31 Days - An update on my most popular post - where are we now?

My most - read post was the tribute I wrote to Stella Young.

http://www.lifeatmylevel.blogspot.com.au/2014/12/stop-all-clocks-you-broke-internet-stell.html

It has been almost six months since Stella's passing and I have to say that there are days where the disbelief still hits me right between the eyes.

She was just so alive, so vital, so incredibly happy the last time I saw her. It was easy to believe that Stella was invincible. She just loved people; she loved life.
All of us who were so blessed to call her a personal friend miss her beyond belief...and always will.

I think of her when I stop at South Yarra station. I think of her when my train pulls into Richmond. My heart is joyous when I hear Uptown Funk by Mark Ronson.  I feel her encouraging me to continue to get proud by practicing and I know she'd be super proud of my daughter Sarah jetting off to LA on her own.

I don't understand why she only got such a short time but oh my gosh, she was so alive while she was here. She did so much, loved so much and was loved so incredibly by so many people. What a good life. What an amazing life.

If I'm only a fraction of who she was, then I've had a great life indeed.

Stop all the clocks, you broke the internet Stell.

November 2014. She and me.

Dear Stell,

I first met you ten years ago. Ten years. Really, was it only ten years? It feels as though I've known you all my life....but I know that's impossible. I am after all, fifteen years older than you....and yet you always seemed so much wiser.

You came along to an SSPA convention to run a theatre/performance workshop at the request of our mutual friend Carly. You and I hit it off immediately, but you know what Stell? That was you. You hit it off with everyone you came in contact with. You genuinely liked and were interested in people and in your presence, each of us had your full attention. Your eyes would light up, you'd smile and laugh and you'd make us feel that we actually meant something to you - and we did! And those hugs! Oh my gosh! When I first met you I was so scared I was going to break you, so ignorant was I! I soon learned that you too, were capable of great, smooshing hugs that felt warm and heartfelt and so I hugged you without reserve.

You turned to me during a rough patch after your beautiful heart had been crushed and wounded. We would talk for hours when you felt life just couldn't go on and you didn't know where to turn and what to do.

"Breathe Stell...." I gently told you. "Just breathe....."

And that's what you did. And your heart healed and you got stronger. Hell....you didn't just get stronger, you became powerful and feisty and I loved you even more!

Later, when my heart felt crushed and damaged beyond repair and I didn't know what to do or where to go or how to live you held me and said to me,

"I'm going to give you the same advice a dear friend once told me. Breathe, Leis........just breathe..."

And so I breathed....and my world went on. I became stronger.

You were the first one to be by my side when I called you desperately from Intensive Care at the Children's Hospital that cold, windy day. You were the first one there to hold my hand after watching my child come back from the brink following an unexpected complication from surgery. You dropped everything and just came, letting us know we weren't alone. You opened your home as a refuge from that nightmare and you held my hand through the night, stroking it, giving comfort.

I'll never forget that. Ever.

I loved it that you and I had opposing views on some things. You, a staunch atheist, me a woman of faith. Not that we ever butted heads about it, but we respected and loved each other enough to simply leave it alone respectfully. We both loved each other too much for it ever to come between us by having endless, pointless arguments about it.

You know Stell...when I got the opportunity to be there on the red carpet at the premier of X-men: Days of Future Past with the possibility of interviewing Peter Dinklage (The Dink - as you so affectionately dubbed him) I felt so hopelessly inadequate. I kept thinking, "It should be Stella doing this! She's got a much higher profile than me; she's more popular and most of all, SHE'D KNOW WHAT TO DO! I'm just a NOBODY!"

But Stell, you showed me that I'm not a nobody and that I'm just as capable as you at getting the word out there, challenging, questioning, provoking and connecting. I love you for that.

After some time of radio silence between us we both managed to catch up twice within the last month at some celebrations. You, in your incredibly generous way encouraged me by being so excited at the changes you saw. Instead of being this non-self-accepting, ableist person you once knew (and loved just the same) you saw a woman who talked to you about the pride she felt at identifying with a rich culture where diversity, difference and disability are not only accepted but celebrated vicariously! Your eyes lit up, you grinned and you high-fived me in celebration of how far I'd travelled in the last ten years. On Saturday 29th November we caught up and danced like wild things together, both of us throwing ourselves around with reckless abandon - not as a political statement, but because we loved to dance. We sang loudly and badly and affirmed to each other just how much we meant to each other.

Before we parted that night you told me that you were hoping to come to The Other Film Festival and attend the On The Road With Snow White forum that I was facilitating on Saturday 6th December.

That Saturday, as I led the discussion I looked out into the audience to find you. You weren't there. Little did I know that you had already cast off. The news had not yet reached us....

On Sunday, the girls and I were talking about how good it was to see you. On and off I'd blurt out a random, "Crips Ahoy!" as I'd heard you exclaim when you'd spy a group of wheelie crips out and about.

The news still had not yet reached us.....

The news reached me on Monday morning...and my life turned inside out, upside down and 'round the wrong way. I cannot fathom it Stell. I really can't. I've taken a huge deep breath in and I can't exhale. It keeps hitting me over and over again....and yet I feel like it hasn't hit me at all. It will. I know it will....and then there'll be this primal wail of this terrible, horrible grief that is gnawing away at my insides.

And yet I hear you, somewhere in the In-between......

"Breathe, Leis'........just breathe........"

My Sarah said yesterday that you broke the internet. Tributes are flowing from all over the globe Stell! All over the GLOBE! Do you know that? I hope you do. I hope you know what a huge, crip-shaped hole you've left. I could write here about all your achievements and what an impact you made in so many different facets of the community.....

.....but I'm not going to.....

I'm going to be selfish.....

This tribute I am writing is what you meant to me. I am writing about the Stella that I knew. That wonderful, gregarious, cheeky, generous, inherently flawed, feisty, vulnerable, beautiful soul that was simply too big for the body she inhabited. You facilitated change in ME Stell. A little bit of you lives in me.....

And the wonder about all that is that you gave everything of yourself to everyone else you touched too......so that all of us left behind can connect with the little bit of Stella that is in each other.

You're not gone Stell. To get through, I'm thinking that you've just gone off to do your work elsewhere and left us to carry on what you were passionate about. I for one, will keep the flame burning.

I'll just keep breathing ok Stell? It's all I can do.

I love you. Always and ever.