This has been a weird experience for me given that I have already experienced the passing of my own mother.
Today, I have many thoughts floating through my mind. What made me log on today is the following thoughts that I don't want to forget:
- Birth and Death are two sides of the same coin. Waiting for a baby to be born is very similar to waiting for a loved one to die. Very unpredictable and truly a process. The emotions we experience are opposites but still very similar in HOW we experience them. It was amazing to realize this.
- I have to forget my emotional state of being from when my mother passed in this particular situation. Mom was a mother to me but she is not my birth mother so I am feeling my loss of her in a different way. PLUS, I don't actually feel worthy to grieve hard because Mom is my husband's mother and not mine so I want him to have first dibs on hard grief...him and his family. So I feel super confused in my emotions. Today, I decided to not expect anything in particular of myself and to be okay with feeling confused
- I feel good after exercising. My husband told me to exercise so I would feel better because I got in a funk this afternoon. I feel so happy after practicing to teach Zumba Sentao.
- Having children when grieving loss is different because they come before my grief. My younger son has cried lots, at least he did on the first day. It was heartbreaking to see him so upset over losing his grandmother. At one point he asked if it was really true because he wanted his Grandmother to still be here. The older son has been confused at his lack of crying. I told him that he is normal. I do believe tears will come. My hubby and I have been so stable and supportive of them that I think they feel stable and safe. So, this is not super traumatic for them.
- I feel an intense appreciation for having known Mom. When my mother passed, I felt a deep loss. I feel like I will miss Mom terribly and really wasn't ready for her to leave but realized that this is a time to recognize the GIFT that I had in knowing her and being her daughter-in-law. I finally got to this place with my own mother but it is weird to START here with my mother-in-law. Spiritually, I am in a different place and so my truth is that they are not gone. I talk to my mother regularly and am already talking to Mom. I have a candle set up for her in front of a LOVELY plant that I know she would LOVE. I will do things to honor her for 40 days. I think this will bless her spirit as well as mine and my children
- I feel like I did after my initiation in the Sacred Feminine Mysteries. I am a new creature who is rising out of the energy of death. Mom has died to this world and gone back to her true home but all of us have died and are now new. We will have to put the pieces of our lives back together but they will never be the same.
- Patches- When I was in my bereavement support group after my mother's death, the counselor talked about patches. She said that we have to think of the memories of our loved ones like we do patches that you sew onto jeans. When a pair of jeans have a hole, we use the patch to fortify the jeans. That is how it is after death of a loved one. We have a hole in ourselves but we can take the good memories of our loved one's and place them over the hole in our hearts. The memories of our loved one will sustain and us keep the hole from getting bigger. The memories will strengthen that which was once broken.
