As I drove home from Mass last week I passed an elderly lady walking in the spring sunshine

This lovely lady with white hair, whom I do not know, caught my attention due to  her smart appearance in a pink jacket and black skirt, tights and shoes which was striking to my eye.

She looked to me as though she too had been to a religious service of some sort, but no matter to me, she may have been on her way to the pub to meet friends – who knows?

It was the contrasting colours in her apparel which caught my eye, and lingered with me long after the fleeting moment of driving passed her had gone.

To wear two colours of stark contrast reminds me of the potential in all of us to hold light and shade in any given moment.

I have developed a much greater capacity to metaphorically wear pink and black in a mode in which neither mood be it dark or light are able to subdue the other.

In my life of many years before development, an altercation at home before I set off for work, could cloud a whole day.

The rejection of my truth in respect of my gay sexuality and the fierce dilemma I struggled to overcome this rejection of self clouded big chunks of my life.

My capacity now to hold on to pink and black means that I can experience light and shade but the contrast allows a perspective, even in the darkness.

The pink came out of the black for me – not in an explosion of gay lifestyle, but in an explosion of truth, an explosion of acceptance, an unbelievable capacity to be Married and Gay, and Catholic and Gay.

This has enabled me to feel peace in the knowledge of my truth and curious to get closer to it, rather than push it away.

Smart Woman, Smart Me, Smart You?

Pink and Black!

My next blog will be: Put the Kettle On

William Defoe