on a decade of sitting with grief
lessons learned when you've got to mother yourself
10/3 marked ten years since my mom died. Ten years since I answered the phone to screams from my aunt, telling me they just found her and she’s gone.
I have sat with this grief for a decade. It started out sharp and sucking and soulless and bottomless. I’ve gotten to know its sneaking ways when I don’t pay attention to it. I’ve learned to make space for sitting with it in my daily life. Grief and I are now old friends. Now, I know its softness, its tenderness. I know my grief’s weak spots like it knows mine.
I’ve talked at length before about how grieving my mom has become part of my routine as the years progress. Grief, like many other things in life, can come in cycles. And grief, like many other things in life, brings teachable moments we can learn from.
In the latter part of the decade since I’ve lost my mom, I’ve started to really work on reparenting myself. As a young person, my family/home circumstances forced me to grow up really fast. In high school I had to make sure my sisters got around to where they needed to be, all while trying to send as much of a facade of perfection as possible at the time. I’ve been in some form of survival mode ever since.
After recognizing survival mode, I’ve worked hard to create a life that is a much softer place to land than the one of my upbringing. And in this last decade of grieving my mom, of going through the cycles of grief backwards and forwards again, I’ve learned a lot. So, my dear reader, I present you with a List of Shit I’ve Learned in the last ten years:
Life isn’t a series of boxes to check off. Getting to the next goal just to check it off and ask yourself, “okay, what’s next?” isn’t necessarily the point of things. Spend more time in experiencing and enjoying. Spend more time in processing.
Grief, like everything else, is cyclical. It comes in waves like the tides; you see more or less of it like the moon. It’s easiest to just be like the tides and like the moon and embrace cycles.
Perfectionism/constant driving for results is both a trauma response and a characteristic of white supremacy culture, and working to untangle this from your daily routine will prove difficult due to how truly ingrained it is.
Sometimes a lot of problems can be solved by throwing on some loud music and deep cleaning. If the problems can’t be solved that way, you’ve at least worked some of your aggression out, and things are now clean.
There is no right or wrong way to grieve your loved one a year after their death, or five years, or ten years, or fifty years. Don’t let anyone tell you that you talk about them too much, or that you should be “over it” by now. Our American culture, with as many innocent folks as we kill, should be much more comfortable sitting with death and sitting in remembrance than it is.
Trust your intuition above all. That intuition is passed on to you through the generations of your family that have persisted before you. There is ancestral wisdom and body wisdom in that intuitive feeling. Trusting it honors where you’ve come from and where you’re going.
Codependency is a trauma response related to feeling powerless, unworthy, and unsafe in childhood. Sometimes your relationships boil down to a long and complicated play-out of that trauma response. When you become aware of the toxicity, you can leave, and you will be painted as the villain, but that’s okay.
Nobody is going to have my back like I have my back. I’ve got a supportive partner and family, but at the end of the day, I make my own choices because I trust my intuition and my knowledge and experience.
Fuck Ronald Reagan for the war on drugs that has led to the current addiction crises we navigate. Criminalizing addiction and adding more shame to addiction is the nail in the coffin for many Americans. Get trained in Narcan administration and carry it with you even though you don’t use.
Even if you’re standing alone, stand up for what you know is right. Use your privilege to be the voice of the voiceless. Shine a light where it’s needed. Say things with your full chest and be okay with it if you’re the only one that does. And while I’ve got your ear, free Palestine.
Even if you have a complicated relationship with your mom, she can be an anchoring, calming presence for you if you’re willing to work with her energy (and get through a lot of your anger; that part might take years).
My grief and I, we’re besties. We make time for each other. We see each other regularly these days. I learn from her (and I hope she learns from me). Ten years on, my mom’s energy is that of my ancestors - here when I need her, offering guidance when I ask. I wouldn’t wish this comfort and familiarity with grief on anyone, yet we all navigate this relationship with her at some point in our lives.
And onward I move, into the next decade without her. She’s Here, though, ya know?
