Managing Holiday Grief at the Office

What do you say to a co-worker who has lost a significant loved one or worse, how do you function in the workplace after losing one of your own? None of us really know what to say to people who have experienced loss. So, most times we say nothing at all. As the holidays approach, pay close attention to your workplace culture around normalizing the human experience of  love and loss and human beings experiencing emotions in the workplace. Grief in the workplace can be difficult for all and expressed by all. I strongly recommend reading the neuroscience behind grief in  O'Connnor's book, "The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science Behind Love and Loss." O'Connor describes what the shock does to the brain and you can see why your co-worker may need a minute or two to catch up. The book frankly made me feel normal in my grief. 

Never again should the words, “You need to keep your personal life at home” be uttered at work as those words stem from a stoic and toxic environment. Co-workers can offer a few minutes of refuge, with offers like, “Do you want to take a walk, or just sit with me for a moment" instead of saying get it together. Distract your team member with a joke or ask for help on something if their mind tends to stay in that pain. Overtalking about the death is not helpful to the brain, according to O'Connor.

Some emotions we thought we reconciled or buried come back even years later during the holidays. People cope by a quick jaunt outside, to the car, to the restroom for a quick walk, talk, or cry or to just sit in silence to settle the body and breathe. After a brisk walk away, stroll back in to the office or jump back on that Zoom feeling refreshed. Listen by making eye contact and listening with no advice. Sometimes, work may be the safest place to be if we have support. But, some of us were taught that to be strong, we need to not show human emotion. We know that fierce strength is a silent killer in every way from addictions to heart disease. You don't never bury your feelings. You allow them to flow through you or they manifest into physical disease. Cry it out.

“The purpose of thinking is to let the ideas die instead of us dying.”

― Alfred North Whitehead

Why are holidays so hard?

The holiday season is about family or lack there of and it's about money and pressure and belief systems. Ask around how many people dust off festive decor and remember the people who owned that stuff before you did. The person we lost plays a vital role still. Include them in discussions about family members if other family's member are discussed. Since my mom died, I have never received a wrapped gift again from anyone. Not a new car just maybe a hat or something tiny. Loss seeps into all the little decorated crevices. You think of buying them gifts, talking about them at work, and their favorite dishes or traditions during this festive time. 

IT IS NORMAL TO MISS SOMEONE FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE. 

Most of the time we want you to speak of them, ask questions about their lives, and honor the person who passed on with a word of kindness but only at these appropriate times. In fact, there are several ways to acknowledge and honor the person who passed on. 

For the grief spasms that can occur so long after a loved one has passed, it's normal to be incapacitated. One of O'Connor's trusted best practices for the grieving brain is to stay busy and keep a normal routine. When the mind is troubled, the body falls ill more often, especially if the grieving experiences PTSD and high levels of depression and anxiety, often healed by EMDR trauma therapy.  

Work places sometimes host calm rooms for the purpose of resetting the nervous system, or they should. Walking in nature or exercise all year long, every morning at sunset resets the nighttime pain and you arrive at work refreshed.

Surprisingly, being at work helps us feed the prefrontal cortex, the thinking part of the brain where hope is found in the creation of the moment. When we calm or distract the brain from ruminating, glucose changes course and decreases the limbic response. We calm the body and we can think. At work, we perform tasks in a safe environment for the brain. Social interaction offers the possibility to feel whole and to be surrounded by people we count on and who count on us. Ask the survivor how he or she can be supported. Productivity can be fostered even a little bit from hope. Hope gives us drive and a meaningful existence in the workplace. 

A healthy workplace offers the grieving social support which is critical to healing.  The holidays are the perfect time to honor the whole human in your presence. The work place is the perfect setting to give back to the community and heal your heart. Organize a sock or coat drive, a food drive with your co-workers. Make it a contest that will impact the community effectively and cheerfully. 

Being of service in any community and giving love heals the brain and body when grief displays as love without that special person to love now.

Now is the time to schedule wellness trainings for the mind, body, and spirit. We function as a whole person. Your workplace can become a safe haven for the person who experiences loss. Thankfully, we're learning to foster workplaces that allow for support through grief, creating opportunities for more productivity, a solid culture of awareness and trust, and even a nice celebration for the holidays.

Halloween, Taylor-style

I guess you’re impressed with qualities you admire in yourself and in my case, I admired my daughter’s  independent views on a few issues that we not only agreed upon but I think she may have listened to me at some point so I felt a deep and abiding ribbon that wrapped us together beautifully. We and she and she made it all look so natural.

Taylor and Tommy have always participated in Halloween. I loved to hand out candy and the kids usually went with their father to gather far too many treats. It was a dad thing for them and it was good for them. I loved the creativity of their decision-making for costume. Tommy was a firefighter one year and Taylor, for some reason, maybe because it’s only been less than a year…I just can’t think that far back. I do remember that as the kids got older, they went with friends or in Tommy’s case didn’t go at all, like a lot of growing kids. Taylor, though dressed up until her last Halloween when she was only 21. I wonder who she would have been this year.

 

 

I still have some of their costumes. Tommy was Woodstock and Taylor was Snoopy. She loved 101 Dalmatians so it worked. Then, my mind jumps to Tommy in a long cape and sword and Taylor as a cute Alice in Wonderland. I feel like I was kind of set up on a soul level, especially with this movie. She loved it. I have that costume and it was just her thing to dress up every year even until last year, her last year. My last year with her and Tommy. She was Pocahontas one time and told everyone the facts about the Disney movie. I completed an excellent class in History that took us to Colonial Williamsburg so Taylor knew all about Pocahontas and refused to watch the movie when I told her. I loved that.

Taylor spent her Halloweens out. We had parties for everything at our house, any excuse all through their childhoods and it was always just kids and me and it was always uproariously funny with Taylor laughing the loudest. But, for Halloween she went out. And, dressed up in cute costumes…Taylor-style. She just never wanted to be the dirty teacher or dirty anything. Her opinion was made known to these girls that they need to respect themselves or they will lose respect of any man. Her choice and the way she saw her own identity.

 

Taylor never came home drunk, either. We’re both terrible drinkers and she didn’t like to feel out of control. She went to parties, some weren’t the best locations or groups, but she left when she needed to. But, I thought it was cool that she didn’t identify parties as places to lose your mind. She noticed how people look at act. She wanted to stay alive driving. I think she probably went for the food and picked up some food on the way to the party and on the way home. It was her thing.

We did buy pumpkins and we have been to pumpkin patches. The kids weren’t into Charlie Brown much but we did watch it when I could beg them annoyingly enough. This year, someone bought a pumpkin for me because Taylor loved Halloween. I brought out all her costumes I could find. I was amazed to find that one of her boxes contained Tommy’s sword from so very long ago. She also kept his name badge from his first job. She didn’t always say it, but she was so sentimental.

 

Taylor was sensitive and loved scary movies. What? I didn’t understand it and frankly, when I finally convinced her that the 80’s version of Poltergeist was terrifying, she and a friend watched it in the basement with the lights off. Not me, I don’t like scary movies. I could hear them laughing all the way upstairs. I guess the cinematography was pretty outdated. Tomorrow night I’ll be alone and silent on Halloween, not knowing which stockings go with the shoes or how to help her with her hair or of course, shape her eyebrows last minute. Halloween is Taylor’s favorite holiday. Tomorrow, I need to do something to honor her, even if I feel like I’m drowning. I’ll dress up and read books to kids. I’ll just love her and Tommy and all of the rest of my “kids.”

Paradox

I feel paralyzed. Like there is a hand on my chest. Hard push against Me. I feel grounded but not Grounded. The thoughts go around in my mind and I try to examine even the most rudimentary of ruminations but I can’t keep up. I can’t speak.

I know there is something right because I can work and I’m good at my job and good for the kids and the schools and I like it. I know there is something wrong because I question my job, wondering if it’s too much emotionally. I see a girl with long hair or simply watch one struggle with a math test and she’s tiny and she bring me her work. Her name is Taylor. I give her the attention and the love I would have given my Taylor but the pain etches somewhere in me. Can I give without wanting in return?

There is something right because I still want to be needed and loved and entertained. There’s something wrong because I don’t hear my phone or see any cars in the driveway and feel abandoned. The emotional mind versus the logical mind. It's absurd. I need this solitude to grieve.

And, I’m supposed to know, to KNOW that we are all one aspect of the Universe or of God and that this separation of form, of Taylor no more, no more, no more….sends me gasping for air and wishing for and end to it all. We are supposed to know that we are still together a spiritual being having a human what? Experience? No, sometimes I cannot hear that. That equals acceptance and promises freedom. But, I want to rage and the Ego is so massive. Steps in to keep me in the shadows. I miss her physically. She is no more, no more, no more. She is a memory and part of my education is to learn to live in the present and that she is in the present and with me presently and the freedom is knowing how to love her for Her without the form.

 

I can’t touch her long hair, smell it, brush it like when she was a little girl. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. This will subside, I heard. I can already be redirected and the my Purpose is to learn this so that I can help people through it in whatever way I can and hopefully that will look like NOT having to go through it as much.

I think I’m meant to thrash and be alone for most of my time. Maybe more time with companionship during the day would be less maddening. But, I must experience it, right? Grieving is normal, right? The feeling of dying inside? Some monks observe the deceased in morgues. Just sit there in the stillness observing, looking at death. No judgement.

In all other times and places I can be trusted to move through the day and love whoever is with me. I know Taylor felt that. She put on a mask. She laughed. She was angry. She was overwhelmed, joyful, strong, proud, fearless and broken. How can You make perfection broken? Why MUST the ties that bound us, wove us into each other, her at my breast, on my hip, by my side…why must we have been that interwoven? Because I have a purpose? I had a purpose. You, Taylor were my purpose and you always will be but at this time, I must be carried. Because the thought of never seeing you again for the rest of my days comes with complete disintegration of my duties and roles in everyone else’s lives. You trumped the world, my daughter. And, maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m just broken.

 

I know it’s time to pour my heart and soul into my sister and my family, dogs, son, job. But, I can’t get up. Because there is a hand on my chest forcing me to witness life through the eyes of the broken. I actually understand now why she did what she did. It was wrong and it was a split decision and it would have been ok or she would have suffered forever. But, we could have fought together. I’m ashamed that I don’t want to stay or can’t think of the people I’m supposed to want to stay for. I’ll find a way so I can teach the way. I’ll find a way so I can teach the truth of the suffering and the witnessing of madness, sorrow, and a questionable need for love from others so strongly that any and every Thing in the world of form is abandonment. Shock. I’ll find a way to keep someone here or to SCREAM from the mountaintops what Borderline is. Why we need to fund the cure. She deserved to love herself like I love her. Stability in one regard seems so out of reach. So, I’ll march on. Hide in the bathrooms and cry, return with a smile and a book to read.

I feel paralyzed. Like there is a hand on my chest. Hard push against Me. I feel grounded but not Grounded. The thoughts go around in my mind and I try to examine even the most rudimentary of ruminations but I can’t keep up. I can’t speak.

 

I know there is something right because I can work and I’m good at my job and good for the kids and the schools and I like it. I know there is something wrong because I question my job, wondering if it’s too much emotionally. I see a girl with long hair or simply watch one struggle with a math test and she’s tiny and she bring me her work. Her name is Taylor. I give her the attention and the love I would have given my Taylor but the pain etches somewhere in me. Can I give without wanting in return?

There is something right because I still want to be needed and loved and entertained. There’s something wrong because I don’t hear my phone or see any cars in the driveway and feel abandoned. The emotional mind versus the logical mind.

And, I’m supposed to know, to KNOW that we are all one aspect of the Universe or of God and that this separation of form, of Taylor no more, no more, no more….sends me gasping for air and wishing for and end to it all. We are supposed to know that we are still together a spiritual being having a human what? Experience? No, sometimes I cannot hear that. That equals acceptance and promises freedom. But, I want to rage and the Ego is so massive. Steps in to keep me in the shadows. I miss her physically. She is no more, no more, no more. She is a memory and part of my education is to learn to live in the present and that she is in the present and with me presently and the freedom is knowing how to love her for Her without the form.

 

I can’t touch her long hair, smell it, brush it like when she was a little girl. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. This will subside, I heard. I can already be redirected and the my Purpose is to learn this so that I can help people through it in whatever way I can and hopefully that will look like NOT having to go through it as much.

I think I’m meant to thrash and be alone for most of my time. Maybe more time with companionship during the day would be less maddening. But, I must experience it, right? Grieving is normal, right? The feeling of dying inside? Some monks observe the deceased in morgues. Just sit there in the stillness observing, looking at death. No judgement.

In all other times and places I can be trusted to move through the day and love whoever is with me. I know Taylor felt that. She put on a mask. She laughed. She was angry. She was overwhelmed, joyful, strong, proud, fearless and broken. How can You make perfection broken? Why MUST the ties that bound us, wove us into each other, her at my breast, on my hip, by my side…why must we have been that interwoven? Because I have a purpose? I had a purpose. You, Taylor were my purpose and you always will be but at this time, I must be carried. Because the thought of never seeing you again for the rest of my days comes with complete disintegration of my duties and roles in everyone else’s lives. You trumped the world, my daughter. And, maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m just broken.

 

I know it’s time to pour my heart and soul into my sister and my family, dogs, son, job. But, I can’t get up. Because there is a hand on my chest forcing me to witness life through the eyes of the broken. I actually understand now why she did what she did. It was wrong and it was a split decision and it would have been ok or she would have suffered forever. But, we could have fought together. I’m ashamed that I don’t want to stay or can’t think of the people I’m supposed to want to stay for. I’ll find a way so I can teach the way. I’ll find a way so I can teach the truth of the suffering and the witnessing of madness, sorrow, and a questionable need for love from others so strongly that any and every Thing in the world of form is abandonment. Shock. I’ll find a way to keep someone here or to SCREAM from the mountaintops what Borderline is. Why we need to fund the cure. She deserved to love herself like I love her. Stability in one regard seems so out of reach. So, I’ll march on. Hide in the bathrooms and cry, return with a smile and a book to read.

Tips For a Good Day During Grief

What is your definition of a “good” day after losing someone you love? Does it mean you get out of bed? Have coffee outside the house or take a walk? Can you clean or take some time for healing, reading, or put effort into your latest work or mission? Ruminating for too long is the greatest barrier to moving through grief. And, I do know that laughing or even being outside can look like a complete betrayal in the beginning because that person can't laugh so why should you? So, on the good days it's critical to create new experiences that may just be the self-care to shower. You don't have to find a reason to do anything and you don't need to justify why you can't. Getting up starts with stopping. Stop yourself for laying there and try.

1.      Leave the house immediately. No matter the temperature or weather, get up, get a shower and dress for the day. Go for a walk around the neighborhood or buy something small for your SELF. Please don’t make big plans and then discover that it’s too soon to be around many people if you’re only ready to venture out into your yard, neighborhood, or nearest park. Make your walk a ritual. Start your day or end the evening with nature and by the bilateral stimulation that allows the brain to process. 

Distract your grief while walking or in nature by using your senses. Name something you see, hear, can touch, and most importantly SMELL that you like. Opening your nasal passages and allowing for fresh air to flow through you provides the brain with something new and your brain needs new.

2.      Phone a friend. I call my lifelines (mostly whoever is available to listen) when I’m falling apart. It helps me to verbalize my pain, doubt, and guilt so that I can overcome it for a moment. But, you'll need to change the focus from you to the person you call. Show interest in his or her story. Because for everyone else, life goes on. Seems like something we do every day but we were different people before we lost our loved one. We need the balance of talking it through but not too much to ignore the part of life with the living.

3.      Read for pleasure. We’re already overloaded with self-help material like books about grief, death, suicide, and a plethora of recommendations or gifts of books to read. Instead, pick up a book that will take you on an adventure. I just finished The Count of Monte Cristo in a beautiful escape. Read something you LIKE. If you’re in the mood to learn, by all means motivate yourself but allow the brain to experience pleasure and escape without analyzing yourself.

4.      Clean. Take the opportunity to rearrange, organize, and create a space for YOU. I bought a beautiful salt lamp and small tabletop fountain for my bedside to create a space that feels good. Cleaning is almost impossible in the throes of grief (which most people can’t comprehend and we can’t focus on trying to explain it) but if you can put things away, the brain sees this organization and understands the process of solving problems. The eye movement of washing the floors on your hands and knees soothes you while you allow your mind to wander, a healthy passing of time indeed! Please stay away from organizing materials from your loved one. It never ends well.

Pump up the jams. Whether you play an instrument or simply love your playlist on good days, turn it up and get the body moving! Dance in your kitchen, relax with lofi in the tub, just sing and move and hum. If you're feeling frisky in a few minutes, don't believe that you can belt out that emotional slow jam that makes you think of your loved one. Stick to the fun, maintain the balance.

I keep it very simple these days. I am not out at restaurants with many people or in crowded places much, even on my good days. I’m not the same person I was before my daughter passed. I keep things slow and easy in these last 6 months. I only do what I can, when I can and I don’t explain to anyone.

Remember, this one point if nothing else speaks to you. Until you’re ready to live for your SELF again, live for your loved one. For me, I am Taylor-powered on the good days. I use her energy, knowing she’s with me, watching over me. I talk to my daughter out loud while I sit by the pond. I only do what I can and on the good days, I want to make her happy and proud of me for being the strong mom she always thought me to be. I want to continue to live in her honor, in a way that will give to others through empathy and compassion as I lived before I lost her. Grief has no time limit and tomorrow may be the day you’ll find me on the floor sobbing. So for just one day, I offer you a little lift and a little life and a pep in your step. One day you will live for you knowing that we’re all one, we’re all together, that they never truly leave us and that we can make them proud through the devastation that has altered us for the rest of our lives. And, it's all okay.

Despair And Madness The Constant Visitors

Despair is madness. I don’t think I’ll use either word in general conversation again. Despair approaches with a gentle, “Come on. Feel me.” It begins as I set the breakfast plates on the table. Why didn’t I cook breakfast for my kids more? Why did I stop? I know it was important to them. I can’t forgive myself. That thought is replaced by a sweet kiss from the dogs or my own Knight in Shining Armor. The subject is changed, breakfast and dishes are done and I swoop by the wall that holds her butterfly wings that lit up. She wore those wings at a circus demonstration. She was getting stronger. Her voice was heard. I know she had to feel good about herself. Why did I leave her? If I would have stayed home this time I would have seen the decline. I can control the panting at this point, restrain the wicked Madness for a time.

When I’m left alone in this paradise I choose an activity that is similar to elephant families stroking the bones of their families. Only I find letters, videos, stories, books from both of my children because one being physically present is equally ravaging my mind as I struggle to protect him from the same fate. We live far away from each other and it’s tearing me apart. But, it’s for the best and he’s at school and happy. And, I bow my head, chin touching my chest, nose lapped at the tip by the tiny waves of despair that will soon drown me. Despair doesn’t drown until you reach the demise of the body and this anguish. I sift through their school work, letters, photos, and videos and then usually, despair enters.

Despair feels like I’m laying down. I am usually laying down on whatever floor, basement, kitchen, or on the grass outside and I’m always wailing, wailing for her. In the beginning, I remember writing that my soul is wailing for her. Yes, you could potentially come to my home and find me on my side grasping my hair, tensing my legs, folding them in and then out through the sobs that wrack my body and ring the ears of my soul. I believe the bell rings for Madness.

Madness strolls in with the answer in the form of questions. But, they’re never the right questions because as I am writhing and rocking, screaming her name or begging to know why she wanted to leave me and why exactly I have to stay here among the living. Madness picks up the phone for you and conveniently dials numbers to people who will answer for me. I demand to know why I’m here. I demand to know why I am not punished for my daughter taking her life. I want to know if my son really needs me or wants me and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t because I am a bad person. I’m not compassionate anymore because I don’t have the capacity. It’s true I lived for her. I know that now. But, it was glorious. I loved every second of my life with her. Hard, hard times tore into us but we survived them together. We fought together. We loved together.

Madness pours your wine while despair takes the first sip. In a drunken stupor and now with a sick stomach, I realize that I don’t think about her really. I think about me and how my daughter being gone has affected me. I’m intoxicated thinking that it would be ok for me check out. How dare I? How could I have even mentioned it to people I call for help that I would be happy to leave them? Panic and anxiety step in. I try to explain to them that I don’t have a purpose in my life now. Who am I really? I am not the strong and resilient fighter, I’m drowning in despair.

I ask my support system of the moment (and there have been many to thank) all of these questions and I cry and I raise my voice in absolute madness. But, I’m always pushed up through the water that crushes my entire chest, leaving a cavern at least for the next day. I am pulled up by the people I talk to. The conversation changes and I ask about them and their lives and I feel better about that. The water is washing up in the tide and I’m standing on the beach and I’m still shaking and I don’t remember climbing desperately out of the water.

But, I’m on the phone and I’m laughing at one point at least. I don’t know how I got there but the madness and it’s rapacious appetite for pain diminishes into a small red cancer that sits in the back of my Self until despair returns from right around the corner, in little tiny reminders all over the house and all over my mind and all over my heart and my soul. She’s always with me. I don’t want to hear that again. We cannot be separated. And, someday my son and I will grow closer and I will grow stronger with my Knight and tribe by my side. But, just know what pain really feels like before you decide to put someone through it. And, if you know someone going through it just hug them and be nice. That’s all. Don’t ignore their loved ones. Just love them. You see, despair and madness may have dissipated for a moment, but they took my love for my Self with them. And, I’m not sure how to get that back without her or if I want to but for her, I know that I must. She believed in me. “You’re the bravest, strongest mom I know.”

Finding Words And Packaging Life

Unedited from 2016

How do you describe what it feels like, the enormity of your loss when the actual loss of your child isn’t just grief, pain, and misery?  Those are words. I can still smell her tiny little belly the first time I buried my face into her naked little tummy. I felt her giggle and I took in her scent and felt her tiny socked feet and chubby legs meet with her tiny hands in my hair to hold me closer. My baby. She loved to blow bubbles, too. She was a tiny package who needed so much care and gave it back in shooting stars…I look to the sky for my breath sometimes and wonder at the sheer size of the Universe and where she could be for that moment,

I close my eyes and I feel her next to me under the covers with her brother, usually after a struggle for “room.” We read every night, usually 3 books and sometimes the same ones and that, no one can take away from me. I have that but I can’t explain that as loss because it wasn’t for nothing. It was for life and that is what we shared. But, it still races through my mind when someone even hints that I should be okay by now.

How do you describe her feel? Soft cheeks that I kissed, tall forehead too…The sprints across the house to catch her on her way to work for a hug. I feel her neck. I feel her hold me. What should I say to you that will allow those personal and sacred moments be translated into words that I don’t even care to put together to form a sentence.

I have since been informed that Taylor used to look through my clothes while I was gone, the same as I do now. They’re folded or hung with mine but she liked me, she really did. She was so funny sitting on the couch when I walked through, ready and on time for work or a meeting. She’s say, “Oh, mom.” Of course I would ask what was wrong with what I was wearing. Sometimes, it was obvious and sometimes she’d say, “If you can’t figure it out, I’m not telling you.” I don’t know how many times I grabbed my tummy to laugh at her little and constant quips.

The truth is that some days are good. And, some days I feel like I’m walking around the house looking for the trash she left in the living room and to see if she left for work, yet (late and looking for her keys). Some days, as our clothes mingle I feel that intimacy of putting makeup on together or looking at her brush that still has her hair in it. It’s going through cabinets and finding the kids’ thermometer and taking care of them when they were sick. They needed me. How do you explain that you’re no longer hearing your name…needed. She needed me and I wander around reading a book or cleaning or waiting.

As I write this, I realize that I miss my son at school as much as I miss my entire family and our lifestyle of swimming, playing, reading, listening to loud music, taking trips, laughing, arguing, so very bonded with close friends and other kids we babysat or who just hung out….they grow up. She was a package deal, you know. She  had it all; a sharp wit, an abundance of compassion and fight for what’s right, and a laugh that involved a slapped knee, thrown back head, wide open laughter, and a hand on her belly, too.

Ah, she had a full 22 years. In her physical world she was fiercely independent and acted with integrity, always knowing what the right thing to do is…she wouldn’t even let me shortcut. She was so brave and strong and oddly enough that’s what she’s always said about me. How do you explain that? I don’t want to be brave and strong and just because I’m not crumbling at your feet doesn’t mean I’m not screaming inside or laughing at one of our private jokes. I read to her, bathed her, hauled her brother, friends and her everywhere and loved and love her with the same fire she chose to extinguish in herself, asking me in her farewell note to “Go do what you love like I aspired to do.” Well, I love you Taylor and your brother. I modeled my advocacy work for you and you followed. I laughed and loved and you loved and laughed and struggled. I am most floored now when I look back at old letters, papers, reminders of her struggles. And, I could not save her and she made her choice. I can’t explain everything that I go through without her. I can only hold onto the memories and ride these waves, float on, drown a little, and lay in the sand waiting to take a breath before I have to face the world again and explain myself.

The Truth And Death

Frantically, I pushed and pulled soggy and slippery logs around the flow of water cascading past the tiny fencing that keeps our little pond safe. The fence acts as a barrier but there was too much rain, too much water last night as I discovered this early morning. Desperately, I clinged to long and awkward logs and tried to avoid the briars that cut into my legs. I shed my sandals, not knowing the mess, the slippery mud I was walking into. The raging storm and torrential rains the night before filled the land around us, the tiny creeks rushed on and here at the pond I couldn’t stop the overflow. We travel the tiny bridge, now halfway covered in water to a small trail we made just the day before. The bridge lies over another tiny creek very much alive this morning. The trail takes us past the swampy area of logs and grasses, home to a plethora of bugs, birds landing for a nice fish, turtles and smaller fish that swim close enough to grab an insect landing on the water. This marshy area is one of my favorite and completely under water.

I ignored the swamp, gone for now and went back to my task, this time pulling a dolly, collecting rocks, walking through spider webs, covered in mud just the way I like it. The dolly has a box strapped to the bottom for me to pull my rocks to gardens and this time to the waterfall. Make it stop. I want it to stop. I placed the rocks strategically and moved the smaller pieces of wood. Leaks sprang and water found its way the same as it had before I started. I worked harder, calm and determined to save my pond that was, in truth, not in any sort of danger. Why wasn’t I thinking of the natural order of things? I thought of a blog I had written a few years ago entitled Water Finds A Way, one that I’m sure I discarded at some point and remembered that I wasn’t stopping a thing. In fact, I was only missing out on the beauty.

I asked Taylor from her heaven to guide me to some rocks that I could carry with my dolly and end this maddening flow. Somehow it works every time that I find what I’m looking for and I held a new passion that if I moved these puzzle pieces from Mother Nature herself, the water would stop leaving the pond, leaving me. The pond would be full, damn the swamp. Rocks replaced sticks that replaced heavy logs and nothing was working out. It was a maddening puzzle with three dead fish staring at me as if to relay the message that I am not in control in this environment.

The little waterfall dumped over into a small gully about 3 feet below and joined happily with the fast-paced stream produced in these times, one of many streams, gullies, and natural ponds that appear, clean and life-giving. Even on top of the trails in the woods, small ponds at least 6 feet round can be found and are found by the dogs. The three fish, unlucky to have been swept around my work site were not lucky and died on the branches that laid matter-of factly at the top of the waterfall. That’s the truth of nature and for me, there was no sadness, no empathy as I’ve learned to watch the birds, turtles, raccoons, or whatever manner of wildlife that will sustain itself on the fish. I couldn’t stop the truth.

I stopped suddenly and sat upright. I observed my surroundings. I love the sound of waterfalls. I bought two of them after Taylor passed over.  I looked at the pond, full and more clear than usual, glistening in the soft light of morning. Standing slowly in the muck I walked back to the house, observing the absurdity of the covered bridge and the marsh that must and will return to a drier environment in a day or so.  My shoulder tickled with the leftover spider web I walked through. I worked hard and stopped nothing. I gathered my shoes, dolly, and put my tools away. I ended the mission with a clear mind, no resistance, only acceptance. Lesson learned.

What did the Zen card say yesterday, the one that held the word Truth on one side, the one that I carried with me into my bedroom only for a sad but brief moment, stifled at the law of nature, of the unjust, the law that was written? I couldn’t stop the water. I shouldn’t stop the water. That was the lesson? The truth is that everything is in order and I am not supposed to try to stop it because the bridge will be passable, the bullfrogs will sing, the dragonflies will mate and the pond will overflow until it returns to its order. The birds will land again and the bullfrogs will hide out in their grasses.

The card reads:

What Is, Is.

What IS Not, Is Not.

No Amount Of

WISHING Or

Wanting Can Change

That Simple Fact.

I didn’t hang my head as I sat to record the happenings of a few minutes ago. Taylor, my daughter, is gone from this physical world. I was reminded yesterday that on my path and only in the future will I be able to heal and draw her strength to live in her honor, to give in her absence all of the light and love and laughter that she gave. The truth is that now, I’ll grieve and forever I’ll grieve but I cannot be broken in her divine presence. I can’t stop the truth, I can’t stop the water from flowing or the tears I’ll certainly shed for the rest of my life in my hunger and desperation in missing her.

Accepting the Truth doesn’t mean I must not mourn. For me, though, I can learn in time to accept just the simple fact that in the physical form, she’s not coming back. I can learn to embrace life on other terms and I can live with sadness and despair that will never escape but dissipate as I embrace my Self living my life in service to others as she did and so much emulated in me. I’m sure the water is still flowing out of the pond, maybe cleaning up a bit, soaking the ground of the marsh and bringing new life. I think I’ll put my boots on this time and watch the flow, listen to the waterfall, think of my daughter and what she may be doing today, who she may be helping from her heaven. I’ll sit quietly and reflect, walk the trails and rediscover the water flowing through them while the dogs crash into the small ponds and wander up the rock beds in the cool rushing streams. The truth about death is that you can’t change the past any more than you can change the flow of water, the rain, or the natural order of things. The only change we can make is how we see those waterfalls.

She Is Bliss

She is BLISS.

She is the warmth of the sun, caressing my face with her soft hands.

I can see her sweet smile and gentle soul looking at me with my eyes closed.

She is the quiet of the moon and stars, the black of night in the infinite sky.

She floats and dances in her bliss, welcome to come and go into and away from galaxies and Earth.

She is the dance in the butterfly and the sway in the branches.

She is the intangible love I’ve found in nature for my entire life.

My bliss is She.

A deer with tender and trepid footsteps, a frog leaping into a pond.

Baby piglets, puppies, her own dogs that receive my love with and for her and for me.

She is love.

How wondrous to be free from this earthbound strapping and trapping of the sensitive mind, the delicate flower of innocence that she is has been revealed and she is free from this place.

She smiles now where there was angst.

She touches with delicacy the lost or hurting.

She soars in and out of the dimensions.

She suffers no more but laughs out loud no more. I can’t hold her. I can’t touch her or help her or talk to her or call her.

She is with me and yet, I am unaware.

There is a cruelty in this pain, an unrecognized beauty in her freedom.

The reconciliation came for her when she broke free of her cocoon that appeared to the human to be death.

She found her beauty, her soul, her true spirit. She flies high in bliss and touches down with no fear, no insecurity, no confusion, no pain…no pain…no pain.

How selfish is the physical, the mother, the living on earth after she has transcended and will continue to transcend into more and more BLISS?

The human experience is unavoidable. The long nights of lying in the fetal position, sobbing with uncontrollable spasms as the physical bodies who love her anguish and physiologically change to adapt to this world without her and to her new and complete form cannot be avoided.

Methods are introduced to ease the pain and aid in the minute understanding or acceptance or even the fragment of joy for her that she no longer suffers here but soars into the everything that is Universe, that is God, that is her true form, that is spirit. But, they are fleeting as the pain drowns me in tidal waves, leaves me choking, and allows me to breathe for a few days after it subsides.

The anguish of desire to tear apart and dismantle the physical from the soul is maddening. My hands want to grip my chest, tear it apart to open the green and red and indigo, to open to feel her in her new form. See her with my heart. See her with my heart. My broken and decimated heart. The one thing that could free me is the only thing keeping me away from her.

Foreign, unable to cope, much less morph into an enlightened human this feeling of ripping at the chest to see her with the heart, not the eyes. The panic that ensues day after day of desperate searching for a way to communicate through the pain.

Jealousy, envy, desire, desperation take the place of the bond we shared. That was my daughter. I made her. She and I were entwined and now she is here and everywhere and I can’t reach her. My joy comes from others who can and do reach her or the people she reaches. I feel defeated. Left out.

She is BLISS. Love her. Trust her. Know her in her new form. Learn patience and feel abundance with the love of the people present in life who need each other now more than ever.

The constant struggle between being surrounded by her love and struggling to love her as the only way I know is constant because I cannot love her in the physical and I cannot escape the torturous pain in me. I don’t know how.

I don’t know how.

My eyes strain as I look too hard, try too hard, am ungrateful, tearing the world apart seeking her, raging, screaming, playing little reels of tape that allow me to see myself with her instead of playing out my sacred contract. I want to remember all of her and I wonder if my memories are just suspended or are they leaving me?

I search for her and she is BLISS. I try to remind myself that she is BLISS. Be joyous and thankful and loving. Be kind and understanding and patient. All while writhing and screaming inside the heart that can and should and one day must open to see her in her new form. I can’t and I must.

She is BLISS

She is BLISS

She is EVERYTHING

She is EVERYWHERE

She is HERE

She is ME

I am HER.

I fall exhausted, the physical world being only a necessity to see through my contract with my sisters and brothers of this dimension, my son, my love, my family. I crawl on my knees through the days and nights, finding scraps of happiness, proof in her love. She cradles me as I cry.

I still feel her growing inside me, holding her as a newborn, suckling at my breast. I see her walking, talking, observing, struggling, hurting, helping, loving. I don’t have another way to view her as I beg on my hands and knees for mercy, for a glimpse of her from my heart….tear it from my chest and replace it with love and understanding. Be happy for her, show her the unconditional love I promised.

She is BLISS. Love her in her BLISS.

  

The Urn Sits Atop The Shelf

The urn sits atop the bookshelf. That’s a sentence, isn’t it? The urn…I’ve heard of them, seen them in movies. It took a few months for me to have my daughter’s ashes, or rather my daughter in her earth form to be in the same room with me. They’re here, now. She’s here now. They burned her and I don’t dare think of that too deeply. I did ask the funeral home if it was just her or her clothes or the casket included in that cremation. But, her tiny body is gone, all of her and I can’t quite grasp what it means.

I pressed the urn to my stomach with both hands, firmly into my stomach, concave. Instinctively, I wanted to shove her back into my womb in her beginning form as my baby, start all over. Maybe there would be a different result. I stared at it for a while. The lid on the bottom, fell off and luckily there is a bag inside with her ashes. Is it her? Can I acknowledge that she has been turned into dust? Does it matter? She’s not coming back. The rational is drowned by the screams in my head, the soul cry. I didn’t feel anything by touching the urn or by placing my fingers inside. There were traces of dust and I touched them and rubbed them on my neck. I want to touch them finally. I want to strip all of my clothes off and all of my Self naked on the floor. I want to scream and rub her ashes all over me. I want to burst into flames with the pain and the utter disillusionment of it all. I want to feel her if only her burned beyond the human form, feel her on me, with me. I’m desperate. Yet, I hold it together and stare at this fancy jar with a faulty lid and wait for magic. There is no magic.

In fact, the urn rests upon a shelf awaiting the journey to the ocean. Some of her ashes will be placed inside rings and necklaces and maybe a few tattoos. And, some will play a part in our ceremony to return her to her love, her peace, her home, her heaven in the ocean. Someone mentioned that fish will eat the ashes. After debating whether or not to scrap the whole idea that second, her friend reminded me that if the fish eat the ashes and other fish eat those fish the cycle of life continues and she’ll be in the ocean forever. So, that’s that.  Twelve of us are driving to the ocean for our first memorial, intimate, secluded, and necessary to honor my daughter. The screams, tears, and pain will flow, grow, subside in our week on the very beach she’s loved and trusted, needed really for so many years. We will laugh, hold each other, and send her off with a ride on a dolphin cruise filled with her music, all scattering tiny ashes of her into the water with a funny quote or perhaps a memory. We must heal and we must endure and we must show her that we will go on.

I don’t know what I was thinking when I planned this trip. She already made the deposit on our town home as she planned to return just four months after she took her life. I think of that a lot…just four months, Taylor. You could have waited four months and you would have some relief. I beg, still. I believe I always will. But, the trip has to happen. We need to go, her close friends, our little family and I. The task seems so great now that there are just 24 hours until departure. The burden seems so much to bear but I can’t think of that. I never think of her and connect it with anything other than honoring and loving her. I will love her and honor her with our little tribe. The tears flowed all day as I sobbed on the floor sorting through her tiny summer clothes and tiny bikinis. 

And, the urn sits atop the shelf. And, I will pack with a mournful and defeated heart. In my mind I know this trip will change us, allow for us to grow. But, for now the urn sits atop the shelf.

Soul Contract And The Sea

Unedited 4/2016

I stood with warm feet and toes caressing, exploring the warm sand. Mesmerized by the tide far, far into the distance I wondered at the distance I would travel into the Indian Ocean, thousands of miles from my home, to feel the sea caress my shoulders and chest to envelope me. As is and always shall be, my heart and mind immediately followed the invisible, magical chord to Taylor, my daughter back home in the United States and I used my phone to photograph and video my first experience of this African paradise in Tanzania. She sought the peace of the beach, warmth of the sun, writing in the sand, feeling the hot sun and cool water, seeking shells, crabs, dolphins, life of the sea, too.

I knew she’d love Africa, too like I did. I dreamed of keeping my line of communication open with her while I was there to express my love for her and this place on earth in which she could find joy, escape, and perspective to change her life, learn of this beautiful culture and its magic. I wanted her to be happy. I also wanted her to have the independence in being home with more responsibility and freedom to think about the past few weeks that lead to her decision to leave this reality. She suffered with Borderline Personality Disorder, the diagnosis that seemed like a death sentence. After 22 years of struggle I held on to hope, to her finally accepting  the help and self-love she deserved.  Oh, I ached for her to have had that joy.

But, please allow me to step back for a moment. I want you to know the whole story, of joy and pain and of the soul contract between my daughter and me. Read with an open mind and find the magic, the surrender and her and my strength in honoring of our soul contract. The truth that something big was to happen revealed itself a few months before my departure to Africa but I was unaware. Having traveled to Africa in 2014 with fever in my heart and determination in my soul to be in the presence of Africans and the wildlife there, to do my part, to learn, to fall in love allowed for the trip of a lifetime.

But, this time something seemed wrong. I thought it was anxiety about leaving for so long (it was planned for 5 weeks), leaving my family to care for what I should have been, deserting them in some way.  I wasn’t sure where the fear or anxiety originated but it dissipated completely just days before I left for Tanzania on January 7^th, 2016 and allowed me as I know it now to accept what  my soul  already knew. I would be accepting and honoring the contract I made with my daughter.

Of course, I had no idea that this trip would be fateful and fraught with that something being amiss.  I felt lonely this time. Something was wrong and I couldn’t place it, define it. So many small mishaps and troubles followed me from the beginning.  I had writer’s block for a project I began (and haven’t finished). A great deal of money was stolen from me more than once and in more than one way. I didn’t experience the joy and sadness, relief and awe at the elephant orphanage I returned to after almost 2 years of dreaming to see the elephants grow and eventually become free. In fact, as my eyes and soul were fixated on a male calf that soon died after I left. I knew that truth when I saw him and thought of almost nothing else. My laptop crashed. A taxi driver got lost while friends and I traveled to an important meeting, the only meeting I would have with dear friends I bonded with on social media. And, then he overcharged me. My camera began malfunctioning. I planned to canoe on the Lower Zambezi and I just didn’t feel like it. Seeing the elephants was joyful but not the same. I kept asking myself what was wrong. 

Contact with home was spotty. I didn’t talk to my daughter or son nearly enough. I was sad during what would end up being the last week I was on the continent. It was cold and rainy on safaris and once the truck became stuck. I didn’t feel exuberance. I became distraught when I learned about the life of hippos and the eventual demise of hippos cast out of groups. After joining 2 nighttime game drives and witnessing the animals shocked and upset by the spotlights shined in their faces I stopped going. Twice I decided not to go on safari at all. I spent one of my final days on safari simply sobbing. I didn’t feel useful, lovable or valuable, Now, I know that my daughter was suffering on the same day and I simply absorbed her pain from across the planet. My camera finally broke in the last days. When I received the call that my daughter transitioned, I sat on the bank of the Luangwa River. I realized then that during the last few months the earth was trembling.

I return to my visit on the beach during the beginning of my trip. I reveled in the peace of a sparsely inhabited beach and walked during low tide far, far into the shallow ocean. As I knelt and allowed the ocean to wash over me and rock me, I turned my face to the sun to cleanse my spirit. I wanted for Taylor to feel what I felt and yet, I knew that day would never come. It was an eerie existence, both healing and cautious. I don’t know how I knew. My soul knew. I was signing my contract, fulfilling my role as her earth mother and although my soul cries now to fight this truth, I let her go that day to make her choice. Although Taylor was proud of me as she wrote in her farewell message to me, and who she determined was the closest person to her, I didn’t know she would not follow me into the peace I desperately wanted for her.

The shock I felt upon learning of her passing lasted for over a month and so did the guilt and questions, the self-blame and desperation. I’m her mom. Those feelings may not permeate me forever but they will still surface as the tide ebbs and flows, a natural and instinctual aspect of my life. She refused help but I wanted to build her trust in me to seek help together with me upon my return. I had it all worked out. Until I didn’t.

It is now 10 and something weeks and the most extraordinary realizations manifested for me in two consecutive days. I was not meant to be at home that fateful night that she left the physical world.  I would have changed and been damaged irreparably. I realize that now and that there’s nothing I could have done to fix her, even after trying for 22 years, after spending the most beautiful days and years of my life giving my children the most beautiful love, life, laughter, and play possible. I was not supposed to bear witness to her parting from me.

After that realization and the very next day. Cranial Sacral Therapy and Reiki  have been the most healing experiences for me. Simply relaxing in a candle-lit room filled with aromatherapy, soothing music and a waterfall, nestled under warm blankets, mind and heart wide open and free of distractions encourages us to connect with the Self, and for me with her. I laid comfortably and immediately relaxed. I found myself visualizing myself floating in the Indian Ocean. But, this time Taylor held me, buoyant and comforted. As she held me, I felt tears touch my cheeks. The pain and sorrow, the longing, desperate in the realization that her body is not with me, never to hear her laugh again dissipated as quickly as it came. I saw her in her new form, or I should say I felt her. I heard her laugh, joke, and felt her love and healing. I saw her as she has become. She is love. The suffering mirrors mountain of love I have for her and I finally understood that suffering and love are symbiotic. I embraced her, accepted her love and who she has become in the universe. I felt pride in the magnitude and latitude of her touch that reaches so many people still here, as was her purpose both in the physical and spiritual.

My contract, my agreement with her was to let her go, set her free, honor that choice that cuts deeply. I, the mother who stands alone without her in the physical accepted her decision to go while I floated, meditated, felt the warmth and peace of the ocean while in Africa. Brokenhearted and contracting with grief, I stand strong still. No waves will break me. She holds me. She told me before that I’m the bravest and strongest person she knows. I haven’t felt very brave or strong. My soul honors her. That must not dissipate.

The way she left us, the pain she experienced, the lifelong suffering she endured haunts me. I know now, hanging my head still that I couldn’t save her. Taylor showed me that I did everything and more. She said in her last message, “You’re the best mom you could have been.”  She’s touching lives now and I will go to that place in my heart as I do every day to feel her within me as others do.

I will learn to love her in her blissful new state of being, joyful, pain free, able to serve a greater purpose. One day at a time I will try. And, one day….as time travels slowly in the depths of despair….I will speak soundly, clearly, respectfully, and with power for families, the suffering, the animals, in honor of Taylor with tears streaming down my face or not, beaming with pride that I am with my twin soul with whom I’ll be connected for eternity.