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Candles have been a source of both comfort and inspiration in these recent days.Small flickering beacons of warmth, amongst a period of my life that has been hard to navigate.Hard but able, I’ve found myself working systematically through my days. Ticking things off lists. Doing what needs done.Yet also… finding magic.Magic lives in the darkest places too. It makes even the most insignificant moment or event, feel meant. Feel gifted.A state of fight or flight, on my part, it seems has been ever present; for months and months, life as it is, has felt tentative. Uneasy and intangible.Somehow, the foundations, and the foothold, have felt unstable, the ground shifting. Tectonic plates of normality, left on fragile planes. Ready to shift at any given moment.And so, we find solace, in the now. The light that shines. The hand on hand. The smiles between the quiet. The ‘lots love’ and the questions of my children.The things that are controllable, even, have sometimes come unstuck. Running, the gym, healthy meals, even they have sometimes felt too much. But we go back to them, like time honoured life skill. And they pull us back to the present as much as the candlelight. The ME in it all.It is a lot, the sandwich generation, I am told I am a part of. The custodian of the care of both my father and my children. Required so much so, at either end of the spectrum of age.What a privilege. It is hard. But it is a gift in turn. That I can, and I continue to.We rest on the light. Warm. Inviting. Mesmerising. Like moths to a flame, we seek it out. We harness it in our stories and our art.That is the hope anyway…A Hope Candle.
