I was going to go sit and write somewhere, but nowhere was sitting with me and it’s cold out and I have things I should do instead. But, I decided to make a snack and grab a sprite and sit on the floor with music in my ears and try to do something I don’t do a lot: write at home.
I don’t know if I currently have the capacity to write about what I’m feeling heading into this year but I’m hearing some things loud and clear so I thought I’d write even a muddled mess of a first try.
Last year my word was “create” and as I pondered through that and what I thought I did or didn’t do; I realize I did create-it just didn’t feel like how I thought it might.
The thing I keep hearing for this year, loud and clear, is just a simple phrase “come back home to myself”.
I know that feels like it should be easy right?
Absolutely not.
I’ve been surviving the last year of my life. I’ve been doing what feels like the bare minimum to keep my head above the water line. Emotionally, physically, spiritually. I’ve been doing exactly what I need to do and I’ve been pushing through.
I think I’ll be honest that at the end of it all, I just truly want to come back home to myself this year.
And I’m not 100% sure what that all entails.
I just know that I need to find those parts of me that I’ve lost along the way.
That I need to not be scared of it.
That I find hope again.
And I know this all sounds dismal- it’s not.
The reason I want to come home to myself is because I have people and spaces and times and abilities that show me who I am.
I know those things.
But, it’s time I start remembering that I have to walk in the door to come home.
Finding ways to care for myself that aren’t always easy and that take some vulnerability and courage. Finding more ways to be exactly who I am.
Finding ways to come back home to myself.
It’s truly an up in the clouds type of word for the year but I’m sure I’ll keep delving and keep figuring out what it means each day.
I’m tired, I had drinks with a friend and some fries, I have a full week ahead- but this morning I had a thought about story. And I feel like I need to flesh it out a bit, so here I am, in my comfy with a Yule log playing on the tv, my Christmas lights on and we’re gonna talk about it.
I just finished a book in a supernatural series I’m reading and with each book I’m shocked to see that this author has more story to tell and more places to go and more character development.
I’m a sucker for a supernatural story. I think it’s the BA in English in me that loves stories that aren’t cut and dry where I have to search out the themes and character archetypes and strings that weave through a story. I love the moment where I realize that something I read ten pages ago was actually the foreshadowing I thought it was.
And I love when an author uses all of those elements; archetypes, themes, context clues and story crafting to take a hard left when you think they were going to go right.
[For example: Gargoyles. (The girls that get it; get it)]
When they craft a story that feels like it always was only to open the world in the story to things you never thought possible.
And as you read on you realize it all makes sense. All the things that have lead to that moment make sense. You just couldn’t read it in the way the author meant because to you that’s what they had always done.
I’m really bad at believing that life is just going to be the same again.
That the situation is the same, the scenarios are the same, the feelings are the same.
That nothing lifted to make the story different.
But today, sitting in church during worship I got a fierce reminder that if the story was the same I’d just be rereading a chapter.
And I’m not.
Going into a new year can feel like a lot of things. And no, the world doesn’t change when the clock strikes midnight. But it becomes fresh.
You can create hope and life and walk into something choosing to believe that the story is going to turn left rather than right.
You can believe you aren’t rereading-it’s a new chapter.
(Like maybe there might suddenly be gargoyles).
I can admit freely that especially in the last year of my life I’ve lived in fear of the other shoe dropping. That I’m gonna get on a plane and the world will crash down again, that a phone call will crumble me.
I’ve treated each season like I was rereading a chapter rather than writing a new story.
I haven’t stepped out of the box enough to see that the themes and context clues and foreshadowing mean something wholly different than before.
And that is honestly terrifying to admit.
There are a few weeks left of 2022. I know there isn’t a magic spell, or some potion or anything that will change it all.
But, I do know that I have to stop living as if I’m rereading a chapter.
And honestly I don’t know what that means.
But, I do know that this isn’t just a me thing.
You also aren’t rereading a chapter.
You don’t have to live in the monotony of what always was.
And you, human reading this, have so much to contribute to the narrative.
I’m currently a little scared to look at all the things I’ve swept under the rug.
Sweeping things under the rug, shoving them in a closet, chucking them in a bag to deal with later isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes to survive you just have to do that.
Today in church as I sat during worship this line stuck out and played in a loop for me the rest of the morning.
“Everything you’ve lost; love’s returning”.
Now; I’ve felt really ugly for the last year.
I’ve tried so hard.
I’ve tried to not be the daughter who lost her mom. I’ve struggled almost every day with that. That weight of grief. The absolute utter loneliness I’ve lived in. The feeling of not having done enough or been enough.
I will repeat: I’ve felt so ugly.
I have to pause and say that I’ve had the most amazing humans in my life who have held me and fed me and looked me in the face and told me that my mom would be proud of me. Friends who I hadn’t talked to in years who still check on me frequently.
I have not been alone.
But the deep loneliness has been hard to shake.
And I have just had to survive.
My word this year, the one that spun in my brain at the beginning was create.
I tried to run from it, I tried to find any other word, but that was the one.
And today all I could think is that all I’ve created this year has been a mess.
I’ve fallen behind on projects, I didn’t meet goals I wanted, my room is still a disaster, I’ve barely written.
I haven’t created anything.
I know this year held hope, it held newness, it held camp and rocky and working with people I love.
It held good things.
But all I can think of is how ugly I have felt.
How grief was so messy and tormenting and how I wanted to yell and cry and throw things.
All I can think of is the parts of myself I’ve lost and don’t know if I’ll ever get back.
All I can feel are the rough edges that feel like they are permanent.
All I can identify myself as is a daughter who lost her mom.
All I can see is what I’ve lost.
I don’t know what higher power you believe in if you do. I don’t know if you find God tangible. Right now, I’m sitting in the back corner of this brewery, tucked in a corner, (trying not to cry and not make eye contact with the bartender who has clearly watched me cry) and I just know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God is here too (yes, God sits in breweries). And the God I know is just sitting there and being in this space with me. Which is a lot for me who’s been dealing with not knowing how to sit in a space with God. But thankfully this God meets me even in places I don’t think I’m allowed to be in.
I don’t know right now what’s on the other side of all this.
I don’t know if things I’ve lost can be returned.
If the pieces of myself that I dropped to make space for pain can come back.
I don’t know how to tie any of this up in a neat bow.
I think what I’ve realized in the last 40 minutes or so of writing is that I can hold both life and whatever this is.
I can hold feeling ugly and moving forward.
And I can choose to keep speaking up instead of believing the voice in my head that I should be stronger than all this.
Sometimes I wish I could be more poetic or eloquent in my writing. But, then I realize that’s not who I am.
I’m just me, sitting here, peering under the rug and deciding what I actually need to keep.
If you’ve made it this far-if any of this hits you, if you’ve felt ugly, I want you to know I’m here with you.
I am not enough, I am not capable, I don’t hear from God and my voice isn’t needed.
All the words I’ve had, all the words I’ve deleted, all the words that have percolated in my head over the last hour have all had the same theme.
I am not enough, I am not capable, I don’t hear from God and my voice isn’t needed.
And I know how that sounds, but I’m gonna need you to hold on and keep reading.
Because at the end of the day, until we realize what binds all the awful things together in our brain we will be unable to figure it out.
I emote for the most part a very bad ass bitch attitude. Because honestly, you just have too.
But, when the exhaustion hits and the seasons change and memories come back to haunt us, it comes chugging down the tracks with a force.
And if you’re wondering: that’s where I’m at.
Exhaustion, changing into a season I’m realizing I have more against, and the memories flooding in.
I was having a conversation with someone a few weeks ago about how I’ve gotten better at meeting situations that feel heartbreakingly similar to other seasons in life not with “but I’ve been here before” but instead “I guess I have to go deeper”.
Because at the end of it all these phrases “I’m not enough” and “I am not capable” are not the same that they were.
They can’t be.
Not only am I am different human than when I met them before, not only am I stronger, but also I’ve seen some shit.
When I first wrote this long list of all the ways in which I feel like I fall short (it was pretty damn long), I felt guilty for even thinking them.
Not because they didn’t feel true, but because I had a momentary pause of; I should be stronger than than this.
But that’s not true.
I don’t need to be stronger than all the lies.
I need to be strong enough to recognize them for what they are and keep moving forward.
I’ve referenced this movie before, but I’m thinking of the scene in The Labyrinth where the main character realizes that the Goblin King has no power over her.
And I wonder how frequently she had to repeat that in her mind.
If she saw an owl, or had a moment of anger at her baby brother, or if she wanted to run. I wondered how many situations she met in her life past that where she has to tell that little voice in her head that it had no matter over her.
(It’s now I’m realizing that lies in my head are 100% David Bowie as the goblin king)
Because some days it feels easier to give in to them.
How easy would have been for her to give the baby to the goblin king and live a life free from the thing that made her feel something.
Sometimes, I don’t want to show up for myself.
I want lean in to all the things that cause me to not be who I am and just exist.
But, what kind of life is that?
I don’t really know where I’m going from here.
I have the legal pad of all the ways I currently don’t measure up.
I have the Goblin King trying to hand me a magic crystal to take the baby away.
Here I am though: standing my ground, speaking out that he has no power over me and choosing to keep moving forward and sitting in the muck and grief and places wherein I don’t feel I have the strength.
If you’re still here I want to remind you that you haven’t been here before because you’re in fact a different human than you were.
I’ve been trying to move through my days and not let anything I’m feeling leak out into the humans around me.
I’ve been trying to be strong.
I think it can go without saying that I haven’t been doing the best. I’ve been trying too. I’ve been attempting to deal with this thing called grief and struggle against the voice inside my head that says I should be over it.
I’ve been attempting to deal with feeling like not enough a lot of days of the week- like I don’t measure up and am physically incapable of doing so.
I’ve been attempting to not feel like a third wheel- attempting to try so hard to not shut down and be an island.
I’ve been attempting to not feel like less than- which is different than not feeling like enough- trying not to feel like my pain and grief and lack of hope makes me weak.
I’ve been attempting to not give in to all these things.
And it’s really fucking hard.
I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again and again: I don’t like writing from the middle.
I don’t like putting things out into the world that feel hopeless or lacking the spirit I have inside.
I don’t like placing what I feel inside for everyone to see.
But what I’ve realized is my ability to see it- to fight it- even when I don’t feel like I’m winning- that’s hope.
My ability to show up even when it feels like it goes beyond what I’m capable of doing- that’s the spirit inside me.
And writing from the middle? That’s me fighting.
Choosing to write from the middle and choosing to call out the things that want me to hide and cry (which I’ll still cry- I’m only human) is me remembering that I’m stronger than I think.
When I was in church this morning God clearly reminded me that I was built for this.
Now, don’t get me wrong- you will never hear me state “god only gives me what I can handle” because I call bullshit.
I’ve many moments in life but prime example: I was not in anyway shape or form able to handle losing my mom when I was only 36.
What I am saying is that, the hard, hopeless seaming things; the grief, the singleness, the feeling lost- it may (it has) knock me down. It may push me under.
But, I will rebuild.
I’ve talked a lot about ruins lately. My letterboard still reads “the city will be rebuilt on her ruins” and well, to be honest, a lot of my life still feels like ruins.
But, I’m working on cleaning it up. On finding the foundation.
On rebuilding.
I’m trying.
I don’t know where you are.
I don’t know if you feel like you’re surrounded by ruins.
I don’t know if you feel like you don’t know what to do with your hands.
But I do know that all we need to do is keep trying.
As I look back through memories and pictures and words I’ve already written I’m trying to find kind things to say that aren’t seen through a filter of just trying to see the good in a situation.
About 7 weeks after I turned 36 I got to hug my mom for what I knew in my bones would be the last time.
Soon after that I made a decision out of necessity for my incredibly burned out self that I needed to quit the job I’d been at for a little over 6 years.
About 5 weeks after I started that new job; my mom died.
Now, I can say something about you 36; you set me up to make some choices before I needed to make them.
You pushed me to make some hard decisions I didn’t want to make.
You allowed me to make space before I knew I needed it.
In my letter to 35 I wrote these words
“thirty-five feels like the end of the chapter that leads into an entirely different part of the story”.
And 36 has indeed been an entirely different part of the story.
But to me 36 feels like one of those montages of a movie where life is just happening and you aren’t quite sure what to do.
And then then main character opens the door and gets blinded by the sun and the fact that it’s spring again after what felt like too long of a winter.
36 has felt like winter.
I don’t know if I can say I’m grateful for it.
I’m grateful for the people in my life who have showed up for me in the most beautiful, kind and loving ways and to those humans there is no way I’ll ever be able to repay you for the love and support you’ve given me.
I’m grateful for the bright spurts of joy; like trips with friends, performing on the Lincoln stage for the first time, family shot Friday and the hilariously wonderful humans I work with.
But I can very easily say that I’m ready for a new year of life.
I’m ready for winter to be over.
I’m ready to open the door and be blinded a little bit by the sunshine.
I don’t remember when I told him this but at some point I told my pastor, that my room was a direct reflection of my mental health. And it’s something he remembers and every now and then will ask me how my room is- asking me how I’m doing in a different way.
My room has been in disarray since August.
August was when I came back from first surprising my parents in Kingsburg (I left with a sense of foreboding that it would be the last time I saw my mom alive) and then had been in Hawaii for a friend’s wedding for about a week.
I was emotionally drained and on the edge of absolute physical shutdown. It was during that week in Hawaii that I realized I had to quit my job, I needed to make the leap, move on and try to breathe again.
I needed to try to find myself in what felt like the chaos I created.
I’ve talked about this before, but I started to breathe again.
I emptied my closet out to go through it, I was beginning to piece by piece put myself back together.
Then my mom died and the chaos stayed.
The effort it feels like it’s going to take to put it all back together still sometimes feels absolutely overwhelming.
I feel as if I had a perfect storm of grief, burnout, teaching in a pandemic, anxiety and so many other things. And I have to remember something in all of it:
It’s going to take more than a few months to heal.
Today in church, I was reminded by someone that I was important and that I needed to take care of myself.
Woof.
And right now, all that’s trying to run through my head are the ways I’m horrible at taking care of myself. All the ways I’ve been a bad, absent friend. The giant pile of clothes in the corner of my room, the fact my calendar still says January. The ways I’m incapable of doing enough. How I’m unable to do what people need me to do because I am fearful of crashing again.
But, if I sit I can also see tangible ways that I am taking care of myself and I have to remember that.
The pile of clean clothes means that I am doing laundry.
The plate on my bedside table means I have eaten today.
My cleaned off desk that now houses my vanity and makeup means that I am taking time to sit and do my makeup and I had to buy more moisturizer today because even if I don’t wear makeup, everyday I sit in my chair and put moisturizer on.
I had to scrounge for shampoo because I ran out, so I’m showering. I had to refill my water bottle because even though I usually suck at it, I am drinking water today.
And the tears currently running down my face remind me that I’m still allowing myself to feel.
I’m well aware of all the ways I don’t take care of myself. I’m well aware that I’ve not been doing well. I’m well aware of all the ways I don’t feel like I’m showing up for the people around me.
But with all that I have to remember the ways, even in the midst of the bad days where I don’t feel like I’ll ever feel whole again, that I’m still moving forward, I’m still creating habits that take care of myself even in little ways like putting moisturizer on my face or listening to podcasts while I get ready..
I have to remember that it wasn’t just my mom dying. It was also the end of a time of life living in high stress. It was living and teaching kids in a pandemic. It was friendships ending.
It was a lot.
So, if right now, if keeping my bed and my desk clear and my floor mostly clear is all I can do, so be it. If for this season my white board calendar stays on January and I just use my google calendar, so be it. If I mostly eat bagged salads and bagels and frozen things from Trader Joe’s, so be it.
Taking the shame out of the things I don’t feel capable of and putting the focus on doing what I can to be human, to live and to move forward in my day.
This is hard to even say but I think I am actually proud of myself. I’m proud that I show up. I am proud that I’ve realized I actually have to eat in the day.
I’m proud that I’ve found new ways to self care.
I’m proud that I let myself cry,
Because I am important and I need to take care of myself.
To actually sit and force myself to write- to just let words flow feels incredibly anxiety-provoking right now. But it also feels like one of those things that if I don’t sit in front of a computer and just let my thoughts out for others to read, I might be stuck on the other side forever.
I don’t want to get stuck, but I feel almost as if I am stuck in a perpetual wheel that causes me to be unable to just write. To pull out thoughts and share them.
Most days, I think, I am doing pretty ok. I am living in this new view of life with a lot of things on my brain- some I don’t really talk about (that’s the 20%) and some I don’t want to talk about because it makes me cry. I am a little bit fearful that this is just how life is now. That I am going to be sad forever and that there isn’t really anything to do to fix it. I know that isn’t the case. I know there isn’t anything to fix.
I know painful things happen and we just must keep walking in the direction that we are meant to walk.
I’m supposed to be writing a piece for the website I write for about the hope I find in choosing to trust my own balance. In choosing to know that I’ve been through some shit and that I am stronger and more capable to withstand things than I think I am.
I’m supposed to be writing about the hope I have in the strength I’ve been given.
You know that word I hate, “resilience”.
But all I want to do right now is delete the 275 words that came before this sentence.
This though is my reality.
Some days, I am truly ok, some days I’m just not and some days are like a little fruit salad of all of it.
But I don’t want to get stuck with an inability to write down my words.
I know I’ve shared this here before, but when I was little, I was so terrified to confront people when I had hurt feelings or was scared. And I would write my mom notes and tuck them in the chair she was sitting in and run away.
I’ve always used writing to communicate my emotions, articulate what is in my brain and conceptualize the thoughts that are tricky for me to decipher.
I write to untangle.
And currently, I am still actively untangling grief, untangling the relationship I had with my mom, and untangling some things that I don’t necessarily feel ready to communicate.
And I’m grappling with the fact that I don’t feel strong enough or capable enough or old enough to be dealing with any of this.
Normally, at the end of a string of words with a lot of questions, not a ton of answers, and what feels like a lack of hope I’d usually tag a PS to my mom who read every word I wrote, to let her know that I am in fact; ok.
Because at the end of the day, I am. I’m ok. I’m moving forward, I’m living. I’m just a little less than sometimes.
So, Mom, I’m ok. I’m moving forward, I’m living, I’m just a little less than right now.
Today while sitting in church, I went down a supreme tears rabbit hole. It is something that happens frequently when I allow myself to be still. And I’m not ashamed of my tears or my sadness or grief, it’s just that my modus operandi is to just keep moving forward and to save my moments of tears for when I’m alone and in my own space.
But grief really doesn’t care.
A favorite photo of my mom and I
Last week we talked about our word of the year for 2021. Mine was shift. And shift I did. I quit my job, shifted away from relationships, shifted I deemed important.
The big one, obviously, was quitting the job I had, had for over six years. I didn’t know why then I was pressed to quit- nothing major had happened, I didn’t leave on bad terms, I just had this feeling that I needed to make this change for myself. I needed to walk away from something incredibly stressful.
Five weeks later my mom died.
So, the reason for the shift I didn’t really know until that moment. I knew it was for me, for my mental health and stress levels, but I didn’t realize that the reason I need to walk in a period of stress relief was because the stress was going to hit incredibly hard in ways I hadn’t felt before.
That leads me to my word for this year. At the beginning of 2021, I read Hannah Brencher’s book “Fighting Forward” and there was a passage that hit me then and today it came back to me. In the book she is discussing her new years words and what that looks like and she quoted a scripture from Jeremiah and this phrase popped out to her, “The city will be rebuilt on her ruins”.
And I started to think about how heartbroken I am, my family, the people around my mother were when she passed. I started to think about how much it might feel as if the lives of those she left behind are in ruins because of her leaving this earth.
But then, I started to think about how ruins aren’t always a bad thing.
Ruins can be the start of something good, something new, something more beautiful than before. Ruins are apart of the restorative process. You just have to sift through all of it and find what is yours to keep.
All I want in this world is one more phone call, one more time for my mom to nag me about my eyebrows, to ask me if I’m warm enough. One more, “I love you my sweet girl”.
Instead I’m left sifting through the heartbreak and ruins to see what can become of them.
To see what parts of my mom I’m carrying to use to rebuild.
I always get a little nervous when it comes to finding my word of the year. That may sound silly but for someone such as myself who finds deep hope in words, it’s always something that truly ends up meaning something in my life.
As I sat with what it might mean to rebuild ruins I wrote out words, that popped into my brain and sifted through synonyms. Begin, embrark, start, innovate.
Until I wrote the word “create” and something settled inside.
It might seem silly for me, as a writer, to settle on the word create. But as someone who has been standing on ruins for a long time, someone who has spent a great deal creating from a place of pulling myself up over the ruins, I believe it’s time for me to create something out of them.
I have so much hope in the word create.
I ended 2021 feeling like I was a bit out of hope. I stood on my porch after midnight holding a glass of champagne (barefoot in 20 degree weather) and it felt a bit like I was look out into an ocean- you know the vast feeling of looking out over the water at night not knowing what is sky and what is ocean. And it felt incredibly overwhelming.
But today, I wrote the word create and I felt something that felt light. Not new. But me.
I don’t know what ruins you’re building on from this past year. I don’t know what heartache or grief or anger you’re walking through.
I don’t know if you need to walk away and rebuild away from the ruins, or if like me you need to find the beauty in the ruins.
Whichever it is, I want to remind you that you’re already on the other side of something. You’ve made it to a shore (even if it’s a small island amid an ocean).
I have been wanting to write the last three weeks but if I’m being honest the thought of writing has seemed heavy and has seemed like it would make the world around me more real than I was capable of dealing with.
For those of you only follow me in this corner of the internet I have yet to share this here: three weeks ago my mom died.
She died in her home, the one I grew up in, surrounded by her husband, us three kids and ¾ of her grandkids- one being away at college and a handful of her nieces and nephews. More family came in that night and over the course of the next week or two that lead up to the memorial we had for her last week.
I don’t know if I’m ready to talk about my mom or see the words on a screen but I knew that if I didn’t begin to write something it would get progressively harder to do so.
This morning I opened my journal in church and aggressively wrote out my thoughts on writing before the tears threatened too quickly. I tend to write around what’s going on in my life. I tend to write to work things out, to untangle them, to remind anyone who might be in the same space as me that they aren’t alone.
I can easily say that of all the grief I’ve ever dealt with or felt I’ve never met this monster in my life. I’m doing my best to be kind to myself, to take help, to ask for hugs, to cry- but it’s really, really hard. Even right now as I write this I’m blinking back tears.
My mom commented on everything I wrote. She would make sure to call and tell me she had read things and I usually got a text after I posted a blog that she “loved my ‘she writes on Sundays’”.
I’m sure I will write more. I will write with tears down my face, I will write through anger and now, I am writing out of exhaustion and the desire to put words on a page.
Grief is a lot. More than any human can actually fully grasp.
I miss my mom a lot. It’s still not real that I won’t be able to hug her or call her or have her nag me to go to the doctor.
