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Today marks the second anniversary of Mara’s passing and I look back on a previous entry to help me reflect on what has transpired over the last two years.

In this previous entry I noted that what I had learned was that…

  • Life is far too short for me to be waiting for permission to do something with it
  • Fear is all in my head
  • I suffer fools even less gladly than I normally would
  • People spend too much time complaining about first world problems

I still think and feel these things but since then I have also noticed that…

  • Slipping back into old habits is easy, maintaining new habits is hard
  • Momentum is something you need to constantly work at
  • You never, ever take anything for granted
  • Community and your connection to it is more important than ever

It’s amazing what comes out of you if you give yourself the time and permission to just sit and reflect (and not feel guilty about it).

Even though it’s been two years, not a day goes by where I am reminded of Mara and how much of a positive influence she has had on my life.

Sometimes this fact energises me and (most) other times it really hits me hard in the feels but today I wanted to celebrate how special and uniquely original Mara was and the best way for me to do that is with a song.

This song is called One Of A Kind and I wrote this in 2018 after Mara put up a fridge magnet with the first part of a beautiful quote from Pope John Paul II on it.

The full quote is…

“The human being is single, unique, and unrepeatable, someone thought of and chosen from eternity, someone called and identified by name”

The quote inspired me so much that I wrote and demoed the song in just under a couple of hours and it was one of Mara’s favourite songs of mine.

Mara was definitely one of a kind. Always was and always will be.

Peace,

Corey 🙂

One Of A Kind
©2018 C. Stewart

You managed to find your way
Through all the obstacles in this game of life
And through the challenges you faced
You made it through to the other side

You never know how much you mean to me
But it’s so obvious as far as I can see

Did you know that you are one of a kind
Yes you are, something so magical
Did you know that you are one of a kind
Yes you are, something irreplaceable

Nothing short of a miracle
Is what you are and what you’ll always be
I don’t why we try so hard
To be somebody else coz we’re all we need

You never know how much you mean to me
But it’s so obvious as far as I can see

Did you know that you are one of a kind
Yes you are, something so magical
Did you know that you are one of a kind
Yes you are, something irreplaceable

Interlude…

You never know how much you mean to me
But it’s so obvious as far as I can see

Did you know that you are one of a kind
Yes you are, something so magical
Did you know that you are one of a kind
Yes you are, something irreplaceable

Did you know that you are one of a kind
Yes you are, something so magical
Did you know that you are one of a kind
Yes you are, something irreplaceable

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I hope everyone is having a wonderful Christmas and New Years break that is full of family, friends and maybe some overindulgence as well, a perfect way to celebrate the year that was.

For me, 2021 was a year to consolidate my emotions and redefine my sense of meaning and purpose in life. This is of course due to Mara’s passing just over 12 months earlier.

Plus, with a couple of pretty major health issues (diabetes and hypertension) at the forefront of my mind and knowing full well that there would inevitably be a time that I would need to move on in my life, I also used 2021 as a means to work further on my health and to get myself back to some sort of spiritual centre.

So, with today being the first day of 2022, I want to share with you the things that I’ll be doing for this year.

2022 will be a year of transformation, a reinvention of the self from who I was in the past to what I will become in the future.

Until now I have been processing and grieving the loss of Mara as well as maintaining a holding pattern for my life until such time that I was ready to move forward but I now know that 2022 is the year that this will all be possible.

It will be possible because this year I will…

  • Continue on my path to reversing my Type 2 diabetes diagnosis, lowering my blood pressure and just getting healthier in general.
  • Continue to keep losing all of the unwanted weight that I have accumulated over the years and re-establishing a better relationship with food and what I put into my body.
  • Continue to look for opportunities to expand on my creativity whether it be writing music, performing live, building web presences, creating content through writing blogs, recording podcasts and shooting video for myself and/or my clients. 
  • Continue striving to be the best I can be through self reflection, meditation and living an examined life. I will learn from all the lessons that come my way just through embracing everyday life and all that it offers me. 
  • Continue to keep Mara’s memory alive in everything that I do because she was the greatest influence on me and a champion of the journey that I’m taking on at the moment so no matter what happens next, Mara will always be with me every step of the way..

I can feel the emotional fog lifting a little, I’m slowly but surely getting out of the house and lifting my head above the fog to see what’s happening. 

Right now, I’m in a good place and what I can say is that this year, I’ll be creating more content to see, hear, read, watch and share. After all, how do I know if this transformation and reinvention caper is truly working unless I document it somehow?

Anyways, thank you so much for being part of my personal and musical journey so far and I sincerely hope that 2022 is everything that you want it to be (and much, much more).

Peace,

Corey 🙂

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Today, Monday November 22, 2021 marks the one year anniversary of Mara’s passing. 

At the end of last week I went back to her Mum and Dad’s place in Millicent to drop off some boxes of Mara’s clothes, shoes, photos and her wedding dress. The trip also gave me an opportunity to celebrate with her family what would’ve been Mara’s 50th birthday last Friday November 19th.

The trip was a sad one but a necessary one because over the past 12 months since Mara’s passing my life has been all about letting go of things both physically and mentally. I suppose for me, this is all part of my grieving process.

I was noticing more and more as time went on that things that had once served a purpose are no longer relevant in my life. No longer relevant as in its purpose, not in what it means to me.

One of the hardest things to let go was Mara’s wedding dress but the reconciliation I had was that at the end of the day it would be better for the dress to go “home” to the house where she grew up.

Besides… It’s not my size.

Right now though, I am slowly going through all of the collected stuff that Mara and I had accumulated in our time together and I’m asking myself the same question… “Does this thing now serve a purpose in my life or not?” 

If it does, then I keep it. If it doesn’t anymore then I simply just let it go and at the moment I’m finding a lot of things that don’t serve a purpose to me anymore now that Mara is no longer here with me. 

It’s these things that I’m letting go of.

Six months ago in my post A Tribute To My Beautiful One – Six Months On, I wrote that the lessons I had learnt in that time were…

  • Life is far too short for me to be waiting for permission to do something with it
  • Fear is all in my head
  • I suffer fools even less gladly than I normally would
  • People spend too much time complaining about first world problems

Well, I can add “life is all about letting go” to the list and I’m sure that there will be many, many more lessons to add as time goes on.

In the meantime, I light a candle and reflect on how lucky I have been to have shared my life with such a beautiful, magical and special person.

Peace.

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Today marks six months since my wife Mara passed away from cancer on November 22nd, 2020 and not a day goes by that I don’t think of her and how much joy she has brought to my life.

Lately I’ve been asking myself the question “what have I learned from the last six months?” Of course I’m still processing all of this and will continue to do so for a long time. I mean that’s what grief is I suppose, but what I have noticed lately is that…

  • Life is far too short for me to be waiting for permission to do something with it
  • Fear is all in my head
  • I suffer fools even less gladly than I normally would
  • People spend too much time complaining about first world problems

Now, I haven’t written any songs since completing the FAWM 14 Songs In 28 Days Songwriting Challenge (which was a wonderfully cathartic experience), but I wanted to show you this, the most recent song I’ve written. 

It’s called My Last Goodbye. 

This is a song I’m pretty proud of and it really encapsulates my feelings for our relationship and how I’m feeling about everything now plus, the bassline is pretty cool too.

Seriously though, this is what songwriting is about for me, putting into a song what I would normally find difficult to put into words and My Last Goodbye is a great example of this. 

Enjoy.

My Last Goodbye
© 28/2/2021 C. Stewart

Verse 1
If I looked up to the nights sky
And counted all of the stars
It would never get me closer
Closer to where you are
If I stood beside the ocean
And stared at the horizon
The expanse of what’s before me
Is so small compared to my love

Chorus
There is nothing I can take
For this loneliness inside
There is nowhere I can run to
And nowhere I can hide
Everywhere I look I’m finding
Reminders of your life
I guess it’s time for me now
To say my last goodbye

Verse 2
If I had a go reciting
All the digits that made up Pi
There’d be not enough numbers
To describe the love of you and I
If I could travel through time
I’d go back to where we started
Just reliving every moment
As if we never parted

Chorus

Solo

Chorus

I can now feel myself just lifting my eyes up from the fog a bit and take my first steps back out into the real world. And what have I noticed? Well, nothing much has changed, the sun still rises in the morning and the world is still going about its daily business.

This has shown me that regardless of what is going on for me, life continues to go on. So I will continue my life’s journey, one day at a time and with one foot in front of the other as this is what Mara would’ve wanted me to do.

But I still miss her… Always.

Peace,

Corey 🙂