Before we start today, this is Fruitycake with something important. The full version of our weekday blog, along with the audio blog read by Girl Person and me, is only on Patreon. If these stories have become part of your day, please do not wait to join us. It is only $5 a month, and right now that support truly helps us keep writing, sharing rescue animals and continuing the work of 2 Traveling Dogs during a very uncertain time. You can join us at www.patreon.com/2travelingdogsrescue. Now come sit with me for a few minutes because today we need to talk about something we have been carrying before it has even arrived.
This is Fruitycake. There are certain bags in life that I approve of. Grocery bags are excellent because there is always the possibility that something inside belongs to me. A bag containing pizza would obviously be the finest bag ever carried up this mountain. I am also willing to investigate bags containing bread, potatoes and anything Girl Person claims is “for later.” But lately, I have noticed that my persons are carrying another kind of bag. A bag of rain. And the strange thing is, it has not even started raining yet.
We know the rain is coming here to this mountain. We have watched the forecast and looked at the sky. We have talked about what needs to be brought up the trail before everything gets wet. There are groceries to think about, supplies, the house, the path and all of the ordinary things that become much less ordinary when you live somewhere that requires carrying your life uphill. But before the first drop has even fallen, it already feels like we are carrying the storm.
I think people do this with many things. You carry the sadness before something is over. You carry fear before you know what will happen. You carry grief long after someone you love is gone, and somehow that bag does not get lighter just because the days keep moving. You carry uncertainty about where you will live, what will happen next and whether the plans you are quietly hoping for will actually work out. Those bags are much heavier than groceries, and unfortunately nobody puts handles on them.
Girl Person is not supposed to carry the heavy things right now, so Boy Person carries a lot up this mountain. Bags of groceries, supplies, dog necessities and occasionally something extremely important such as pizza. You can see those bags. You can put them down on the kitchen floor, unpack them and eventually they become empty. But there are other bags nobody can see. Grief is one of them. Fear is another. Sadness may be the heaviest because sometimes you do not even realize you picked it up. One day you are walking along, doing the laundry and making dinner and writing the blog and feeding the dog, and suddenly you realize you have been carrying something for miles.
Maybe that is why waiting for rain can sometimes feel worse than rain. When the rain finally comes, you deal with what is actually happening. You shut the windows. You make soup. You listen to it hitting the roof and figure out what needs to be done. But before the rain comes, your mind can make it rain everywhere. What if this happens? What if that happens? What if the sale does not work out? What if we have to prepare for another winter here? What if something else goes wrong? What if we lose something else we love? Pretty soon you are standing in a perfectly dry kitchen carrying forty-seven imaginary umbrellas and a bag full of storms.
And this is exactly why I want us to stop here for the affirmation of the day. Do not just read it. Say it with me.
October 7 | I Can Be Proud Before I Am Finished
TODAY’S AFFIRMATION
I do not have to wait for the ending to be proud of myself. Effort, persistence and learning deserve recognition while the work is still happening. I will celebrate progress in the middle.
There. We said it. And I think that middle part is especially important because most of life seems to happen there. People are always waiting for the ending before deciding whether they did a good job. You wait for the sale to close, the problem to be solved, the grief to become manageable, the plan to work, the rain to stop or the next chapter to begin. Only then do you think you have earned the right to look backward and say you did something difficult. But what about the person standing right in the middle of it? What about the person who got out of bed this morning while carrying an invisible bag nobody else could see? What about the person who kept cooking, writing, working, loving, helping animals, carrying groceries and making plans without knowing how the story would end?
Dogs understand this better than people. If I climb halfway up this mountain, I do not decide that none of those steps count because I have not reached the rustico yet. I climbed them. These paws did the work. If I bravely pass something frightening on the trail, I do not withhold congratulations until I have completed a twelve-month personal development program. I expect recognition immediately and preferably in edible form.
Maybe we should all do a little more of that. You do not have to be finished healing to recognize how far you have come. You do not have to know where you are going to live next to appreciate everything it took to get here. You do not have to stop missing someone before recognizing how hard you are working to live with the empty place they left behind. Effort counts while you are making it. Persistence counts while you are persisting. Learning counts while you are still learning. There is something brave about continuing when you cannot see the ending yet, and maybe we should stop making ourselves wait until everything works out before admitting that.
Maybe the bag of rain is not the only thing we are carrying. We are carrying proof too. Proof that we made it through yesterday. Proof that we kept going through things we once thought might flatten us. Proof that even here, in this strange middle where we do not completely know whether we are staying or leaving, preparing for winter or preparing for a future somewhere else, we are still creating something. We are still helping rescue animals. We are still writing. We are still laughing. We are still making dinner. We are still loving each other. And I am still conducting extremely important pizza-related research.
Dogs are not especially talented at worrying about endings anyway. Most of the time, we are interested in the weather that is happening right now. If it is sunny, we find the sunny spot. If it is raining, we shake water all over the person who just dried the floor. If there is thunder, some of us find the safest place we know. We do not usually spend Tuesday being wet because it might rain Wednesday.
The good things in life have weight too. A grocery bag is heavy because it contains food. A pizza box has a little weight because it contains happiness, although in my professional opinion it should contain considerably more cheese. A blanket has weight because it keeps somebody warm. A dog leaning against your leg has weight because he trusts you enough to rest there. Those are weights worth carrying.
So maybe today we can put down the bag of rain for a little while. Not forever, because grief does not work that way and neither does fear. Grief in particular may never become completely weightless because it exists where love used to have somewhere physical to go. But perhaps we can stop adding tomorrow’s fear to yesterday’s sadness and expecting ourselves to carry both at the same time.
You do not have to carry tomorrow’s rain all day today. The clouds can carry it for you. That is literally their job.
While they are doing that, maybe we can look at the middle of our own unfinished stories and give ourselves a little credit. There may still be miles of mountain ahead, but that does not erase the mountain already underneath our paws. Perhaps life is not about making every bag lighter. Maybe it is about learning which bags actually need to be carried today. The groceries? Yes. The pizza? I volunteer. Love? Always. Yesterday’s grief can walk beside us because love put it there. But tomorrow’s rain can stay in the clouds until it gets here.
This is Fruitycake. And for right now, my paws are still dry.
Fruitycake
P.S. This is Fruitycake again. Support for 2 Traveling Dogs is extremely low right now, and we really do need help with groceries, necessities and the supplies that keep us going, especially with the bad weather coming. If you are able to help us carry one of the real bags instead of the imaginary ones today, we would be incredibly grateful.
You can help with necessities at www.tinyurl.com/2tdnecessities, join Patreon for $5 a month at www.patreon.com/2travelingdogsrescue, send support through Venmo to @travelingdogs, or use Zelle at rachael@2travelingdogs.com.
You can also help our This Is…Me project, created to help real rescue dogs be seen, believed and rescued. By sponsoring a This Is…Me dog, you help us tell a real rescue animal’s story and put that dog in front of the audience we have spent years building.
Sponsor a This Is…Me dog here:
https://www.paypal.com/ncp/payment/Q56YEJJTKXY96
Every bit of support right now helps us continue the blog, tell the stories of rescue animals, keep This Is…Me growing and continue the work of 2 Traveling Dogs. Thank you for helping us carry some of the weight while we are still very much in the middle.
