The Light and The Dark

A major difficulty with life here in the Land of New Normal is that even while I'm counting out my reasons to be cheerful there comes difficult news.

Over the last few weeks we have lost two of our international bloggers and, more recently and closer to home, one of the North East girls to this horrible disease.  And still close to home there has been bad news for a couple more.

Life seems somehow sharper here. The sadness surrounding the losses and grim news is painfully deep. But the breath-taking beauty of a morning drive past the diamond-sparkly frost-on-snow fields, hedges and trees the weekend before last was certainly heightened. The friendships that we form in this sisterhood that was thrust upon us are precious and life-giving, but when those very friends are taken from us the grief is profound.