Some lessons can only be learned, not taught.

Yesterday marked three whole years since you were called home. Your love has carried me every single moment since, just as it did every moment leading up to the one that took your physical presence. I admit yesterday was not my best day, but I have learned not to apologize for grieving, however it may look on any given day. Yesterday I spent the entire day in bed. My phone was silenced, and I did not hold myself to any expectations. I ignored the entire world. Slept, cried, read, ate unhealthy food and then repeated the cycle. After writing this I will shower and rejoin civilization.

Our parents teach us so much, they show us how to live and how to love. From learning how to walk, to tying our shoes, obtaining graduate degrees, building engines, and changing tires. They show us tenacity and grit with one hand while simultaneously teaching us gentleness and nurturing with the other. Since you died, I have been trying to wrap my head around how parents teach us everything we know but not how to live without them. When I needed you most, when I was down for the count and the world had me at my knees, I could not understand how we could leave our babies to face that kind of tragedy alone. It felt like a cruel joke, and I searched for ways to prepare my girls for the day they wake up and I am no longer physically here.

To say I almost didn’t make it would be an understatement. It was dark. It was ugly. It was scary. It felt like I was in the ring with my back against the ropes and the blows wouldn’t stop coming. I gave up for a little while. Spent more time than I would like to admit staring at walls and trying to wish it all away. I quit nursing and stopped showing up as a mom. At some point I heard a few phrases that slapped me pretty hard and helped me begin the biggest fight of my life so far… “You don’t have the luxury of giving up” and “You have to get out of the grave you put yourself in when you buried them”. After many nights of pleading with myself to stay alive I came to a simple conclusion… “You are either going to live or die. Pick one”.

Picking the first option was much harder than the latter. I had no idea where to start but I knew I had to start somewhere. I researched and read and listened to podcasts and speeches. Learned a whole lot but learning without doing was getting me nowhere. I was still in the grave. I wanted to take my grief out and physically look at it, examine it, smooth out the edges so maybe they weren’t so sharp. As I visualized this, I came to the realization that I couldn’t even reach my grief if it were to be tangible. Life has not always been a field of flowers for me as you know, and I used pain as fuel. I pushed through everything. Used my trauma as steppingstones. Broken hearts as staircases. While it did help me achieve a few things, suppressing everything did not mean it was taken care of or addressed. It just meant I had a whole lot of mess crammed neatly into a tiny little place that I had carried with me for a very long time.

If I wanted to learn how to carry the grief of losing you, I had to take out every single dark, ugly, and painful thing I had never dealt with and face each one. Work through them and there was no cheating or shoving any of it into a corner for a later date. When I try to explain this process to other people the best way, I’ve found to describe it is “I had to take it all out and put it on the table. Then I picked each thing up, got to know it, worked through it, and then I was able to put it in a place where it belonged”. I didn’t throw any of it away but found a home for it, kind of like putting it in a filing cabinet instead of a heap of trash. None of it was easy. At all. I wanted to run and hide from it, numb it, ignore it, to do literally anything to not face the things I managed to ignore for the first 30 plus years of my life. The phrase get comfortable with being uncomfortable sometimes repeated on a loop in my head. Have I healed all those things? No. However, I have acknowledged them, processed, faced, and felt them. Some things I was able to discard and others I still carry with me, but they have a home inside of me now. They aren’t spilling out or overflowing into every aspect of my life anymore. I like the way that sounds … my life… now it is my life because I built it with my very own trembling hands.

I digress, let’s revisit the part where I said parents teach their children everything but how to live without them. I’m not sure I think that is a fair statement for me to make for several reasons. First of all because I am not without you. It has taken some time, research, and expansion on my behalf to truly know that… like know it in my bones. I’m not sure everyone comes to this understanding and that is okay too. You did not die. Your body expired. Reaching that conclusion does not mean grief doesn’t still kick my ass from time to time, as it clearly does. It means that I have learned that death of the vessel is just that, death of the vessel. The love does not die. The essence of you continues. Your soul does not perish. Grief is still real and sacred to me, and it always will be for as long as I am human, I will feel and experience the most beautiful things life has to offer as well as the unbearable anguish that we all must endure while we are here. For both I am grateful.

Secondly, you did teach me how to live without you here with me, it just took me a while to understand that. You taught me courage, love, determination. You showed me while you were here through the way you lived your life many virtues. You taught me countless lessons. So yea maybe you physically left… but you left me with more than enough to do this life thing without you. Even when it’s scary, lonely, hard, exhausting, uncertain, painful, and overwhelming. Even when it’s beautiful, gentle, warm, happy, fun, weird, and wild.

You taught me so much while you were physically here on this earth, and you’ve continued to walk with me and teach me every day that I do this thing called life since you have been called home.

Yesterday was hard and that is okay. I give myself grace.

I love you. Be Good...and I'll do my best while I'm here.

Photo Credit: Sherisavino "Trees thru the archway"