“Like most people who are freefalling, I’ve always clung to routine.”
― Rachel Joyce, The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy: A Novel.
Have you ever been told you are a "free spirit"? I'm not sure that is the same thing as "freefalling" but they are similar. I remember the first time this description came my way. By a psychiatrist. No, I wasn't seeing him as a patient, but working for him as a nurse. He had come to our little town in the middle of WV, filling in for the regular doctor who was on an extended vacation. The visiting doc was in a horrid accident and I went to sit with him in the ICU. He grabbed my hand and squeezed it. "Don't ever stop being a free spirit, Beth, it is who you are. It will not be an easy life." This was decades ago, before it was a common saying, and I felt both relief that someone of his caliber recognized what I felt so deeply in my soul..and fear that it would be a hard life. I grabbed on to routines as though they were life lines thrown to the drowning. Just a few, but enough to keep me grounded. I share this thought on this rainy Boxing Day after Christmas just because...Maybe someone needs to hear it. Maybe to honor my doctor friend who was paralyzed in the prime of life. Maybe because Spirit, the Spirit, did a whole lot of work to make Christmas happen! - Beth Almond Ford
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