We are still here

On the truths that guide us and the collective power of the decisions each of us makes.

I write to you from 36,000 feet in the air, a place high above a thicket of clouds, a lumpy highway guiding us home. My daughter is by my side, listening to music and staring out the window. Her eyes are brown like mine. Her lips are full like mine. Her hair is thick like mine. Her long limbs are just like her father’s.

She told me she doesn’t remember her father. I told her that her body remembers the love he had for her, a girl whose name he heard Bob Dylan sing, though the song is one that Joan Baez sang well before Dylan, which is why my daughter, a budding feminist, has revisioned her own history to credit Baez with the origin of her name.

My daughter is 16. For eight years, three months and 19 days, it has been just he two of us. We’ve lived by three truths since her father died 30 days after we learned that he had cancer: We trust the other, we believe in ourselves fiercely and we work as a team.

Our bond is strong. Our love is stronger. We lose our shit and regroup. We fall apart and we pull ourselves back together, together. We take the lemons we have been handed and squeeze them into yummy lemonade. Our resourcefulness is anchored in our ability to embrace the discombobulation of change.

When our world spins, we hold on to each other more tightly. When anxiety creeps in, I remind myself to remind her that to spend time lamenting what could or should have been is to waste time because we can only shape what is. Our power — yes, yours too — rests in the collective impact of our decisions and actions. Decide and act wisely.

With love and purpose always,

Fernanda