I'm Adalimone and this is the slowdown.

I just escaped for a few days with some friends to the Cayman Islands.

It was a last minute trip where we thought there was no way we could make it happen.

And then it happened and suddenly there we were staring at the sea.

The color so unreal it looked like a blue raspberry now and later or listerine,

a color that didn't seem possible in nature.

It was all too brief and all too beautiful.

Still the saying is true wherever you go there you are or rather the world is there too.

So of course there were moments when I'd find myself spiraling a bit about the state of the world,

the pandemic, the climate crisis, the war in Ukraine.

And I'd have to remind myself that there was a moment not even that long ago

where I wasn't sure if I'd ever be able to travel again, to see my friends again,

to see the sea again, to feel safe, to feel healthy.

I'd make myself remember the hardest moments of the darkest days just to be sure

I was appreciating this extraordinary moment of sunlight and waves.

Humans are so strange in the ways that we are either recovering too quickly from something

or holding on to pain forever.

There seems to be no middle ground.

We bounce back or we wallow.

But remembering the hardest moments of grief or loss and letting them be present for you in the good moments

is something I found youthful and grounding as I age.

It feels like a way of remembering that balance does exist.

...