There are certain locations that we visit sparingly, maybe once or twice a year, through which we can mark time. Locations where specific memories are made year after year as opposed to the never-ending stream that occurs closer to home. My parents home is one of those places for me and especially their neighborhood pool.
This week I battled some major mind-screwiness to finally find Adelaide - she's been with us all along.
And then it was August. Even though it is still 90 degrees outside and my kids don’t go back to school until after Labor Day, I can feel autumn and all its changes right around the corner. As long as there are school-aged children living in my home, the start of a fresh school year will continue to feel more like a new beginning than January 1st ever will. A new school year mandates change to the routine of our lives in the way a traditional new year can only do arbitrarily.
This week has been wild. I started ini Fayetteville, Arkansas and am currently wrapping up a couple days of CURE business in Chicago. It hasn’t been entirely smooth but I’ve rolled with it. I’ve even leaned into which is so not like me. Is that growth I’m feeling? And also, whose life am I leading because I’ve only dreamed of this life - is it actually coming to fruition after all these years?
I surrendered control for this trip in a way I haven’t done in years. That I didn’t know what to expect is, at best, an understatement. By the time I stepped into my room with the summer Italian sun blazing in the window, luggage at my feet, and jet-lagged after a 16-hour journey I began to question what in the hell I had gotten myself into. Who had I just surrendered to and what exactly was I surrendering for? Over the next four days, I learned that the answers to these questions were as complex and varied as grief as itself.
By the time you read this I will have landed in Sicily. I’m equal parts excited and nervous and also a little bit wondering if manifesting is real? You see, about a month ago, I received an email from a fellow loss mama with an offer I couldn’t refuse (movie reference 100% intended).
Monday is the Fourth of July, and well, the holiday is hitting a little differently than it did in the summer of ‘89 when my brother and I wore matching outfits and my bangs were cemented in place with Aquanet. Over the last few years I’ve looked on as a number of my black friends had complicated emotions surrounding the holiday. While I respected their feelings and understood to the best of my ability, the holiday still rang true for me.
The more I read through the responses to last week’s blog the deeper I dove into the concept of forced gratitude - a topic I’ve touched on before but I don’t think I’ve every truly grasped. I just knew that I hated being told that I had so much to be grateful for when all I could see was everything that I’d lost. And that’s certainly part of it, but it’s also so much more.
Strawbaby has been been testing boundaries like a velociraptor at Jurassic Park with zero concern for consequences. It’s been hard, really freaking hard but I’ve been having difficulty communicating that because shouldn’t my past perspectives leave me grateful for this healthy child? How dare I be stressed when this is what I’ve wanted. It’s just not that simple though, is it?
The last week and a half I’ve felt like one of those toy cars that you pull backwards until it makes that clicking sound and then races forward. It’s not that I haven’t been active or involved in the last two and half years, its just that during that time I developed an incredibly strong aversion to stress. I’ve become terrified of feeling the way I did when I was at my worst after Adelaide passed. The lack of control, the unpredictable emotions, the debilitating anxiety and depression - I’ve come so far and I don’t want to go back.
Jackson came home from school on Wednesday and let me know that they had spoken in his class about the school shooting in Texas. Along with the conversation in class, his teacher emailed a list of 100 coping skills which I appreciated receiving - but also, my child shouldn’t need coping strategies to feel safe at school. We are collectively grieving: all the lives lost to gun violence and also that this nation has failed to protect its citizens from themselves. I may not have a lot of factual knowledge or direct experience when it comes to firearms but I do know a thing or two about grief.
I lost a dear friend this week due to complications from a very fierce fight with breast cancer. Recently we had spoken about the pressure of acknowledging that we had limited time with the people we love. We came to the conversation from different places but our takeaway was the same: there is an unimaginable weight that settles over you when time becomes finite. A desperation to make every moment count.
I overheard Miguel on a call giving someone an update on our lives and he concluded by saying that the world may be in chaos but, in our little bubble, life was pretty good. I had to take a moment to register that he wasn’t wrong. The depressing current events have been filtering my perception of my actual daily life into thinking that it is a shit show as well. How do I still feel present as a citizen of the world and also experience personal joy? I found the answer in the most fantastical of places…
