What needs healing?

A. A wound?

B. Pain?

C. Trauma?

D. All of the above?

If you chose Answer D, you are correct.

And how does one heal?

A. Time?

B. Attitude?

C. Sharing love?

D. All of the above (and more)?

Again, it’s Answer D.

This voyage – I’m calling it the Healing Voyage – is intended to provide time and space for grieving, for remembering, for honoring, and for sharing the love I have for Jocelyn.

Unlike past seasons, when this blog served mainly to record the people, places, and experiences had aboard the Windleblo, now this space offers more. Yes, it will continue to record the when and the where of my watery wanderings, but now it can serve to help me heal.

Given the blow I have suffered, I suspect there’s no way to keep my feelings out of these pages. So why not let go? Allow emotion to color my vision. Explore what that means for now and tomorrow. Together, we’ll see where it leads.

Before we start, a word about privacy. You may wonder, why is he posting these innermost thoughts on his blog? After all, it’s very public. Anyone can find it, read it.

Under the circumstances I now find myself in, I decided it was okay to seek grief counseling. Among other things, my counselor advised that many people find writing helpful in processing grief. I’ve also discovered that the people I feel most comfortable talking to about my grief are people who have been there, people who have suffered a loss of their own in the past. For their willingness to listen – and to respond lovingly, without judgement – I am forever grateful.

These folks form a kind of club. An unwelcome one to be sure, but none-the-less a group bound by common experience. Members of this club are good at paying it forward by helping newcomers to the club with their grief.

When thinking about whether to keep my writings private or posting them on the blog, I considered that posting could be my own way of paying it forward. Perhaps readers could relate to their own experience, or at least empathize with mine. As I’ve learned recently, there are only two kinds of people in this world – those who have grieved and those who will. I decided if I could I should help whoever is coping with what I am coping with now. I decided to put the writings on the blog.

And then there’s the question of What Would Jocelyn Do.

Before Jocelyn’s Ceremony of Gratitude, I ordered a bunch of WWJD bracelets off Amazon. At the risk of offending devout Christians, I co-opted the acronym for my own meaning – What Would Jocelyn Do? She had a knack for knowing the right choice in most any situation, plus her ethics met the gold standard, so I accepted her way a lot. I distributed the bracelets to closest friends and family who knew her best and would understand the meaning. For now, I wear the bracelet every day to help me find my way.

Jocelyn wasn’t a writer. She was an accountant, more of a numbers person. And she was all about helping others. If a choice presented itself to her where one way would help others more than another, she would take the more helping way. If these pages can help anyone turn their grief into love, then she would be all for it.

So the Healing Voyage has begun. On July 4^th, my crew and I set sail from Canoe Cove Marina, North Saanich, British Columbia. The crew consists of myself as skipper, my brother Bill as first mate, and my dog Frida as mascot.

Our loose cruising plan is to head north and possibly circumnavigate Vancouver Island. Our first sail took us about 40 nautical miles north to a berth in the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club at Coal Harbour, right in downtown Vancouver.

Allow me now to pose the question again.

How does one heal?

Well, certainly not by inflicting more pain and suffering.

That’s why when Bill tested positive for COVID the day after we arrived in Vancouver, our Healing Voyage took a detour.