Hello friends.

Happy summer!  We hope this post finds each of you well and enjoying the rhythm of what summer holds.
We thought it would be worthwhile to fill you in on our Murchie family happenings since, well, I am still working on the website/blog I mentioned in our last post and life moves faster than I tend to process. 

As the title of the post indicates, the Murchie's have moved to...wait for it...Bethel, yet again!  I know, can you believe that we moved back to campus!?  Now do not worry your little hearts, I have not lost my mind.  Student development has always been a passion of mine and I was offered an opportunity to continue to expand my learning as a professional as I accepted a job to work as the BUILD Residential Supervisor for 2nd Year Students.  This program at Bethel "provides a supportive and comprehensive educational experience for individuals with intellectual disabilities". I will be working specifically with students in the BUILD program who are in their second and final year on campus as they move towards graduating with a Certificate in Applied Studies.  I will work closely with the students to encourage their personal education and learning while on campus.  I am thrilled to be a part of something that provides opportunity for those that society can tend to exclude.  For anyone interested in learning more, I highly encourage you to visit their website (https://www.bethel.edu/academics/build/).

As this position provides exciting new opportunity, it has also been a true mix of heavy emotions this month as we have prepared for this move.  Obviously, our time at Wyndham Circle with Luke's parents is deeply connected to Leo.  Most of his living life in the world was there. It is hard to even imagine that this time last year, Leo was in the process of being discharged from the hospital, a month that started with unbelievable trauma and then seemingly, stepping towards healing.  Wyndham Circle was and will forever be wrapped in Leo's story and leaving it felt weighty in a different way.  Of course, we carry Leo with us, literally, as the boys bring gifted lions from place to place and figuratively, as we know who we are was changed by him and his story and we hold that with deep sacredness.  Even still, to anyone outside of our everyday, it could seem like we are 'doing better' by making this change which tends to provide some sense of relief that this will not over take us.  In actuality, we are 'moving on' with our lives as we make this change but it is hard not to feel that this language is limiting to what we actually live and experience everyday as we make any change.

Moving on?!  No one ever moves on from loss, especially like this.  We move forward because that is what life requires but moving on somehow indicates that we leave him behind.  Norah McInery talks about this difference in her Ted Talk (https://www.ted.com/talks/nora_mcinerny_we_don_t_move_on_from_grief_we_move_forward_with_it?language=en)  I recommend if you want some perspective and she is also very funny in her podcast, "Terrible, thanks for asking."  

I was trying to find an analogy that would give people a sense of what this feels like.  My mom, early on after Leo died, sent us a post from someone connected to her that lost someone special to them and the writer wrote about it feeling like his loss made him feel like he was walking with a limp.  Some things in the story resonated but I kept feeling like it wasn't enough to describe what everyday feels like to me.  So, as Luke and I sat and watched Grey's Anatomy over the course of the last few months (maybe healing or maybe torture), there is a character, a doctor, who loses their leg in a plane crash.  As we watched her make her way back to some sense of what life was like before, I could not help but feel like this is what it somewhat feels like for us each day. 

We have lost a limb (Leo).  It sometimes feels like that limb is still here with us in reality.  I sometimes wake up feeling for him next to us sleeping or talk to him as if he is here.  It's like the phantom pain many amputees talk about, there, but not really there.  The denial stage of grief has also played a role for us.  It wasn't that I did not know he was gone but it felt bigger, like, is this really my life?!  I fought the idea that it was for a while.  Then, the idea of "rehabilitation" for our lost limb was not really in the my sphere of thinking much these past 9 months.  We have just been wobbling around, hoping this was not our life.  

And yet, as life beckons on, we had to start considering our options if we were not going to shrivel up and die ourselves.  So, we moved forward with some things and I wonder yet if this is what it feels like to be fitted with a prosthetic limb.  We know and sense the loss all the time.  We are trying on something new and we will continuing to feel the loss even with something new.  Every step we take with this new fake limb helps propel us forward and yet there is no getting around the fact that our limb, Leo, is gone.  

Well, anyways, I feel like you get the point.  We are slowly finding a way forward.

That's probably enough for one post.  Thanks for taking the time to read this.  I wanted to also share some photos from Leo's 1st birthday celebration. (Photo credit goes to Gus Tiffer)

Much love to each and everyone of you.