Journal Entry 11.11.23

I am emotionally spent. I have opened my heart and empathized both with the communities I am in and with myself as I have worked on this grief project. I have opened my heart wide using muscles I did not know I had to embrace the world and myself in it in a new way. I have forcible let down my defenses. I have gone into territory I have not traveled before. I have not relied on defenses or fear or comfort and I am exhausted.

I need to regroup. To rest, to nurture, to appreciate, to comfort myself even as I continue on this journey. I am just a few weeks away from a tangible journey and over halfway through a journey I have embarked upon internally. I have a distance to go. But one cannot pare oneself down to the bare essentials and remain this open for too long. It feels like it might become life threatening to not rest and rejuvenate, to drink and eat and refill physically and spiritually and then continue forward to learn what more I can learn.