Today I made a decision to end the business I've had for 7 years: TheSpiritSource.com. I am certainly not the only one in these times to see a business fold. I have friends who had thriving art enterprises who are now working in grocery stores. And my little, bitty stock illustration website was never a booming business. At best it made some money for artists that didn't have to pay the expenses, and was a wonderful online portfolio; I got several lucrative commissions from it. Maybe the real sadness is in the lack of people that I can really share the loss with. My husband, Jamie, has been dead now for 10 months. I have a son and son's girlfriend who I feel closer to by the day. That is a blessing. But no other family. No parents, no cousins, no real siblings ( one sister who is too attached to her husband to truly care). Friends try, but have there own lives. True loneliness is strange. When problems arise your mind casts around for an anchor, for that person that you can turn to and help you solve it, or at least hold your hand. That's gone. You only find a void in all your searches for that comfort. But there is another side to it: real freedom. Freedom can be a burden. It's something one has to become familiar with, comfortable with. New beginnings are scary. A little like swimming into the really deep water. There's no ground to touch. The shore is distant. The water a little cold. But the sky is wonderous and the horizon stretches out to Africa.