So I was having a conversation this week with someone about ‘that’ photo. You’ve all seen it, me topless (or on occasion completely nude) facing into the unknown, hands stretched out. The first time I did it was in Malaysia with a girlfriend while staying in a penthouse apartment in Kuala Lumpur, and I have done it in a whole lot of other places since then as well.

For me that pose and photo has always been about making myself small and vulnerable in the universe. It’s a statement of ‘here I am, what else are you going to throw at me!?’. It’s actually not about the nudity, but rather vulnerability. Being naked in the wild is being vulnerable. You have nothing to defend yourself with and are at the mercy of the elements. It is about accepting that in the scheme of things (very big picture) we are actually completely insignificant, and don’t matter. The world will keep turning and the universe will continue to exist long after I am gone, and I recognise that.

Whatever my issues are, big or small, they are nothing in the grater scheme of things, and for whatever reason, that pose, that photo has helped me to gain that perspective. Sometimes it’s just been for fun, but there have been some significant times that it’s happened for me where I have needed the ‘small in the universe’ moment. There have been moments of grief and anger where it has also been a huge ‘fuck you’ middle finger to the world… a shout of I am still here and still going regardless of what you throw at me.

What I realised the other day tho, after having a conversation about it, was that I don’t think I need it anymore, that I have other ways of gaining that perspective when I feel overwhelmed, and I don’t need to challenge the universe to throw anything else at me!

It was a bit of a startling realisation to be honest. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still going to have up and down days and things that drag me under, but I do feel a whole lot more resilient, and I know that I can get through the things that life throws my way. As the saying goes, ‘ so far, I have managed to survive 100% of my worst days’ … and I know that will continue.

This whole grief journey has been (and continues to be) an extraordinary thing to go through. I could never in my wildest dream have imagined this being my life. The bubble that Claytie and I had for ourselves was so completely ordinary that I had no room to picture anything else. I know that that’s the case for most people who face the death of their person (whatever the relationship) .. we all think that we are immune and that this stuff happens to other people, or at an appropriate age when we are done with life. The reality of going through it is shocking and isolating and so all encompassing that it takes a massive effort to recalibrate and persevere.

The biggest lessons that I have learned from all of this is that I am far more resilient than I ever thought (and I can’t tell you how much I hated hearing that in the early days from well meaning people on the way through), that grief does not have a time line or goes away, that you can feel a multitude of emotions all at the same time, and that it’s really really hard work to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

I am never going to be the person that I was. She died the same day that Claytie did. But I can like and be proud of the person that I have become and will continue to become, and that constant change is the only certainty we have. It turns out that I’m getting better at ok with being a speck of dust in the constantly changing universe