I admit I live a charmed life. My sons, now 19 and almost 15 are easy (compared with what some parents have to deal with) and I travel extensively. We live in a comfortable home among splendid neighbors in a city that has everything but mountains and an ocean. I love my job working day-by-day with some of the most gifted men, women, and children who grace the planet. I have a platform and an audience for my writing that I never anticipated. We are in good health. I earn enough money for our needs and we have everything we need.

Yet, there is room and a place and a desire for grief.

I grieve friendships lost.

I travail over errors of judgment and at times I find surges of primordial regret barreling from within me. 

I grieve wasted time, squandered moments with my parents who’d have given anything to know me better, to talk with me more deeply, to reach into matters more substantial than I was apparently willing to offer.

I grieve not being more fun with my sons, not loving sports as they do, and my lack of ability to discard a sometimes-overwhelming sense of responsibility to offer them a more carefree version of myself.

How about you?