Beginnings and Endings

I am so far from being finished acknowledging who and what were part of my beginnings.  But one of the points of this blog (for me) is to really articulate (again for me) that each of us lives our life as a series of beginning and endings.  When I was diagnosed with cancer for the first time in 2002 I bought an ancient Roman coin which I wear to this day.  On one side is the god of Janus, who is in Roman mythology the "god of gates, doors, doorways, beginnings and endings, and time" (Wikipedia).  It was something that was very meaningful to me then since I was at a place in my life that was a beginning AND an ending in a very clear way that often doesn't happen.  Life generally ebbs and flows into what was past and what is becoming the future but a diagnosis of cancer clearly puts a person into a place where the door of health as you knew it is over and learning how to deal with illness is beginning often with a vengeance.  The necklace continues to remind me that not only do I live with beginning and endings, but all of mankind does.  The differences lie in the specifics. Change is an undeniable fact of life.  We begin.  We end.  We begin again.

It is my wish that somehow I can draw on my life experiences and help those around me facing beginnings and endings in their lives.  Interestingly enough that covers so many people I know to one degree or another.  The quote by a man named Carl Barth sort of sums it up:

"Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start now and make a brand new end".

I really hope people who find themselves in circumstances in which their lives are changing can embrace this and know that moving forward is the only direction one can go.