Courage Journey

Chapter 7 opened with a scene at the waterfront, one of my favorite places at real life camp.  It's a place of zen in spite of the organized chaos.  Whenever I'm there, I close my eyes for a moment to drink in the sound around me.  The happy shrieks of campers being playfully splashed.  The roar of a counselor pretending to be a lion as they tromp around the shallow end with more kids dangling off their back than should be humanly possible.  The thump, thump, thump of wet feet padding the planks of the pier toward the deep end, just shy of running, but racing all the same.  The thwap of a life jacket smacking the water, the last piece of a swim test so close to being completed once they click that strap into place.  The far away voices carrying across the water as rowboats drift further away.  The giggles of a counselor being buried in the sand matched by the giggles of the kid doing the burying.  The slap of UNO cards on the nearest picnic t...

One of the reasons I started this book was to give myself space to confront very real feelings.  As I said in my first post , despite the sheer highs that camp produces, there are also a lot of low lows.  Chief among the lows for me is grief.   Grief about the literal pain the kids endure through treatment, about the way their lives have been changed, and about the people they could've been.  Grief about the loss they feel in their own lives, about friendships created and changed through relapse, and about the old fashioned, straight up kind of grief that comes from death.  Their deaths.  Their friend's deaths.  The death of the kid who shared their cabin last year that they never connected with so now they carry deep regret with them right next to the grief.  Grief comes in so many shapes, sizes, and colors at camp that it's kind of a constant.  For me, processing grief is a little bit like being a parent whose kid is pulling at their p...