Ann

 

“Ann”

“The fiercest anger of all, the most incurable, is that which rages in the place of dearest love.”

• Euripides

I found out on Labor Day that my mother passed away earlier that afternoon.

I didn’t know how to feel about it. My mother and I had not been in contact for nine years and all the things I feel are roiling around inside me, mixed together and brawling with each other.

I have been trying to write this piece since then. I have started it and stopped it several times. I spent a long time trying to find a quote that would fit and I settled on one that was very forgiving and kind. Then I could not keep writing and I was stuck. I realized that I was trying to make this piece more palatable for others to read. I don’t know if I wanted others to see me as less angry or if I wanted to spare people discomfort or what, but I couldn’t write because I wasn’t writing the truth.

The truth is that I am full of rage. I am so angry and bitter and I don’t do anger very well. I don’t like how anger feels and when I get angry I get scared. Not only am I angry, but I am angry with myself for being angry so I am all over the place.

When I was in graduate school we did an exercise where we did a family genogram. I dug deep into the stories I had been told and put down on paper the traumas, the addiction, the domestic violence, the sexual abuse and neglect as far back as I could remember. I discovered a pattern of sadness that went back several generations and I cried when I had to present it to the class. My thoughts were a scrambled mess and all I could think was, “this stops here”. 

After I came out of rehab the second time, I did extensive step-work and therapy. Forgive me, but at the time I thought I had everything all figured out. That turned out not to be true as I went back to rehab for a third time and have had to do even more trauma work. But at the time I thought I was essentially cured of all things and I was floating along on a fluffy cloud of pretty colors while my ego slowly inflated and I didn’t even notice. 

I remember getting a call from my brother one afternoon while I was working and my body started to shake. I asked my therapist why this continued to happen after I had come to a place of forgiveness and relative calm in my life. So why did I panic whenever I heard from my brother or my mother? My therapist explained that even though my mind had reached a place of acceptance, my body still remembered the traumas. 

I grew up wanting for nothing in terms of material things. I traveled around the world and went to an expensive boarding school but there was verbal abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse and neglect. There are large portions of my childhood I don’t remember and I have to think that may be a blessing in the end.

My mother was mentally ill. I know that she was molested by her older brother. I know that she had OCD and severe anxiety and she could not cope with many things in her life. I know that her mental health or lack thereof, ruled our household. My father never challenged her and stood back and let things unfold around him. My brother had anxiety as well and he molested me. The ripples of sickness had staggering consequences.

I know that I have mental illness as well. I have depression, anxiety and substance use disorder along with severe PTSD. I have not been a model parent either. I have been absent from my own childrens’ lives at times while I have been away trying to get well. What I will give myself grace about however is the fact that I have gone away to try and get well and I have shared with my children what is wrong. I want the cycle to end with me and I want them to have a chance at a life free of the generational abuse and “sweep it under the carpet” mentality that has cast such a large shadow over my family tree.

I am now fifty years old and both my parents are now gone but I would say I haven’t really had them for years now. I want to be able to say forgiving things like “they did the best they could” but I’m not sure that I am there yet and I can’t say that I ever will be. What I can say is that I am grateful that my mother is no longer suffering from the crushing anxiety that plagued her all her life.

There are people who will read this and feel I am being unkind. There is pressure for people like me to remain in the role of the “good daughter”, “good sister” because “society says” we should. Forgive me once again, but fuck that. Just because someone holds the title of family member, that does not mean they are automatically kind and loving.  It does not mean that they earned the right to love you the way you deserve to be loved.

 And that is just it. I deserve to be loved. I always did and I didn’t get that as a child. Not as a daughter and not as a sister. I was used and abused and belittled and demeaned. I grew up in a fog of despair and secrecy that taught me I had no worth and I acted accordingly. I treated myself abominably for years and sometimes I still do. I have to remind myself of my worthiness often and it is hard and it is counter-intuitive and it shouldn’t be like this - not for anyone.

So my mother died on Labor Day and I am angry. I am angry she did not fight harder to overcome her demons. I am angry she wasn’t capable of being what I needed and deserved. I am angry she lost out on being what she could have been. I am angry my children did not get a grandmother worthy of their love. I am angry that I did not get to resolve these wounds. And I am angry that I am angry. I am also angry that I still love her.

Biscuit

 

 

“Biscuit”

 

“When someone is walking beside us, we have more courage to walk into the unknown and to risk the dark and messy places in our journey.” ― Henry Kimsey (House)

 

 

 

 

This week has been a little challenging for me.  I recognize that in the past, it would have been the kind of week that would have sent me into a tailspin, but today it caused some bumps and discomfort rather than a complete derailment.  I was talking to Joe this morning and was able to see I need to allow myself props for how far I have come. I don’t give myself credit enough and have to make it an intentional exercise.

I got some news about my mother this week that threw me off.  To be honest, any news about my mother throws me off.  I haven’t been in contact with her for years and so any contact with or about her is jarring at best.  I have a lot of mixed feelings about her to say the least. I also carry a lot of societal expectations about what a good daughter “should” do and perceive judgement from others about not being in contact with her. Of course others don’t know our story and don’t live inside my head and didn’t live my childhood and I can tell myself over and over again that I don’t owe anyone an explanation for my actions or lack thereof.  Yet the baggage of the “good girls should” still weighs me down from time-to-time. Understand I wish her no harm, in fact I hope she is well and I still love her on some primal level.  I just can’t be around her because it causes me physical and emotional distress of epic proportion.  I deserve to be happy and I couldn’t do that when we were in contact and I also saw that having her in my children’s lives was not going to be healthy for them at all.

Beyond this news about my mother, I had a few instances at work where I began to feel like an imposter. I was challenged by a few clients and this week it stung.  I wasn’t as able to not take it personally and I began to question my capabilities as a therapist.  My insecurities grew inside my head and crowded out the work I know I have done with clients who have made progress or whose lives have improved.  Momentarily blinded by my affect, I made it through the rest of the week by leaning on my colleagues in peer supervision and talking through what I was feeling. In fact, I made it through the week in general by leaning on others.  I went to meetings, I talked to my best friend, Tony, Frank and of course Joe. 

This is what brings me to Biscuit.  Biscuit is the family dog.  She is a golden retriever we got in 2011.  She lives at Frank’s house even though I was the one who bought her at a charity auction (when I was drunk – long story for another day). Frank is her person and she follows him everywhere. She is loving and sweet if not too bright. She is an old girl now and you can see from the picture, her muzzle is lovely and frosted. She is going deaf and she has some trouble with her joints that makes it hard for her to get up and down the stairs now. Frank bought some carpeted stair runners for her so it’s easier for her to get a good footing and she has an orthopedic dog bed on a platform.         

What happens with Biscuit now is that she will come down the stairs in the morning when Wren feeds her and lets her outside.  When she has finished this part of her routine she wants to go back upstairs to be with Frank but she gets stuck at the bottom of the stairs.  She sits in the hallway and barks and complains until someone comes down and gets her.  You don’t have to carry or lift her, you just have to give her words of encouragement, walk up the stairs beside her and sometimes place your hand on her back or pat her and then she can do it.    

I realized that if nothing else, I do this week in and week out for my clients and I do this really well.  If I never get to evidence-based practices in a session, or work on a skill or confront a fear or process a trauma… I ALWAYS walk beside them.  I always give them words of encouragement and show them they can do more than they think they can. 

All Biscuit needs is moral support and it is what everyone needs in life – it’s what I needed this week.

Halfway There

 

 

“Halfway There”

 

“Knowledge will give you power, but character, respect.” ― Bruce Lee

 

 

 

I just got home from karate.  Tonight was a belt test night.  I can’t say that I enjoy belt testing.  It is a night of intense work-out and we don’t get a break.  We are constantly on the move: punching, kicking, running, flutter kicks, planking, self-defense tests, katas and it goes in rotations over and over again.  You have to remember nine self-defenses that you have learned since the last belt test three months ago and this round we did a12-count bo staff kata. Right now everything hurts… seriously, my hair hurts.

But, what I can tell you is that I passed.  I feel a great sense of accomplishment and a little bit of bewilderment at the same time.  Dermot was there tonight as well.  He tested last night and passed and tested again tonight and passed but is one class short of having the required attendance to earn his belt and move up so will have to wait until next week to receive his actual belt.  I was able to get my blue belt (pictured atop my bo staff) and Dermot pointed out to me that the blue belt means I am halfway to getting my black belt now.

The fact that I have made it this far honestly astounds me.  There are nights I don’t want to go to karate.  There are times I have to talk myself into it and times I don’t manage it.  There are times on Saturday mornings I would really rather not be heading out the door for a three-hour stint at the studio but I do it anyway (for the most part).  I can tell you though that even if I may not always feel good going to the studio, I ALWAYS feel better leaving.

Dermot got me involved in karate.  I started with a free month for parents a couple of years ago.  I had some time off during a relapse but came back and got involved again once I got back into recovery.  Once Dermot had been instructing for a while, he convinced me to take a training certification class and now I’m an instructor for the 3 to 6 year olds and I love it.  If a few years ago you would have told me I would be exercising regularly, part of an extended family of inclusive and supportive people and feeling as though my self-respect was getting an infusion each week I would not have believed you. 

See it isn’t easy.  I have to work at it.  I have to set goals and attain them.  I have to fail and get back up and try again.  I have to accept constructive criticism and learn from it.  One of the people I have to accept that constructive criticism from is my own son – AND I have to call him sir.  But things that aren’t easy and things you have to work for are all the sweeter once attained.

The blue belt represents respect and that is one of the things karate is teaching me.  I have respect for myself again and that is a priceless gift to re-gain.

The Year of Child-like Fun

 

“The Year of Child-like Fun”

 

“When fun gets deep enough, it can heal the world.”― The Oaqui

 

 

 

 

Last year I mentioned that it was to be my year of “Yes”.  I explained that I no longer subscribe to the concept of New Year’s resolutions.  I don’t like the idea that we embark on what seem to be a self-defeating, self-flagellating journeys that imply we have been doing something wrong which need fixing.  These punitive promises we make ourselves start off with good intention but often begin to drag and fill us with dread and I just feel they begin to rule with the whip rather than with the carrot.  I prefer to give myself a gift each year.  This year I give myself the gift of more fun – specifically the gift of returning to more child-like fun.

I had considered giving myself the gift of more time smelling the roses, but child-like fun has won-out.  Work played a part in this for me as it often does.  I have talked before about giving gifts to other people or using methods at work or in groups.  I can tell you I see results with other people and I started to think, “Why don’t I let myself enjoy these things as well”?

Last year, my niece was off to college.  She is driven and works extremely hard.  She studies engineering and puts a lot of pressure on herself, which in turn gives her some anxiety.  It can be crushing at times.  I was thinking of ways she could relieve that anxiety at exam time and sent her off to college with a hat.  It is a bunny hat that has floppy ears you can control by squeezing the flaps – you literally can’t take yourself seriously when you are wearing it.  I told her to take breaks and wear the hat when she got too stressed.  She did and still does and talks about how she and her roommates laugh every time. (https://www.amazon.com/IronBuddy-Rabbit-Moving-Jumping-Winter/dp/B07GDCFG34/ref=sr_1_16?crid=6E4JCE9YHCFZ&keywords=floppy+chicken+hat&qid=1674295553&sprefix=floppy+chicken+hat%2Caps%2C90&sr=8-16). 

For both my chronic pain group and my women’s empowerment group, we take art therapy breaks from regular therapy every few months.  We did shrink dinks twice and then I sent them adult coloring book pages and finally we spent a session working on rainbow scratch off booklets.  The joy on these people’s faces as they relax into coloring and creating is priceless.  There are always some revelations during these sessions but there is also much-needed laughter and a lot of “ooh look what so and so just drew!” and “can I see yours”?  “Hold yours up to the camera”! and “when are we doing this again”?  These people with debilitating depression and chronic pain become kids again and engage in things that brought them joy as children and it is magic. (https://www.amazon.com/Shrinky-Dinks-Creative-Activity-Multi-Color/dp/B08HHF82MM/ref=sr_1_6?crid=1ZZGNDA11TNQB&keywords=shrinky+dinks+kits+for+kids&qid=1674297464&sprefix=shrinky+%2Caps%2C118&sr=8-6).

As I was shopping for stocking stuffers this past Christmas I came across a gem – the slingshot rubber chickens that are pictured.  I originally bought them for a friend’s son who is about 10.  I have since gone back and re-ordered them 4 times.  Yes 4.  I ended up ordering enough for everyone’s stockings and then for friends and then for Tony to take to his school so he could give them to some of the kindergarten teachers he works with.  I can’t tell you how much laughter has been had with these rubber chickens.  My very favorite scene from Christmas was watching my 84-year-old ex-father-in-law load one up on his finger and launch it across his living room giggling.  I mean it really doesn’t get any better than that.  It is my firm belief that everyone should have a stock of slingshot rubber chickens AT ALL TIMES. (https://www.amazon.com/Sumind-Slingshot-Flingers-Stretchy-Chickens/dp/B07MB9XW4N/ref=sr_1_6?crid=3QS5TUTMPSG3P&keywords=slingshot%2Brubber%2Bchicken&qid=1674296445&sprefix=slingshot%2Brubber%2B%2Caps%2C96&sr=8-6&th=1).

Last year was the year of YES and I said yeas to a lot of healthy things.  I said yes to karate and I am a purple belt.  I am slow at it and I could be further along in the belt system but I am still going.  I got certified as an instructor for the 3-5 year olds and now I get the joy of teaching little ones karate each Saturday. I said yes to a relationship and I can’t tell you how happy I am that I did.  Tony makes me feel seen and heard and is lovely and smart and funny and kind.  We say yes to things together and have fun and I can’t wait to see what we do next.  I said yes to working on a grant project and yes to working full time at my job.  I said yes to these things and more and I am so much better off today.

This year I want to have simple fun.  I want to laugh more and enjoy child-like things.  I want to go to the zoo and feed the giraffes.  I want to pet dogs and giggle often.  I plan to get together with a group of local girlfriends and have a craft day where we do the arts and crafts we used to do when we were kids just because we can.  I want to eat dessert first and have breakfast for dinner.  I want to color and sing and dance in the rain. 

When we were kids we did these things and we did them with abandon.  We had simple fun and we didn’t complicate it.  That is the kind of fun I want to engage in this year.  I hope you will consider doing the same.  But watch out because I may hit you with a small rubber chicken!

 

 

 

 

Take up Space my Darling

 

“Take up Space My Darling”

 

“You were wild once.  Don’t let them tame you.”― Isadora Duncan

 

 

 

 

I run a Women’s group at work.  It’s one of my favorite hours each week.  It is a lovely group of women all struggling with various mental illnesses, traumas and syndromes.  They are all working on themselves and have banded together to try and support and uplift one another.  My job is to provide a platform, a space and a structure.  I moderate at times and referee but for the most part I sit back and let them interact with one another.  It started out as a process group that I inherited, but it has slowly become an empowerment group and as they allow me to help them with their struggles and create a safe space for their stories I feel more and more honored to watch them gain in self-confidence.

As a girl growing up, I was taught so many things that were designed to make me smaller.  By that I mean, I was supposed to follow rules more than the boys who were my age because “boys will be boys” you know.  But girls, well girls are supposed to be polite, sit with their legs crossed and look pretty.  My brother played soccer and my dad was the coach of his team.  I longed to play soccer, mostly because I wanted to be closer to my dad.  But I wasn’t allowed to play soccer because “girls do ballet Fiona”.  I hated ballet…  I am not that coordinated and I don’t like pink and frills and glitter and I could never get it right.  Soccer looked like so much more fun, AND they had orange wedges at half-time.  You can make silly smiles with orange rinds when you are a kid…

I don’t remember when it was that I stopped skipping, but I know there was a time I just knew it was no longer appropriate.  I remember knowing that I was supposed to hug relatives because that was the “nice girl” thing to do and I was supposed to answer questions but not really ask them.  I inherently seemed to know that it was better to smile and nod and seem to agree when things got tense just to placate because it was better to diffuse a situation than to incite someone and I noticed pretty quickly that my opinions seemed to make some people mad – mostly they were male.

As I got older and more trauma became baked into me, more mental illness manifested and addiction emerged from a hollow inside my soul.  Alcohol became a friend, a comfort and an escape before it turned into an insidious lover with whom I had the most toxic and abusive relationship.  What had at first been a haven and provided fun became a master of the worst kind and one from whom I could not run.  Addiction overtook my thoughts and my decisions and the core of me, the “Fiona” of me, became so quiet, I forgot to listen for her voice and soon I forgot what she even sounded like.

The decisions I made while in active addiction will always haunt me on some level.  Spectacular mistakes were made and extraordinary pain was dealt out to all the people who surrounded and tried to love me.  I can never wipe that away from their memories or my story.  But I am grateful that I can hear the “Fiona” voice once again and better decisions get made today because she listens to a much kinder and wiser master.

I was teaching karate yesterday morning as I do most Saturday mornings now.  I help with the classes for 6-12 year olds and the 3-5 year olds.  I have a penchant for getting very little children really excited to do things like jumping jacks and mountain climbers by counting wrong or making silly mistakes so they have to correct me.  Kids that little haven’t stopped skipping and it’s a joy to be around them and their unfiltered reactions.  They don’t know not to be exactly who they are and that is a precious commodity.

During each class there is something called the “Lesson of the week”, where the kids will gather around one of the instructors in a circle on the floor and the instructor will explain the lesson the week.  The lesson of the week is tied to concept of the week and is usually told in the form of a story.  This week’s concept was self-confidence and the story was about a speaker who stood in front of a room of 200 people and asked who among them would like a $20 bill.  They all raised their hands (as did the kids).  The speaker then took the bill and crumpled it up and asked the audience, “now that I have crumpled it up – who among you still wants the $20 bill”?  The audience all raised their hands (as did the kids).  The speaker then took the bill, dropped it on the ground and stomped on it with his foot.  He then took the money and asked, “now that I have ground it into the ground, who among you still wants to $20 bill”?  The audience all raised their hands (as did the kids).  The speaker then told the audience that the lesson had proved that no matter how battered or dirty the $20 had gotten, it had not lost any of its value.

No matter how many decisions I have made that have been bad ones, decisions that have hurt others, that have caused pain…  I still have value – in fact I still have the same value.  The decisions were bad, I wasn’t bad.  I have the same value as a human being now as I did when I was born.  I still have the same value now as I did before I learned to stop skipping, to be a “nice girl”, to placate, to not argue, to be polite, to acquiesce.  There is a lot of stigma around addiction and mental illness, around gender and age.  But I can remind myself that it is alright to take up space and be joyously me and glory in all my value.

           

 

SIGNS

 

“Signs”

 

“All you have to do is to pay attention; lessons always arrive when you are ready, and if you can read the signs, you will learn everything you need to know in order to take the next step”― Paulo Coelho

 

 

 

 

The past few weeks have been difficult for me.  I have struggled with the anniversary of Liam’s birthday which always seems to knock me off-kilter.  Then one of Dermot’s karate coaches died suddenly and it hit our little karate community pretty hard.  I also had a situation at work that had me feeling under-appreciated and unheard, which had not been the case at this place of employment up until now and I also became somewhat overwhelmed by the scope of work required for the grant I am now involved with.  Finally, I have had a few conversations that have been difficult to navigate in my relationship.  All of this has taken place over the past two weeks or so.  Basically, I am tired and a little down.

            We cooked dinner for Liam’s birthday at the Ronald McDonald House in West Philadelphia on his birthday the other week.  This is the first time in two years we have been allowed back in to do so since the beginning of the pandemic.  We worked in an industrial kitchen and made enough food to feed and serve the families staying there and packaged up fifty more meals for another house that hasn’t opened up their kitchen yet.  We were there from 3:00 PM to 8:00 PM and it was the right combination of hard-work and distraction.  Frank, Dermot and Wren and I were there early and we had Frank’s sister and her husband join us as well as Aunt Gail and then Tony.  Pitching in and making food and feeding others on his birthday is always a good way to keep busy and give back as well as honor him but it is also exhausting.  The next day, we found out that Dermot’s coach had died and we went to watch the kids do a demo team performance and met back at the karate studio so they could hear the news.  Dermot asked me to be there and talk to the kids about grief and see if anyone needed to talk, including the parents.  I left from there with Tony to go to an AA retreat for the weekend and, though that was a good experience, I felt I was not as present as I would have liked simply because I was still in a state of profound grief.

            The funeral for Dermot’s coach was later that next week.  It was held at the same funeral home as the one where we held Liam’s funeral nineteen years before and sitting with Dermot in that room for the services was somewhat surreal.  After the services, and before going to the family’s house, the team was trying to figure out what to do for an hour and talking about meeting up for a bite to eat.  Dermot declined the invitation and instead told the team he was taking me to see his brother in the cemetery (he didn’t talk to me about this first) and he would catch up.  We went to see Liam’s grave before he left to join the family at their house and I went back to work.  It was an emotional experience to have one son take me to see the other.

            Work, well, all I will say about that is that I went from an independent contractor to a full-time employee and the transition has been less than smooth.  My immediate supervisors have done what they can to make it work, but matters out of their control have made it uncomfortable and some things have happened that should not.  I have come away not feeling safe and not knowing who I can trust and that does not make for a healthy work environment.  When I am working with clients I am all-in.  I don’t have a lot of time during the day to worry about the admin side of things and so when that doesn’t go smoothly or I can’t trust that side of my job I come away with a bad taste in my mouth and it makes me unable to concentrate as much on the clients as I would like.  It is something I find unfortunate and unsettling.

            And the relationship stuff is simply learning to communicate with someone in a way that makes sense to us both.  Tony and I have never fought but we have had some uncomfortable conversations lately.  He talks about how we can’t both be a 100% all the time and that sometimes one will be giving 70% and the other 30% or something similar.  Well at the moment we are both struggling so the percentages are somewhat off because we are both somewhat off.  The important part in that though is that we have the uncomfortable conversations and keep on going.

            So the point of all of this is to tell you that the other morning, I went outside to have my conversation with Joe.  Instead of starting it with gratitude like I always do, I began to just rail at him.  I complained and moaned and bitched.  I had a one-sided conversation with someone from work as though she were standing right there in front of me and my voice began to rise the angrier I got.  In mid-sentence as I was getting more and more heated I looked up and saw a shooting star fall from the sky and I stopped speaking.  I stood staring, slack-jawed at where the star had disappeared.  I have been going outside and talking to Joe in the early morning hours for about 15 months now and I haven’t ever seen one, but while railing at life and how unfairly I feel I am being treated, I get a shooting star from Joe.  I stood there in silence for a long time before I started talking to Joe for real.  I returned to gratitude and started seeing life from the perspective that helps me not hurts me. 

            This happened to me again this morning.  I woke earlier than normal.  I had another busy week last week and yesterday was also stressful.  I felt overwhelmed by work, the grant, a speaking engagement, just life getting lifey again…  I started down that same path, this time about how stressed out I feel and forgetting to start with gratitude.  Mid-bitch, I see a stag come out of the bushes on the hill outside my house.  It came out slowly and looked me in the eye and stopped.  He stared and waited.  When I didn’t move or speak, he completely emerged.  He was a young stag with smaller antlers.  He was limping.  He limped slowly into my yard and past me and then down my stone steps and down the street and out of sight.  A shooting star, full of the beauty and awe of the universe and a limping stag showing me the fragility of nature…  Ok Joe. I see, I’m listening.

            I returned to gratitude once again.  I need reminders at the moment and Joe knows this.  I get overwhelmed and stressed out and forget to look at my life from a lens of gratitude and benevolence for myself and others.  If I am honest, I am stressed out because I perhaps have taken on too much and that is on me.  I can also manage it if I stop looking at the whole and eat the elephant one bite at a time and stop saying “yes” to everything and everyone.  Dermot is doing alright and I just need to be there if he wants to talk.  He is handling this loss better than expected, probably because he was raised with the concept of death from an early age and because difficult topics are talked about in both the houses he lives in and by both his parents.  Liam’s birthday is hard every year and I have to be kinder to myself around that, realizing that there is no time-frame or limit to grief and no right or wrong way to “do” it.  Work will sort itself out and I know I do right by my clients and that is the most important part of it in the end.  And the relationship conversations are going to be hard from time-to-time.  If they weren’t we wouldn’t be real people and it wouldn’t be a real relationship. 

            Mostly I need to remember that my life is gloriously mine.  It is full of beauty and grace and with beauty and grace come bumps and shadows.  I just need to remain teachable and open to Joe’s signs.

Nineteen

      “Nineteen”

 

“Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love.  It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot.  All of that unspent love gathers in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in the hollow part of your chest.  Grief is just love with no place to go.” ― Jamie Anderson

 

 

 

 

    I have been asking myself all week why I am not doing better with this.  Why I am not farther along and why I still fall apart during this week each year.  I seem to put pressure on myself as the years go by to be more put together and to handle Liam’s birthday more gracefully than I am capable.  I don’t know why I do that to myself.  I know that if I were talking to a patient or a friend I would be much kinder and much more understanding than I am to myself.  So when I read the quote above it resonated.  I have all this love and it has nowhere to go so it makes sense for me to be off-kilter.

    The fact that I am not as kind to myself as I should be is something I am working on in therapy.  Yes I am a therapist in therapy.  It is a case of I can’t see the forest for the trees…  I am good at helping other people but not at helping myself so I manage to take my own advice on this one and I get help from someone myself.  My therapy sessions are intense and enlightening and I am all the better at my job because I work to understand how I cope or don’t cope and how I can move through life with more ease and comfort than I have in the past.

    Back to yesterday…  Our first-born son, Liam, would have been, should have been, nineteen.  He was born with a complex combination of Transposition of the Greater Arteries (a heart condition) and Pulmonary Hypertension (a lung condition) that proved fatal and he died when he was 68 days old.  He had open-heart surgery when he was four days old and lived with oxygen and a broviac line in his chest and a complex regimen of medications.  His short life was not easy and I think he was in pain and struggled to breath.  There is a part of me that was relieved when he died, partly because he was suffering, but when I allow myself to be completely honest, I was also relieved for myself.  I was living in a constant state of adrenalin because I was to be his primary caregiver and with him 24-7 and responsible for his needs and all those complicated medications and after being trained by a pharmacist to administer the medications, I was not entirely sure I was up to the task.  Mothers are not supposed to be relieved when their children die you see.  They are supposed to walk through fire for their children and I would have, did do, but I was terrified. I struggle with those feelings because, as a mother, I have guilt over having them.

    Mostly though, I miss him.  Mostly I want to hold him again and touch his sweet face.  I long to know what he would be like today.  I have strong and fascinating relationships with his younger brother and sister and I would give just about anything to talk to him and know him as he would be today.  I would love to have a conversation with him and find out who he would have been.  I do have all this love inside that has nowhere to go.

    There is nowhere to put the years of stored up packed lunches, birthday party themes, favorite meals and Christmas mornings.  There are years-worth of boo-boos and scrapes gone un-kissed and tears gone un-wiped, laughter gone un-heard.  So many secret worries and after-school stories I have heard from his siblings that I haven’t listened to from him.  School plays, art-shows, cringe-worthy music concerts, sporting events and parent-teacher conferences, tantrums and fights. 

    Last night we went back to the Ronald McDonald House to cook dinner for the families because they have opened that option up again since COVID.  We could take eight people and Frank and I went down to start the process off with Dermot and Wren.  We were met by his sister Erin and her husband Mark and joined thereafter by Aunt Gail and my partner Tony.  They have an industrial kitchen now and serve upwards of 200 meals each night.  It’s quite an undertaking now – a far cry from the smaller operation it was when we started doing this years ago in Liam’s honor.  I was outside on the walkway at one point looking for Liam’s memorial brick and ran into a father and his toddler who were staying at the house.  She had Down’s Syndrome but they were staying there because her little sister had been born six weeks ago with an insulin problem and needed to be flown in from Michigan.  I showed him Liam’s brick and he asked me how old Liam would have been.  We talked for a few minutes and he thanked me for volunteering.  I said it was a pleasure to be able to do something in his honor, and it is.  It is something I think I can do each year with all that unspent love. 

    Grief is not linear.  In the beginning it is blinding and there is no way to see around it.  Slowly I felt as though I was able to see a little better with grief on the periphery.  Eventually, over time, the grief shifted to the side and began to walk beside me.  I allowed it to become a part of me rather than trying to reject it.  I made peace with it and treated it with kindness, most of the time.  It’s like a sad, calm sea – vast in its expanse.  Its tide always coming in, and, at times the tide is high and I feel it coming up dangerously close and threatening to overwhelm me, but the tide always goes back out again.

    Nineteen years of unspent love makes for some achingly empty arms which is why I think I love those I do have here on earth so deeply and so hard