I hesitate to share this story because it’s so deeply personal, but when something has this big of an impact on me, I want to share it, just in case there’s someone out there who can relate. A few weeks ago, as I sunk into
Conjure up a parliament in old England: a stately room of soaring ceilings, carved wooden chairs and podiums, colorful flags and the smell of lemon furniture polish and Old Spice wafting through the air, except in this room the scents change to freshly fallen leaves,
I spent this morning going through my closet, looking for two dresses: one to wear to a wedding and one to wear to a funeral. Sigh. This grand pageant of life can feel less than grand sometimes. I have a whole team of people I
The last day I visited my Mom was like visiting a fairy tale kingdom living under a curse…
It looked like she was some sort of goddess scattering starlight made of love-bursts right out of her body to wrap around mine. I think she would like that I am not running from my pain. but absorbing and integrating it into my soul, allowing it to change me moment-to-moment, and knowing that time and space can not separate me from her. I think she would encourage me to keep spinning my stories and assure me that they are indeed, spinning into gold. I think she would like that I have found healing in my Unhealable Wound.
Everyone copes with the sorrows of the world in different ways– for me, I choose to play in what I call “a glitter cyclone,” aka my Magic Treehouse camp.
The boy has finally found a sport he likes. After years of trying football, basketball, and baseball, he tried Lacrosse a few weeks ago and has been happily running around the fields of Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachussetts for weeks now. When he played football
I’ve written before how death and divorce can make holidays especially piercing, seeing everyone with their loved ones when so many of mine are now gone.
This is the first Easter in 6 years that didn’t feel like I was being stabbed with 1,000 tiny pins all day long.
I wondered why the feelings changed. Was it time? People love to say, “time heals all wounds,” but I have not found that to be true for me. In my experience, some wounds never heal.
I miss my beloveds all day every day. The pain remains, as big and all-consuming as ever, but the more it tries to pull me down, to destroy me, the more ferociously I create: writing, dancing, filming, creating…
I have learned to live with loss and grief, it is a part of who I am, and though I wish this wasn’t true, it is: grief is also an integral part of my children, and I know they feel the loss a little extra on holidays too.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final…
Ranier Maria Rilke
This is the quote on the handmade cards I’m giving my kids for for Christmas this year. I want them to remember, as tragedy and sorrow swirls around us, to allow themselves to feel everything, even the sharp and jagged edges of pain, to allow it in, let it change you, invite the pain in to teach its lessons. It hurts to lose people we love, and what can this brutal lesson teach us? I’m still learning myself, but I have noticed a deep and abiding compassion growing in me, forged in the fire of loss and pain, that urges me to show up for others who are in pain.
As we checked out, we did a little Game of Thrones photo shoot in the empty rooms we walked through. Mind you, my kids are too young to watch it, so it was just me living my Mother of Dragons fantasy because I so resonate with the character: I feel like I’ve spent a long night in a fire, burning with grief and love and heartbreak, and now as the fire simmers down, I emerge, not burnt and weak, but stronger, braver, with my arms full of fierce baby dragons.
