Every morning before I leave the house, I take a few minutes to read something from my little green bedside book. It contains words of wisdom and thoughts for the day. Each day I read, and then I contemplate. It sets me up, helps me to stay focused and calm.

This morning I picked up my little book for the first time in over a month. The page marker was stuck on February 22nd. The mediation for that day was about tolerance, patience and love. Just the usual. I haven’t been able to pick the book up since that day. The first few days after the quake I was just too busy and shellshocked – out of my normal routine. Then I was too mad. I didn’t want to meditate. Then I started to miss it.

So today I picked up my little green book again and opened it to March 28th. I read this:

“Is there ever any particular spot where one can put one’s finger and say ‘it all began on that day, at such a time and such a place, with such an incident?’ … We can reflect on a particular experience and tag it a turning point…”

It made me cry, which I’ve mostly managed to avoid the last couple of weeks. February 22 was a defining moment in our lives. My little world has changed so much since then. For weeks after, nothing seemed familiar. It is very disorienting. After more than a month, my world is coming back into alignment. It’s all still new, but it’s starting to feel right again. Just in small bursts so far, but life is slowly getting back to some kind of normal.

And like everyone else in Christchurch, I just keep moving forward, making the most of what I have. I can’t put it behind me yet because I’m still living in it, but I can think about what I can learn from it, what I can gain. The reading finished in this way:

“…it’s the many parts of our lives, past and present, that guarantee us the turning points that nudge us further up the mountain. We will see the summit and we will understand how, each time we stumbled, new strength was gained.”

It comforted me to think about it in this way.