I’ve taken with my own self-awareness. The pauses. The willingness to choose differently. To say I’m sorry. To consider how another might be affected by me.

It matters.

I remember sitting with the reality of my marriage after my husband disclosed his secrets and knowing one thing with certainty. Before I made any decisions, I needed to make sure my side of the street was clean.

So I took a year. A full year of walking backward through my life, relationship by relationship. I found them all. From the first boy I ever kissed, to the one I did the most damage with, and everyone in between and after. I wrote letters. I traveled. I knocked on doors. I met them in cafés. I sat across from men and told the truth, most of which was simply saying what I had never allowed myself to say out loud.

In some places, I was gentle. In one, I had to own the worst of myself.

Then, at the end of the year, I knocked on his door. He opened it and stood there, tears already welling. When they finally spilled down both our faces, he stepped aside and invited me in. We sat for hours. Talking. Sharing. Owning without defense. Without blame.

His last wife had insisted that he do his own work. I had done mine. And there we were.

For most of my life, I couldn’t see the kind, generous man he was beneath his wounds. That day, and every day after, that is all I saw.

I know it’s the real ‘Good Luck Vibes‘ to have this unfold. I know not everyone gets a parent willing to heal their own wounds or take responsibility for their suffering. The healing that came from that moment, and the years that followed, changed everything. My relationship with myself. With my children. With men. It continues to give.

Taking that year mattered. Owning what I owned mattered. Saying what needed to be said… mattered.

It matters now. And I believe it will matter 100 years from now.

Time is not just passing, it’s responding. Responding to what we choose to face. Responding to what we avoid. Responding to the care we take with our words, our impact, our repair.

The truth is we all hurt and we all hurt others, it’s part of being human. How we live with that is where the rest of the story plays out.

Some losses teach us gently. Others do it by force. Grief has a way of stripping life down to what actually matters. It asks questions we can’t outrun. Questions about presence. About honesty. About whether we are willing to see ourselves clearly, even when it costs us comfort.

What if we didn’t wait for grief to lead the way and instead, this year, or even today, we… Take responsibility for our impact, especially when it would be easier not to. Choose to repair instead of disappear. Tell the truth, even if it’s not clear yet and most importantly to ourselves.

This kind of care isn’t loud. It doesn’t come with applause. Most of the time, no one ever knows it happened. And yet, it changes everything that follows.

If you pause for a moment, you might feel the way your body settles when something unresolved is finally named. The way a relationship softens when honesty replaces avoidance. The way your own reflection feels easier to meet.

Integrity over time, reshapes how we love. How we parent. How we show up for ourselves and others.

Some things matter because they echo forward. Some things matter because they heal backward. We understand the difference when we slow down long enough to be with it all.

For this moment in time, let the ‘Wild Sounds’ Bloom like a love letter to life. Tender. Imperfect. Ongoing. Not rushing toward anything, just staying close to what’s real.

When I hear this song, I think about staying. About choosing presence. About letting life unfold without demanding proof of where it’s going.

Will it matter 100 years from now?

We can’t fully know the reach of a life that far into the future. I’m only nearing version 5.6 myself, and still, there are always signals. Small proofs that surface when we slow down long enough to notice. Like finding out that my dad was my biggest fan in a fleeting moment of memory on the last day when we said goodbye.

Now it’s time to say goodbye to you, as it’s nearly noon. The sun is still shining, calling me out for a walk while the skies are clear and dry. I am going.

Thank you for another shared Slow Sunday together.

Kissed by Wonder,

Michelle

If this found you in a quieter place, somewhere beneath the noise of the season, in that space where things are not finished but are gently shifting, you’re not alone here.

This is the work I care about. Sitting with what’s real. Letting the body exhale. Allowing old patterns and roles to loosen without force, so something truer can begin to lead.

If something in you feels ready to be met more closely, you’re welcome to reach out for a First Step session. Or you can simply reply to this note. We can listen together for what wants to unfold, at its own pace.