If you feel grief, let it rock. Let it rock.

~ Martin Prechtel

This site was named No Safe Distance for a reason. None of the work I have done has felt particularly "safe" to me. It's terrifying to go head to head with fundamental existential questions. It's gut-wrenching to look at someone you love knowing you are going to see them die. It's painful to face the reality that sometimes in life you simply run out of "do overs." 

I have faced all of these things.  

As a result, you won't find me spouting a lot of sugar-coated platitudes here or revealing which Ten Steps I took to survive it all. Living is a messy process and dying can be even more so and I think we all need to talk frankly about that. As a friend said once, "I'm no longer a grief virgin."

Don't worry! I'm far from being a mope. It's just that not everything in my life is going to be okay. I know that. My mortality is not an abstract concept to me. I buried someone I loved like sunshine. I helped him design his headstone. Yet somehow I am still standing. I've learned how to love life even in the midst of profound pain.

What I have learned for myself, and what I hope to share through No Safe Distance , is that the best way out of something is often to go through it. Going through may cost you something, but the wisdom and compassion you gain are worth the price. I've learned to appreciate the beauty of a scar, of the jagged edge.

Maybe you can relate to some parts of what I have faced. If so, the good news, and it IS good news, is that you are in excellent company. There are many footsteps lining the path ahead of us. Poets, writers, philosophers, saints and even a sinner or two have left words of wisdom, like luminaria along the path.  It may be that you haven't noticed them before because you have found yourself on a path you didn't necessarily want to be on, but trust me, they are there and part of the work of this site is to shine a light on them for you so you won't feel quite so disoriented and alone on your journey.

And while many of the luminaria have passed on before us, I'm still here, walking the path just like you are. If you feel like a little conversation as you go, I'll tell you what the road has looked like from my vantage point as I, too, make my journey to the grave.

Joy and sorrow are inseparable.
Together they come
and when one sits
alone with you
remember that the
other is asleep upon your bed.

~Kahlil Gibran