Slowly very slowly I am becoming myself again. Grief takes you away from everything you are and everything you know. That’s what I have learned recently. As the storm clears however, what I am finding is a new appreciation for all that I have and all that I am.
This year I do feel as if January was the lost month. And that’s a lot of time to lose for someone who doesn’t want to miss a second. But was it really lost? Or did we only stand to gain?
Gain?! How can I possibly suggest watching our dreams crumble could result in a gain? I can hardly believe what I’m typing! But yes you gain something. Perspective and Presence with capital P’s.
Now I am here finally able to wipe the tears that kept smudging the blueprint of our lives and begin to draft again. This 2 months has felt like a single lifetime.
Recently I had my kids write me a letter (to lift their grounding from the dog peeing on the couch). They were to write an essay on their experience with me as a mother. At some point I may share them in their entirety, but to summarize for now. They love me, they really love me. It’s unthinkable they wouldn’t right?!
But often times I don’t feel loved like the humans do, it’s part of what I come with.
Recently someone told me at the end of the day we are who we are. Seemingly simple advice right ? Why is it that it’s the most simple of advice executed at the proper time that is the most profound?!
I’ve spent a lifetime fighting what I thought I could become, because of the things I saw and experienced when I was little. If there was any chance I could be that, I wasn’t going to take it. I was a vicious slave master over myself, and I did not use kindness to meet my goals.
I found as a mother I could keep the same viciousness I treated myself with away from my children, but that meant I had to keep a large portion of me distant as well. I replaced me with more warm and safe characters. Until later in life I began to realize they had their own dark sides as well, and maybe I wasn’t so terrible after all. I grew and I grew.
I have always done it backwards. Their love saved me, when it was “supposed” (such a nasty word) to be my love nurturing them. I loved better and more than my memory allows me. Again that terrible slave master who was constantly whipping me when I would come even close to the behavior of my mother. It was exhausting to be that vigilant over myself and much of their young lives they have seen me tired and stressed.
Until finally I put the whip down and began to give myself nurturing and affection.
Again seemingly selfish in the world of society’s view of the mother. But society never knew my beginning, and kindness was the medicine I required all along. I could never be warm, gentle, and kind with my children when I couldn’t be with my own child. It was always incongruous and disconnected. And I was always aware that I was. Not a fun combination. That shit needs to stay in your subconscious so you can survive. I’m an odd breed. Always aware when I constantly wished not to be. My gift and my curse.
Thoughts like, “it’s too late”, or “you did this the wrong way”, only harm my soft new self. Like a baby from the womb my new self isn’t ready to take care of itself yet. I needed nurturing, and I found that in my love in my 36th year, and the rest as they say is history.
Not co-dependent love, despite my sometimes fear of bordering on that 😉 not all consuming love, not burning love, not scathing or scarring love,
Generous love. Benefit of the doubt love, trusting love, gentle love, infinite love, graceful love, warm and available at all times love. Patient, oh so patient love.
Love heals all wounds. And I hope to love my children and family with this healed self for the rest of my days, and I hope to tell my story so they can know how hard I had to work to be available to them. So that they know I fashioned a self out of scraps. And what it takes to do that in the way that I did.
My gratitude continues to grow by leaps and bounds and perhaps this new self that is growing and being raised with all this love will have the courage to write books and talk you the world about her experiences.
