Have you ever been there? Feeling as though you are in a never-ending period of transition with no end in sight? I found myself wrestling with this thought—where will I be at the end of all this? I still want to be ‘me’ and recognise who that is. Darkness and silence are sifters: they reveal to you who you are and who you’re not, what you believe and what you don’t. Somehow, you know the only fruitful way through it, is to do just that—go through it. Not try and side step it, or go around it, or duck out of it…but walk through it.

When sitting down to write this article, all I could think about was writing a letter to a friend. A friend who is tired, worn out and feels at the end of themselves. Or perhaps a friend who has their make-up on and is smiling brilliantly but falling apart on the inside.

When I hear the word “trust”, I cannot help but think about relationships. Trust is both the necessary bridge for building relationships and the glue that keeps them together during periods of pressure, strain or disappointment. Looking at my life I have learned that there is something integral about the journey toward living well and the need for trustworthy friends who help you get there.

Sometimes at the end of a long hard journey we can compliment the adventurer who undertook it and say “you did well” or when someone passes away after a difficult illness we say they “shame, they did so well”. I once did a mountain climb that I was convinced was going to kill me! At the end of the climb, people said to me, “you did so well!”. But, upon reflection I know that what they meant was, “You made it”. 

What takes life from being something that is happening to you, to something you are living well? I propose it is the sense that you are using all the raw materials you have been given in order to create something, something that will long outlast you and your time on this earth.