Healing thoughts

I've been through a lot in the past five years-- my husband and I separated after 21 years of marriage and then he died tragically in a car accident.  That was May of 2011, and my mother died in January of 2013.  These years have been so difficult to get through.  The loss and pain was so heavy at times that I could not leave my house.  But recently, things have shifted, and I have had a revelation.  I went to my niece's wedding and sat talking to my niece, her wonderful, funny, loving wife, and my step-daughter and her incredible husband.  And my other niece and her amazing husband.   I felt truly lucky to  know these young people and to be part of their lives as they get married and start families.  At the wedding, my sister-in-law said that our family is "a bunch of weirdos" and when she met Amy, her new daughter-in-law, and she saw how happy Amy and Sara were, she knew that Amy was "one of us."  I realized then that people leave your life, and then people come into your life-- people that you may not have expected or known would come into your life-- but there they are.  Now my step-daughter and her husband have a baby boy--three months old.  I am filled with joy.  I thought the pain would never end, but it is changing.  The joy of these new family members and new lives is easing the pain of loss.  Life goes onward and upward.  I am so pleasantly surprised!