Beginning to climb from the Abyss ©MC_2023 It is enough that I am here, that I am starting. I wanted to write this for you, neighborhood children/friends, tales on hauling oneself from the deep… but better advice is to write this for me, alone, no one wants to read exhortatory messages - especially from someone continually pulled down (succumbing to or perhaps less generously repetition compelled into) these familiar paralyzing depths - I am pulling up, a 30 cm at a time, towards the surface of watery depth, my own abyss, hard pull after hard pull upwards. Maybe someday in this you’ll find comfort, as everyone has the time of dark nights and the dark valley. Still, each step has to be made by myself and for myself alone. It has been my nature to feel I am forever putting others first, offering service but that may well be too how I tumbled down into the darkness… God knows that the darkness, so familiar, so enveloping has been a safe place for me all my life, safe but not comforti