Despite the repeated migraines, nausea, joint pain, and other afflictions, I had to get out and walk this morning. To move some energy. My thoughts were dark and intrusive. I’ve been clenching my jaw and tossing and turning.
There’s a combination of distressing things happening currently, and all around that is regular every day life. Life that I love. The distress threatens to swallow, but it can’t with this spirit. It’ll never break my spirit. Et Lux Intenebris Lucet.
An ex lover and partner’s mother is actively dying. In one year’s time cancer has ravaged her. I had no idea how something like this would feel. The memories it would walk me through. I’ve never been so close to death before. I never realized how entirely I love, and that no longer being connected to the people never removes it. It just exists there.
It helps me to experience myself as loving and I need that right now with everything else I’m going through. The threat of parental alienation is real. I was programmed to always believe it was me, that’s bad, wrong, causing things. And while I’m by no means perfect my perception of myself has been the biggest battle in my life.
It’s plugged right in. People have plugged right in to my trauma and taken over where the previous left off, and the worst part is it felt like home. Love that wasn’t love at all, but a mask for insecurity, a bizarre attempt at control, a lot of things. But not love.
The impending loss of this woman who was a mother to me, one of very few, surrogate mothers. Who cried as I wore a wedding dress. Who loved my children and I…. sits like a stone in my stomach. I am heavy, foggy, and struggling with focus.
I burst into tears to her and her husband when I asked permission to marry their daughter and I meant it. I meant it. I didn’t mean to be the way I was, to not have room for anyone else’s feelings to exist. To be consumed inside my mind. To not stay. Those I didn’t mean. There was a lot I didn’t understand much less meant.
She is happily married now to a person who is well suited and she’s happy. She still loves my children and her partner holds that connection sacred. So they visited a few weeks back. I was nervous and they handed me their little one. Welcoming. Another baby I wasn’t able to have with a woman.
They are about to have their second, any day, while any day the glue and the matriarch will take her last breath. Vibrant, laughing, alive, kind, loving, Karen. It is unthinkable. I cannot even think it because what comes with this will be all manner of intrusive thoughts of myself or my loved ones going like this.
I stare numbly at the wall.
It’s almost show time. The time I show up for my client’s and give all I’ve got until I run out. My energy, focus, love, wisdom. What meaning would my life have without this exchange. It is not a question, it’s a statement. It’s everything. The sharing of knowledge that could make a moment of passing even a tiny bit lighter. I hope..
I hope for the family who is saying goodbye that the new lives beginning, at times provide temporary anesthesia for the pain.
Mother daughter relationships are complex. I’m struggling immensely in my own right now. This morning my mind is busy sending it’s energy to my former lover and friend because I know what that connection means to her, and what losses she’s already endured.
In some ways this is one of my first. The first up close death of one of my surrogate mother’s, and a loss to people I love deeply.
When love is true it still exists whether near or far. There is so much of that in my heart right now. Love and loss, the full spectrum.
I am learning it’s just still all right there. Ulay Ulay….
I am grateful for my deep connections and all of the love that’s helped me get connected to myself, every thread is honored.
Twin A begins college today…. Twin B prepares to move out West, a one way ticket for now with so many possibilities, my family is changing. It is a beautiful agony. One that I don’t know if I could have ever prepared for.
There will be a funeral soon. Life is just an endless cycle of birth and death I suppose after all, and this clinician is most concerned with the meaning between the lines and what’s beneath the surface. It’s not a bad way to live. It’s not too shabby.
Remembering and forgetting moments all while simultaneously creating new ones, because never give up is something that I live by. For me there is no other way.
Will you hear my heart tearing when the plane takes off, and the last breath is taken? You never know the last time you’ll see someone, hug them, appreciate their laugh. That’s a lot to be with, that reality.
What I do know today however is that real love never dies. It only transforms and is transforming. What a comforting sentiment amidst all of this existential suffering…..
💜