Cuckoo's nest

The session ended and we parted ways. There were ten of us in the beginning, all from different walks of life, all brought together by the most human experience of loss and grief. Before we parted, we embraced one another by the door and told one another to be strong before we braved the world outside.

I flew over the cuckoo's nest, and what a long, difficult process it has been. I flew over the cuckoo's nest, and I feel I have come a little further than before.

Cuckoos do not actually build nests. They lay their eggs in the nests of other birds for other birds to incubate. How out of place, a fraud perhaps. How the little cuckoos will grow up in a nest with other strange birds and feel so estranged and different from the rest.

I flew over the cuckoo's nest and now understand "you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy".

“That ain't me, that ain't my face. It wasn't even me when I was trying to be that face. I wasn't even really me them; I was just being the way I looked, the way people wanted.”
— Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

“I been away a long time.”