Because I Love Me
I will go on with your absence etched into my forehead and hands, stretch marks on my heart. I think of how you loved me and know that now I have to learn to take my own face in my hands and love with all my heart the woman that has lost her baby, her dream, yet is bursting with words and colors and melodies born of the silky, rugged, shattering terrain that she's traversed.
Because I love me I choose quiet over noise, wilderness over civilization, being over doing. I tell myself with great kindness, "It's ok to be right here, right where you are, in this puddle. Everything you feel is welcome. Everything."
When shame bubbles up, and it does, believe me, it does, I talk softly to the part of me that has a whip in her hand and a hard look on her face and remind her to return to now, I remind her to feel my hands on her heart, I remind her that I love her so much. I've discovered that guilt and shame live in the past. When they start marching into my awareness I can quietly close the doors and sit with what is present in my body. It's a mindfulness practice everyday.
Because I love me and because my child died, my sense of what matters has shifted. I no longer think I have all the time in the world to speak my truth. I have more clarity about how I want to spend my precious life. I am acutely aware of how temporary life is and the mystery of our unfolding is what propels me to be more boldly me, even when draped in grief, even when I want to curl up in a ball and talk to no one ever again. Even then.
Loving myself through this loss requires patience and permission and honoring. It means moving more slowly and taking on less work. It is about setting boundaries and planning vacations in nourishing places.
Transparency with clients and friends is also a form of self care. Sometimes it backfires because some people are not accustomed to my level of honest interaction, but that too is okay with me. I gather around myself those that appreciate and support and are willing to grow with me. I'm human. Perhaps my goal now is to be as fully human as I can be, in the best sense of the word-- connected to this incredible planet, connected to all life, connected to the galaxies we still know so little about, connected to the soul of my child and parents and friends that have transitioned.
Because I love me I will look for the gifts in this sorrow so that I can turn to you with something new in my hands-- a deeper capacity for compassion; insight; creativity; messages from beyond. Perhaps it is only when we love the aching places in our own souls that our humanity evolves. I have become a gardener tending fallow ground, knowing with all my strength that emptiness is also temporary