Glass Ceiling ...Glass Wall

A woman with her dog stops to talk to me when I'm taking photos of this snowy display of hundreds of magnolia stellatar in the park the other day.

She says they were planted for a particular reason....a special occasion.

But I can't remember what she said. 

Maybe it was for the millenium... whatever it was they are spectacular.

There is a glass ceiling for women in business.

There is one for us who grieve as well.

It's vague, general, unacknowledged.

But all the same a consensus

'out there'

an agreement when enough is enough....

when it's now possibly

 too long.

When the activity of mourning 

at first respected, expected,

normal,

tips into what is called 

self indulgence

a dangerous dislocation

from reality

requiring 

an antidote.

To breach that glass ceiling

of well meaning, 

for -your-own-good, 

concern,

needs a courage I may not have.

It is also an inherited family "get over it now" pattern,

my own internal glass wall 

to dismantle

one brick at a  time.

So I need

a hand to hold.

An angel's wing

to guide me.

Which is what I had today.

To say out loud 

to write it...

'It's not enough for me.

Not yet.

I need more time.

I don't know how long.

It could be forever.

It hurts even more than it did at the beginning

when  I thought I was feeling

the pain

but really I was just

numb.

And now I know 

to enter the heart and stomach of it

to rage

to rail

to want to die

to be so 

foreign to myself

without my love

is 

my reality now"

To hold the faith of that

morass of feeling

not knowing when it 

will change

is my fist in the glass ceiling...

my fingernails in the mortar.