Breathing Deeply — Perhaps for the First Time

After all the effort, the hardscrabble existence, I can breathe again.

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

There’s nothing quite like the first deep breath. You know the one. It’s the first you take after the hard climb — or when surfacing from being too long beneath the water. It’s the first full inhalation after panic or fear or an argument that twists your stomach into knots.

There’s rarely such a flood of gratitude for th…