Grief is ubiquitous. Like REM sings, “Everybody hurts — sometime.” I lost the most precious person in my life, in all my lifetimes: my son, only child, and best friend. I’ve been navigating the grief process for nine and a half years at the writing of this blurb. I write about the improvisational nature of grief; it’s a day-by-day thing.
Some days we soar and some days we sink. I write about the ways we manage our grief from the sunbeams to dark nights of the soul. I’ve managed to create purpose from my pain. I went back to college and earned three degrees. I help raise our grandson. We have cats who entertain us for hours at a time. I spend time reading, writing, and visiting with people I love. Life is short; my son was only 32 when he died from alcoholism and heroin addiction.
Life is very short. In the interim between the time of our birth and the time of departure from this earthly trip, we must grab hold of all the amazing things life has to offer.
I miss my son more than there are words to express, but life goes on; it must. There’s still so much beauty, beauty we shared with our loved ones. Beauty they left behind for us to remember them. Their beauty shines through our lives…let’s do them proudly.
So, no news is good news, right? Well, maybe on some days. I haven’t written anything for this page for a spell. My absence has been both good and challenging. Life is to be lived fully when not in crisis, and I’ve been fortunate to have smooth sailing for a bit. Our Christmas was chaotic because of my husband’s accident, but we’re back to normal – whatever that means, right? For me, it means that we are fully functioning, that my husband is healing, that our grandchildren are well, and that my hormones are in “balance” – so I can live a life worthy of the life I’ve been gifted. For how ever long it lasts … (a fragment means incompletion … it means there is still time for correction).
Admittedly, with the exception of a few days of great sorrow, my son’s angelversary on January 22nd, for example, I’ve had beautiful, sunny (if not chilly in the high desert) days when I’ve been able to play with our grandson, write, and socialize. I may have even found a progressive church where I might “fit in.” We’ll see. I want no membership, no responsibility, other than to help in the kitchen, and service tasks, and the like.
My health is good. I’m happy. I have moments when I miss my son so much, I have to work doubly hard to make it through the day; it’s better when I’m busy. When I’m alone and isolating myself, it only leads to stagnation, and I so need my life to be full and dynamic – despite the greatest loss a parent can endure. So those of you who’ve supported this site for some time know ten yeas have passed since I lost my Rikki. During those ten years I’ve worked my ass off to stay with the living, to enjoy life, to navigate wounds more efficiently, and to thrive…the full spectrum.
My dearest friend has told me that she sees me as all about healing – myself — and helping others to find their own pathways to the greatest healing they could ever even imagine. What a nice thing to say. If you want to know how I’ve done it, how I’ve managed to begin and to continue healing, well, I have stood on the shoulders of giants, of those who precede me in the grief process, and those with whom I have traveled for ten years, and more if one considers the mutual losses my population has endured: the loss of our children to a current plight in American society.
I’ve leaned on and so, I’ve learned from fellow grievers, experts in the field of grief, friends, and strangers on the street how to begin healing, what unguents to put on my wounds, how much sun to expose them to, and learning to not pick at the scab – or it will never heal. Doesn’t matter how well our healing process goes, whether we find transformation or unresolved trauma, there will be emotional scars. I have them. I’m able to cover the wounds until my life no longer resembles a person in deep and incapacitating grief. Trust me; I was there.
Having had a hoppin’ life for the past two years, I’ve been able to slow down, veg to music and binge watch pay channeled series of fascinating new shows with the grandson, have long conversations, non-rushed, with my husband; I’ve been able to have friends come stay with us and visit for days. I mean, I’ve been living it up. I’ve also been reading A LOT in preparation for my doctoral program. See, I’ve learned to stop and breathe for moments at a time when the vestiges of visceral pain, which will always be there, are just too present at inopportune times, I refocus and reframe my overwhelm. I redirect my pain into purpose. What can I do for someone else who is hurting or struggling? Or … I find a space of time when I can fully immerse myself in rising grief – which will always be present – but now navigable.
When I consider each of the days that comprises my individual grief process, I simply can’t believe ten years have passed. I feel like it was just yesterday we were cruising around in my car, laughing and singing along to the radio – on a perfect January day in Southern California. When I play the movie of my life … the past ten years, I see the woman doubled over in pain during the day, and curled up in the fetal position at night. I see the woman who begged the God of her limited understanding for even a second of relief from the stabbing pain into my very Soul, and I marvel at how far she’s come, and how far she’s had to work to find her way to Wholeness.
Transformation does happen when we’re ready, when we’ve navigated the darkest parts of our early grief days. I know; there are parts of us that stay in the dark, and it is we who must release them so they can be exposed to the healing sunlight. Not easy, truly, even if you were expecting the death of a loved one, it hurts; it just does. I’ve been so fortunate to cross paths with grievers, some with less time than I have for the loss of their children. They’ve helped me to open my eyes to the transformative power of grief. Of course, we’d give back all the transformation for the return of our babies, but we live in a world that has shoved reality in our faces by the loss of our children, so, we adapt and we adjust to new lives – carrying our grief in our knapsacks of emotional resources, of which grief is one.
How is grief a resource?
I guess, for me, and I don’t believe for a second that all things happen for a reason, but I do believe we make meaning out of the experiences in our lives. The deeper the wound, the more profound is the meaning; I would argue. My son died and there are infinitely many reasons for his drug use which led to his very early death; however, he didn’t die so I could learn something. I object vehemently to anyone who suggests otherwise. For me, the only phenomena that helped me to begin healing were logic, having answers in the present tense, knowledge that has morphed into wisdom and gifted me with the ability to want to work toward the best life I can offer myself, and the ability to hold time and space for deluges of tears or times I need to be alone with my grief and mourn my son’s death in private.
Any methods we employ on our way to wholeness, even those that prove self-destructive, are personal and individual. I’ve tried everything from a shaman to more traditional healers to stop the pain; however, when the pain comes, there’s really no stopping it, only navigation. I can shelve it temporarily until I can get to a safe space or find a safe person from whom I can find comfort.
I’ve always had people in my life, just as I’m sure you have, who are the best of friends, but with whom we have not been able to process our grief because they simply do not know how; I’ve learned to let them off the hook. They simply did not know how to share in my grief either because they had not experienced a grief so great, or because they were overwhelmed by the fear that your loss brings into focus — the reality that death will touch us all. In some ways, and until we begin to stabilize our emotions, I believe we grievers are seen as contagious – while we feel invisible.
As the saying goes, “All things passeth away, and all things are made new” – how ever you interpret this. I’m told I exude joy — . I ‘ve worked hard for it. Sometimes I’ve had to replace a pang of sadness from a memory with a happy thought or lovely memory – immediately, as soon as I feel the pang…because I wasn’t in a place where I could melt down.
Know your audience and find safe spaces in which to mourn and/or commune with your loved ones. I don’t think one has to necessarily be a mystic to commune with the Spirit of your loved one, and I don’t necessarily mean I believe my son is present or that he can hear me. I just don’t know about that, but I know I go out to the National Park and speak to the part of my heart where my son will always reside, and I find healing power in the billion years’ old stone formations and I commune with the desert ravens, the amazing foliage in our beautiful landscape, and I bask in the silence.
Where are the beautiful places in your neck of the woods? I encourage you to go there often, alone if that’s what you need, or with a trusted friend with whom you can be vulnerable, maybe even to weep in his/her arms. We grievers are really the only ones you can walk out of our sorrow and into new lives where we can thrive, and where our whole lives are not consumed by that sorrow.
I strongly urge you to read everything you can get your hands on about grief and the mourning process. I encourage you to view YouTube videos about how others have navigated the process, one that has been prompted by a loss that is similar to your own. For example, my loss involved losing an adult child to heroin and alcohol; your loss may be something a chasm apart from my loss.
Find your grief niche.
Find your purpose post-loss; it’s still there, and perhaps your dreams have come into greater focus, but the pain of your loss holds you back from pursuing those dreams. If you’re new at this, trust me, your grief will lessen in intensity even though it will never go away completely. For those of you who are veteran grievers, thank you for allowing me to stand on your shoulders. I am so grateful for, and sad that you’ve had to be, the example of courage you’ve shared with me and other grievers.
So, I haven’t ghosted the site; I’ve just been fortunate enough to be okay enough to have a busy life, rich relationships, and the ability to immerse myself into research and creativity. I know some days it feels like you will never feel good again. Don’t cheat yourself out of those moments when you do feel good, no matter how much survivor’s guilt you carry. The breaths of fresh air are brief in our early days of grief; lap them up selfishly regardless of their brevity.
I also encourage you to get out in the sun today, or if you’re in an area of crazy blizzards, I encourage you to bundle up with your fluffiest blanket with a good book or engage in a conversation with someone who makes you think existentially, or who can make you laugh.
I know it hurts right now.
But … this too shall pass is a reminder to me that I won’t always be in the dumps – even though I will grieve until I breathe my last. In the interim, in between my first and last breaths, those that came easily, and those that came labored, I will strive to be whole, which means I allow myself to feel the full spectrum of emotions, even when I find I must sob until I catch the breath that will keep me here in the present moment.
I guess like a magician, now you see it, now you don’t is how I grieve. I wear grief like a disappearing tattoo, always with a trace, never fully gone.
Despite how I feel on great days, the grief that is always present is a commemoration for my son’s short, beautiful, and tortured life; some days I just handle my shit better than others.
To love someone, especially in Christocentric faith traditions, one must prove her love through suffering. How many love songs and love stories have been written about this very thing, and maybe even your own relationships, and the sagas of your friends and family in which all characters have suffering and drama pretty consistently? This is the kind of family I emerged out of; it took me decades to stop suffering at the hands of others. I had a lot of drama and today I have peace. I think we recreate the behavior of our family of origin family dynamics, good, bad, or indifferent affects — until we realize we don’t have to.
There’s a song by Dramarama called, “Anything”; it’s about a dysfunctional relationship and the negotiation process in such a relationship. In the song, two people are suffering, and yet one of the parties wants to try despite the hell the song portrays. I’d have run in the opposite direction – today, and I never really had “fights” in any relationship but the one with my ex-husband, and we were two dysfunctional very young adults, but – there was drama — and a lot of it. How could there not be?
In Buddhism, suffering is called dukkha, and Buddhist perspective is that suffering is just a part of life, from birth to death, and the sooner we accept this, the sooner we will find liberation here, not in some imaginary utopia, but right here in our current life. Surely, suffering IS a part of life. I suffered a great deal when my son died, for example. We suffered together during our hell of addiction.
Again, suffering is a part of life – but to volitionally put oneself in a relationship whose constant theme is suffering, that’s suffering, certainly, but my advice is get out and find your peace and then other peaceful people will be drawn to you, just as we draw dysfunctional partners and friends to ourselves when we haven’t worked through our shit and made the choice that being happy, whole and at peace is so much better than being oppressed or abused.
My husband and I laugh at our arguments five minutes after we’ve had one, and the arguments are about chores, ideological differences. We’re on the same page politically, but I’ve been sporadically religious during my sixty-three years, so I consider myself a sporadic theist, and he is devoutly atheist. But as when I was nineteen, I tolerated infidelity, boredom, angst, rage, and extreme dissatisfaction in my first marriage. I suffered. My son suffered.
I suffered until a friend told me the truth. No one likes to hear truth when they’re afraid or stubborn, or unaware they are unhappy, dissatisfied; or they’re not sure they “are” being abused. I know sometimes you may feel hopeless in the dramas in your life that keep playing out – over and over again. I assure you, once you begin therapy, educating yourself by reading every book you can find on how to find peace, wholeness, and the divine in your very own life — life will open up for you in great leaps and bounds.
Losing my son will forever be the heartbreak of my life; it leveled me for a few years. If I allow myself to lapse into the type of mourning I did in the early years after he died, I’d suffer. I choose not to. I choose not to suffer. I had no control over my emotions in the early months and years after he died. Every single thing reminded me of him. I call reminders triggers, because sometimes they fire out like a bullet with precision and pain, and then I have to remove the bullet, clean out the wound, bandage it and wait for it to heal. Grief is suffering because that’s life and natural stage in our lifespan. Suffering, dukkha, is the natural course of events. People die; the manner really is circumstantial. A life ends, and people loved the decedent, and her absence will be an adjustment period for her loved ones – and the separation between presence and absence is deeply felt – there will be a mourning period for however long one needs to mourn.
The mourning process is difficult, sometimes complicatedly so. Mourning is suffering; grief is the awareness of loss and the desire to stop suffering; the acquisition of this self-awareness does, in fact, in my experience ease the suffering. I know, for example, that my son suffered in his life. I know he chose a coping mechanism that would ultimately kill him. I know, intimately, about the experience of the hell of his addiction. I have answers. I’m not asking “Why?” anymore. I’m also no longer suffering.
Suffering at some point can be dismantled and replaced with emotional and spiritual liberation. My heart hurts for those who suffer without self-awareness; healing is a very long process – lifelong I would argue. Little children have no voice and have no choice about suffering at the hands of abusive primary caretakers, i.e., parents, etc. I commiserate, and I am fortunate and humbled to work with populations in which people have suffered and are currently suffering, but who remain hopeful.
In abusive relationships between two consenting adults, you gotta just leave, bruh, man, woman, or za. I know it’s underreported, but men also experience spousal abuse. Suffering can be relinquished for peace and tranquility – absent of drama, abuse, and suffering. Life will happen and suffering will occur without assistance, and then – we’re left with how to manage life after the implosion of a dysfunctional relationship. Sometimes suffering and shouting and violence are all we know when we leave dysfunctional families; and so – wash, rinse, and repeat.
Love does not mean taking shit and being silent about it. Sheryl Crow also sings a song called, “No One Said it Would Be Easy”. I know there are adjustment periods when two people begin to live together, and sometimes it can be a tough transition, but suffering should not be the norm. One should walk away from people who consistently hurt you. My transition, after not living with someone for over twenty years, might have been a trainwreck if I hadn’t spent a substantial amount of time in therapy, getting emotionally well, after being one of those children who suffered at the hands of adults.
I know some of you may think you are without hope, but you’re not, and “counting “suffering” all joy” for love will only perpetuate choices we make about how we choose a mate. As a self-aware person, suffering is optional – after a substantial grief process; the end of a relationship, even abusive ones, leaves a hole – that we must fill up with purpose which will bring you a peace you may only dream about at present. I have a friend who is very proud of himself for how he left an abusive relationship he had tolerated until he just couldn’t take it anymore. He did leave and he lived on the streets for a bit. He said he would rather do that than take one more minute of abuse. His life is going well. He stopped the madness in a repeat performance of the relationships in his family of origin. One day a lightbulb appeared over his head and self-awareness was born. He had the revelation he deserved better than he had been receiving in his marriage, and he left, no matter the difficulties he had to brave for liberation.
Some challenges in life will take every ounce of strength you possess, but energy can be replenished. I know in grad school I worked with a population whose members came from worse backgrounds than I did, and I encouraged them to know that life will present challenges, hardcore challenges, and to navigate them during the height of their chaos requires some of the hardest work we will ever do.
I love the verse in the Christian Bible where Jesus says, “Suffer the little children to come to me and forbid them not.” However you navigate your Christocentric religion or non-“traditional” religion – whatever informs your goodness, kindness, compassion, doesn’t need to have an object of worship. But – to my point, the position of the Christian Bible says that God is love, and then Paul/James come to peddle his/their “count it all joy” bullshit, and all hell breaks loose in relationships. Submit your wife; don’t spare the rod with your children. Suffer because it shows me you love me. Suffer for me. Those are the messages that got my blood roiling this morning…and then I wrote about it, and now I can let it go, and try to stay in the place of love for all people. If I’m going to follow the example of a supernatural entity, the entity must be one that engenders love and charity, progress by altruism.
No more prolonged suffering in dysfunctional relationships. There can be liberation from suffering.
My friend told me this morning that in the Twelve-Step program there is a saying, “Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional.” We will have our hearts broken. We will lose loved ones forever (dependent upon your assessment of an afterlife). Disappointments abound in this awful/wonderful life.
There is so much suffering in the world presently – for infinitely many reasons. My thinking is that we have a whole mess of dysfunctional relationships in which both or one of the parties feels trapped, unhappy, or is being abused. In that respect, abuse is causing you to suffer. In the Holocaust people suffered horribly. Suffering was not optional at the time of the brutal savagery. There are times, of course, when suffering is our present experience – sometimes at the hands of others, and sometimes we suffer by own behavior and choices we make.
Dukkha…not being able to forgive yourself causes suffering. If you’ve never read David Kessler’s book Finding Meaning, I emphatically recommend it, and When Bad Things Happen to Good People” by the Rabbi Harold Kushner. Once we become aware that we deserve the best, and that we don’t deserve the drama of other dysfunctional people, we can begin to heal and to liberate ourselves from the trauma of dramatic and emotional and physical abuse in relationships that cause us to suffer.
I don’t know if suffering is optional. I know I suffered a great deal in my first marriage, mostly with chronic dissatisfaction and his infidelity. How did I set myself free? His infidelity became the opportunity for me to create a happy life, in essence, to escape the hopelessness I felt in an oppressive life.
Are you currently suffering? Does it feel like you will never rise above the tragedies in your life? You can. You must. Does the song “Anything” remind you of your current relationship, or if you’re currently single, does the song remind of you past patterns of relationships you’ve had?
As far as grief goes, we also grieve bullshit relationships in which we might have suffered a great deal. The grieving process is a must. I know once I became self-aware enough to figure out I deserved better in my life, the world began to open up for me. Was I frightened? You betcha. How does one surrender self-destructive coping mechanisms? How does one find a healthy partner, even if that partner is oneself? Like I tell my clients, hard work, hard work, hard work is how one makes her dreams come true.
Grief is a process that must be worked. Did I grieve my first dysfunctional marriage? Perhaps in the beginning as a 21-year-old, but as the decades have passed, I’ve grown through personal trauma. I’ve released fucked up people back to their own dysfunction. I’ve also married an emotionally sound person who thrives on peace as much as I do. We don’t negotiate our differences manipulatively. Love shouldn’t hurt. Love should never gaslight.
There was book written and I believe it’s been revamped by Lynette Triere, called Learning to Leave, which is not only comforting, but it is also practical. I return to my original point, suffering in relationships should be eliminated from your life, even if you are like my friend, without a place of your own, are adrift in a sea of unfamiliarity, or couch surf for a while. If you have children, read Lynette’s book and start planning your escape. I encourage you to get therapy and/or pastoral counseling for spiritual sustenance. Even atheists need some kind of anchor, even if it is a human one.
You will suffer through the mourning time after the loss of a loved one. Work through it. Read everything you can on your challenge. Talk with a trust friend. Journal. Write poetry. Paint your pain and release yourself from suffering that you no longer need in your life to feel alive.
Trust me, liberation from suffering is in our hands. I had no place to go after my ex-husband’s infidelity. I never received child support and we lived at the poverty level for decades as I worked my ass off and tried to stay in school to improve our lives. I escaped a lifetime of dissatisfaction. I escaped the kind of volatility that comes from frustration, frustration to change my circumstances.
Today, I offer you hope that no matter where you are, please don’t give up hope. Hope really does float and we really can soar. We have the potential for a lifetime of peace – interspersed with occasional suffering that we must work through, but trauma in relationships should not last decades.
Please read the two resources I’ve mentioned here in this post. Please see Nadine Burke Harris’ TED Talk on abuse and its effects through the lifespan. Listen to “Anything” by Dramarama, and see if it rings true for you. Maybe you think this is the way relationships are conducted and it’s the only thing you know. Suffering in relationships is not conducive to a good life, and you are so richly deserving of a good life.
Believe this. Work hard. Keep that spark alive. Draw in the kind of people who will love you without pain, and … set yourself free.
“But I was so much older then; I’m younger than that now.” ~Bob Dylan~
In the phenomena of living things oxymorons are plentiful. The word oxymoron originated in Greece. The word means, basically, double-sided, two-edged, one side sharp, and the other side dull. Perhaps indicative of the ability to choose between two types of behavior when confronted with life-altering experiences, for one’s reputation, or for one’s very life.
I don’t want to go too far off the beaten path, per normal, but I do want to throw in Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model of psychosocial development and say that within each concentric circle of the model there remains a need for survival, some methods used for achieving survival are more base than others.
But do we really have only two choices? Maybe. I’m going with adaptive and prosocial behavior vs. maladaptive and antisocial behavior. I don’t think you have to have a doctorate to make prosocial decisions and then act appropriately. I also don’t think a doctorate affords one emotional stability either.
I’m going with the double-edged sword, one side so thin it could ever so thinly slice through the epidermis without so much as a nick in the dermis with steely precision, and the other side, dull, as if to say, “I want to offer you two choices for resolution, but I don’t really want to engage in battle.”
Which of these methods is your M.O.? As I’ve learned to soldier on and sometimes skip gaily through life since the death of my son, and since therapy and decades of healing, there are not only two sides to every social event, and in fact, if there are multiverses, I bounce in between them in every interaction with an “other”. Is that woo woo? I know there are some phenomena which will remain unexplained, unanswerable, and perhaps even a mystery our species will continue to chase until our own extinction. Sunny thoughts, huh?
I both love and love a little less the aging process. My husband absolutely sees no reason for it. I shudder, right now, at the alternative. I’m so not ready to launch into eternity yet. I have too much to do. I got a late start, but I’m rarin’ to go – even in my sixties. I feel alive, vibrant, and full of energizing creativity. I have a friend who creates beautiful artwork in several media. I have one medium: words.
I no longer need the steely, sharp-witted and caustic side of my rapier. I am not foolish enough to think I don’t ever need to protect myself; however, I prefer harmony, inasmuch as I can evoke it in my life and inasmuch as I can share it with others.
Healing from all sorts of personal, emotional, and spiritual injuries takes time and courage – and absolute dedication to the process, no matter how much it hurts. The cliché, “The only way out of the pain is through it,” should not be relegated to the bottom shelf of pithy sayings that got you through early stages of your healing process; trust me, someone else will benefit from your experience. I shout from the rooftops, TELL YOUR STORY.
If it had not been for those who grieved the loss of their children before me, I would have had no models to emulate, and I do so have the heart of a professor. I want to impart the knowledge that is lifechanging. I want to impart the knowledge that has been shared with me. We each interpret our grief through different lenses, at different levels of clarity, as our hoped for lives come into focus. I’m no longer dreaming. I’m fulfilling my dreams, even as I grieve, even as I hold space for my marriage to my amazing husband, share a home with our grandson, enjoy my friends and family of choice. See, we must live because as death constantly surprises us with its brevity, we have no clue when our number’s up. Cheery, I know.
Carpe freakin’ diem. Eat, drink and be merry. Live your best life, and don’t wait until your ship comes in; we could be wasting an amazing life on waiting for something we think is best, and then … tragedy strikes and some things couldn’t wait, relationships that will never be experienced again satisfactorily, and we must settle for missed opportunities.
I couldn’t wait for a publisher to get gaga over my book, so I self-published. I never expected a best-seller; I’m too humble, but I do hope the words of mine and my son’s story resonates with someone all the way toward healing the deep wound that gapes in the early days of loss, in the lifelong process of grief.
So, as I approach my 64th birthday with glee and anticipation, I will do my best to promote my work. I have seven months before my program begins, and I choose to present this old lady’s work with the verve of an idealistic twenty-year-old.
My husband feels like an anachronism. This sentiment is one among infinitely many one may choose to feel as he ages. What compels me to soldier on despite the most painful loss a parent can endure? Quite frankly, and as simple a thought as strawberry shortcake on a cool evening at the end of a sweltering summer day, the answer to that question is: Love; it just is. I wish I’d known that the end goal in life is not to make gobs of money and acquire gold only to store it in warehouses where it is of no benefit to anyone but ourselves. I wish I’d known that at the summation of one’s life, a satisfied mind is the goal.
My supervisor during my internship asked me what I wanted out of life. I told him, unequivocally, I want peace. I want to help others to achieve peace too. He asked me, “What if people don’t want peace?” I hope that’s not true. I longed for peace for fifty years before I began to get and love a taste for it.
I’m a late bloomer in academia and in achieving happiness. My friend and reverend told me a story about something someone told her as she was working on herself and making great strides. Her friend asked her to imagine how much further along she would be if she’d been loved, encouraged, and recognized during her formative years. Ouch.
Fear is a dam holding back all the emotions that need clearing or feeling. Burn some sage. Have a shaman come over and do an energy clearing. See a shrink and pour your heart and soul out and HEAL. I don’t want to waste a single minute suffering the vagaries of life.
I’ve been writing since I first learned how to hold a crayon. I had no voice as a child, and for much of my time as a struggling single mother of a beautiful little boy. Neither of my parents had the emotional resources to offer encouragement or recognition of their children’s innate talents.
I went through almost all of my secondary education without a voice, until I had an English teacher who encouraged wild creativity. I was enthralled with language and worked hard toward precision language about phenomena that explained human behavior, everyone’s behavior but mine. I had no idea who I was, what I looked like, what I thought apart from my abusive parents, or where I wanted to go. I had no idea there was a trajectory toward joy. After Rikki died, I lost my way, and I forgot I had a voice. I didn’t have something that has never failed me: words. How does one adequately express a pain so deep that there really are no words? I wish I could paint and I would use dark colors, purple for the bruising in my soul, black for the depth of emptiness where my son’s presence used to be, a swath of grey, my son’s favorite color, with broad brush strokes reaching outward from the center of my canvas returning to and being recharged by the Sun. I wish I could create in a medium that won’t fail me like words have where grief is concerned.
Some people describe their understanding of the Divine as ineffable, indefinable, inexpressible, and all encompassing. I feel the same way about grief. The blog I have is filled with grieving parents who are at various stages of healing, and their metaphors are at once hurtful and healing.
My purposes weave in and out of my words here today. I’m a healer simply because I am healing and as I’ve stood on the shoulders of giants who have found their peace through the grief process, I feel as if I’m called to take others by the hand and guide them to the multiverse where anything is possible. I’m not talking about the American (Materialist) Dream; I’m talking about the kind of peace that you can summon anytime. Breathe through the tempests. Peace is a gift we give to ourselves, and if enough of us can find that inner-peace, just imagine how peaceful our world could be.
We’re all growing toward our visions of ourselves. I pray yours is colorful and bright, with veins of the darker colors that shaped you into a person who would aspire to peace.
It’s so hard to not ruminate on the days leading up to Rikki’s death, when he was so sick and weak – and I was terrified. I try to not think about those things as the anniversary, the tenth, approaches. I just found myself doubled over in pain as a memory pierced my soul. See, isn’t that the way it is? There are days when we shine and make progress in our lives, and then …
There are days when a dark cloud follows us throughout the day and the nights seem forever.
I have booked myself solid for next Thursday, January 22nd; I find I have less time to writhe in my grief that resurrects itself with a furor every year. Why did he have to die? What were we doing at this time the year he died? Oh, my heart hurts. Oh, why, oh why, did I survive and Rikki had to die?
See, these things come up as angelversaries come up. I call them angelversaries because it softens the blow a bit to think of my son in angelic terms, even though he was magnificent while he was here. I just wish I’d been able to get that through his very thick skull, and yes, anger is part of the grief process, and sometimes I’m mad, but it’s been years since I felt the rage, rage at the closing of the light (Dylan Thomas), and so, anniversaries should be celebrated, and deaths, in my opinion, don’t need to be.
I don’t commemorate the day my son died, the absolute worst day of my life; there will never be a worse one. I was there the day my son died. I was there all the days and years leading up to his death. Those were painful days and years. Why would I want to remember them?
I have found purpose for my life, for the rest of the days I’m graced and gifted with life; it took a while, ten years, in fact, and I continue to heal and to grow. My journey has led me to more than healing; it has guided me toward transformation. Of course, I’d give it all back if I could have my Rikki back, whole and happy, but … reality might suck sometimes, but if I can’t be in the Present Moment, how can I reconnect to the world, to my friends, my family, my coworkers, the beggar in the street? Rikki’s life and death expanded my world. I will ~never~ be the same.
In some ways that’s good; I have softened through the loss of my son, my only child, my best friend, the child of a single mother for 18 years. How could it be otherwise? I have cried until my tear ducts ran out of tears. I have doubled over in response to a memory or a trigger. I’ve also had really good days on some of the angelversaries. I got to lead a women’s group the last two years of angelversaries. I spent four hours in traffic on each of those evenings I led group.
I know what my calling is in life, and I really never knew what it was before Rikki died, not really anyways, even though I’ve been in college most of my adult life, weaving in and out of community colleges and universities while I raised a son alone, at the poverty level, worked, and tried to stay in school. I just knew I wanted something better for my son. I got therapy and I went to college. My calling is to show others that healing is possible. My calling is to guide others to something magnificent in their life, an anchor, something that will guide them once I’m no longer part of their process. My purpose is to teach people how to grieve in ways that are not self-destructive. I know this, and I’m up for the challenge, even as I face the tenth year of my son’s absence.
I know I can handle it; I have for the past nine years, so this one will be manageable and I’ll get through it. 5:55 p.m. will roll around and I’ll work hard to not look at the clock. It’s like when you know something bad is going to happen, and you can’t stop it, but you wait in dread until it happens and you survive it, relieved that you made it through, and ecstatic that it’s over.
I grow each day as I live without my son. Again, I’d give it all back if I could have my son back, but if and when that day of reunion comes, I’ll be a different person than the one he knew, and I’ll wrap my arms around him in utter joy and gratitude. Is that going to happen? I don’t know; I hope so. I miss my Rikki so much.
I want you to know that as you face the angelversaries, they hurt; they just do, but even as you hold your breath for an entire 24 hours, the time will pass and you will get through it. My friend and I are going to make Mexican food and light some candles and incense for Rikki. I need another woman to accompany me on the day, another mother, even though she has not lost a child.
We may paint a picture or make a mask, or I may choose to watch a movie with her. I just know that as the day draws near my heart races and I hate the day. I will not cop to ruminating on the second I said goodbye to my son. I will ruminate on how much he made me laugh; how beautiful, generous, and kind he was. I miss his amazing conversational skills. I miss talking on the phone with him until 3 a.m. – just chatting about absolutely nothing and absolutely everything.
I will think about those things on January 22.
We can do this. Many of us have been doing it for longer than I have, and because of you, I’ve had models to emulate. Thank you. I know it gets easier, but it’s never easy. I carry my grief like an accessory; some days I have mascara running down my face, and other days my make up is perfect and I’m able to get through the day productively; it’s a crap shoot on any given day, despite the fact I’m now able to control my overwhelming moments, my breathing, and calm myself down enough to find reason again and walk myself through the panic.
That’s what I’ll do next Thursday. I’ll think beautiful thoughts about Rikki. I’ll cry. I’ll breathe and then the day will be over, and I’ll have made it through another angelversary.
As my older brother riffled through our dead mother’s belongings, I sat and waited for his assault on my mother’s last belongings to be over. Her calendar of her days, when each of her children visited or she spoke with us on the phone were priceless items I could not part with . My mother had a cheap plaster Virgen Guadalupe that I asked for from my siblings. No one wanted it. I kept some of her notes she wrote, and a couple of robes I could cling to in the early days following her death.
After my brother finished packing up his booty, my younger brother and I were left with clean up, which was substantial. She had just been cleared of breast cancer, after a mastectomy, at 83 years old. She wasn’t supposed to die after such a victory for our family. I guess when it’s your time to go, it’s your time to go, and it was hers. The last few years of her life, after our father died, she thrived, even despite her physical limitations. She always dressed her best and had smiles for each of her children. When we lost my son, she lost her only grandchild, and the grief never left her, just as it will never leave me – in this lifetime.
I had a tempestuous relationship with my mother. We were so different. She was also abusive to her children; she also dealt with mental illness. Everyone in my family does. Despite the abuse of withdrawal of love or a full physical assault, I loved my mother. Trauma bonding is very real. Sometimes, and I don’t know who is blessed or cursed with this ability, we romanticize our parents or others who may have abused us. I know my mother was imperfect, as am I; she tried on her good days to be a great mom, and there were days, just as I was, when she was a good mother. Those who come from abusive backgrounds have conflicted relationships with their abusers.
I don’t know why I maintained my love for my mother, but I did. Perhaps, the reason is because of a deeply embedded Christian ethic; you know, forgiveness is big in the Christian doctrine (well, the one that the archetype of Jesus advocated for – forgiveness and wiping the dust off our feet). I understand my parents, and maybe, because forgiveness is a process, I extend forgiveness and then I take it back. Again, the relationship, was dysfunctional from the day I was conceived to the day my mother died, I loved my mother, and I always sought her approval, and sometimes she was able to give it to me. She didn’t have the emotional resources to always “be” there for us. She could be loving and then ten minutes later, she’d be shaming or hitting us.
Which brings me to interesting metaphors; like a double-edged sword, metaphors can cut to the quick or inspire us to moments of clarity and states of pure and extraordinary lucidity as we pare away toxic ideology and toxic people. The mental/spiritual phenomenon/a of achieving clarity is a magical, sometimes scary experience. In my opinion, being lucid in a moment of clarity can be transcendent, launching you from a place of stagnation into the most dynamic life you can imagine.
I know.
Astrologers and psychic folx have me pegged as a Gemini, one who is double-minded, i.e., taking forever to make a decision because she can see both sides of the coin. Who ~doesn’t~ have that ability? Someone for whom healthy decision-making skills were not modeled may not have the requisite trust in herself to make wise decisions. Or the alternative is true; someone for whom healthy decision-making skills were modeled would behave accordingly when making decisions, “twins” or not. I’ve also been told by my energy working friends that Libras take forever to make a decision; hence, the scales are symbolic of trying to balance the truth…good luck with that.
Anyhow, metaphors.
I didn’t ask for much from my mother’s belongings. My younger brother and I were interested in things with her handwriting. I took her ChapStick, silly tokens of Mom’s last few days, things that were specific to my mother’s daily life. We each grieve differently.
There was a spoon Mom used to cook with, a wooden one. She had that same spoon as far back as my memories go. Mom was a fantastic cook. My parents were from Texas, so we ate a lot of Tex-Mex food. She loved being a mother; she tried. But back to the spoon; as lovely as I remember her cooking for us, lovingly, always justifiably proud of her meals, also, always on a tight budget, she used that wooden spoon to hit us – on the head, on the backs of our legs, basically, wherever it would land.
Why would I want such a thing? I guess, we, or at least I, received from my mother one of the good coping skills: Pollyannaism; and one of my father’s gifts was a keen sense of wonder, oh yeah, and a large dose of cynicism; but I guess inherited behaviors can also become restrictive and oppressive. Mom also shared her steely and caustic tongue with each of her kids. Some of us used it more effectively, and more meanly than the others in my family. Unfortunately, words … are my wooden spoon, lovingly creative, or targeted missiles. I no longer shoot for the latter.
The death of my son changed me, made me softer. My husband’s heart attack awakened me to how temporary and random life is. My seminary experience changed me. I choose to use my wooden spoon to blend the ingredients of you and me, with a smidge of him or her or they, with healthy coping skills, including the prosocial behavior of compassion. I no longer need a wooden spoon for anything other than creating beautiful and communal spaces for those with whom I come into contact. If I’m lucky, I’ll live as long as my mother. Mom tried to make up for her imperfection later in her life.
Her behavior was all about survival – and when you’re using all your emotional resources to just make it through each day, you don’t have the resources of love, empathy, compassion, or insight into someone else’s life. I get it now. Do I forgive? I don’t know. I’m slowly letting go of the anger and bitterness I had for my father; it’s almost gone. See, I don’t know where you come from, heaven, hell, or limbo (stagnant life), but healing is possible.
We each have a wooden spoon, our double-edged sword, or like an oar that steers us toward a beautiful shore or tossed about on the rocks of despair and discontent, where we are living towards dying, without hope.
I was able to walk away with a note my mother wrote to the God of her understanding. The note said, “God, please don’t let me hurt my children.” I took it as an apology for all the times she was out of her mind from fear, rage, mental illness, and avenging her childhood on her children.
She loved me and I know this. Despite the fact we were often at odds with each other, I know she loved me. Mom was a hardcore, kind of fundamentalist Christian, with modifications for her gay children who she adored, and a daughter who wouldn’t behave until she was thirty-five. Mom prayed for us incessantly. She prayed for us out of her love. Prayer was on the kind side of the wooden spoon. I still to this day appreciate the prayers or good juju said and sent by others. Do they work? I don’t know (she said irritated). But I appreciate them nonetheless; the mere intention shows me people care.
I know I’m not mad at my mother anymore. She gave me some good things too, i.e., ladybugs, butterflies, perennial flowers, and she gave me life. My mother was my wooden spoon; she created out of love, and she struck out because she was broken. If I’d been a perfect mother perhaps, I wouldn’t cut her so much slack. But who’s perfect? Who does it consistently right every time? No one. Not my mother. Not you. And certainly not I.
Hurt people hurt people, with words or with wooden spoons, in whatever form they come to us. As I write this, I’m full of love and understanding for my mother. Some days I have the energy to think rationally and so my pot of gold at the end of my rainbow is freedom from lingering anger, fear, woundedness, pain. You name it; all sorts of neuroses emerge from the dysfunctions of domestic violence, sexual assault, unhealthy social influences, ad nauseam.
I laid down my wooden spoon; I don’t need it anymore. I prefer the electric mixer anyhow; it blends all the ingredients into one blended whole, a whole where we are not separate from one another. I prefer the newer metaphor, more modern, fewer memories of dually-edged challenging parentage, confusing, conflicting, and compassionless –.
I haven’t relinquished Mom’s wooden spoon. Perhaps the vestiges of the poor coping skill are conduits for lingering masochism; I hurt myself and others for a number of years, until I got medicated and was able to learn to trust the world enough to lay down my wooden spoon.
My best friend in high school, used to say when people were jerks (in high school the boys were relentless), “Kill them with kindness.” I was too angry from all the ways the wooden spoon had been used against me, kindness? Why? Who extended kindness to me? Well, decades later, I see the value of the saying.
Kindness is always better than conflict; since therapy and since medication, I now see that love really ~is~ the answer. I’m lovable. I’m worthy of love. We are worthy of the good side of the wooden spoon. We are worthy enough to free ourselves from our own wooden spoons that come to us in the forms of causticity, hypervigilance, ad infinitum. I love the quote by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., apropos of his birthday, “Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, we’re free at last.” Abuse is oppression, and we are imprisoned in that oppressive climate until we have that moment of lucid clarity and set ourselves free. Elsa from Frozen (yes, I saw it.) sings a song, “Let it go.” The Buddha reminds us to let go because all things are transitory. St. Augustine said, “Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” I was an angry lass before therapy and my lucid clarity (said in an Irish brogue).
Life is so much lovelier without hanging on to the brokenness my parents passed down to their children. I suppose I’ll heal from the polar opposite purposes for my mom’s wooden spoon. That’s my goal anyhow…it’s a lifelong process. Anger and rage use energy that would be better used for healing yourself, your relationships, your mind, and your soul.
Anger poisoned me and my relationships for decades. So, I laid down my wooden spoon. I breathe more easily now.
Racing against the clock; it’s 11:28 p.m. I know, with eight billion people in the world, there are bound to be a few wistful, woeful, and wonderful missives saying goodbye to 2025, and so, here’s mine. I can describe my year as wonky and wonderful. I finally, after what has seemed like one-hundred years and many lifetimes ago, received my master’s degree in a discipline so far removed from my history and psychological development: interfaith studies, that I’ve shocked people who’ve known me my whole life, when I tell them I’ve gone into the “ministry.”
“You?”
“You what?”
And cherry on top, “You gotta be fucking kiddin’ me?”
Some people change very little. Some people never change. Still some people change until they no longer resemble their former selves. Losing a child is also transformative – grueling, but navigable and winnable. I mean that too. Humans tend to anthropomorphize those phenomena we can only understand through “fleshing” them out. In a business meeting or in academic halls, we’re often asked to “walk out” an idea, as if the idea could ambulate. Jesus, to me, is a fleshed-out example of what it means to be fully human — in touch with the divine – with healthy boundaries; I also have an affinity with the mother of Jesus, having lost a son to a trajectory about which I could do nothing. Certainly, the character of Jesus was placed in the First Century, so, the social norms and mores were much different than they are today.
2025 has been chockful of lessons, falling in love over and over again with people whose lives intersected with mine and who taught me how to do pastoral care. I saw the man who had been robbed, beaten by the side of the road, and left for dead in the people I was blessed to counsel. I so want to be that Good Samaritan in the lives of those who are aching in their Souls. How could I feel anything but blessed for the people, places, and the acquisition of an excellent seminary experience at Claremont School of Theology, all gifts over a four-year uphill climb?
I say goodbye to some friendships that proved to be toxic in some way. I’ve let go of family members for the same reason. I have worked too hard to surrender my peace for the kind of drama that comes from unresolved trauma. I did the work; so too can they.
I say hello to the possibility that I will be accepted to all three of university choices for the doctoral program – psych, religion, and consciousness, the anthropology of religion, or a Th.D. I fell in love with process theology in my last semester of internship; they were extra-curricular classes, and my mind was blown pretty much by every reading, every discussion, every connection I was making as I learned about all the models of G_d there are. Boom! (as the kids say) – My mind was opened in a way that has allowed all the knowledge I can handle to flow in and through the gyri within it – like electricity enlivening dead tissue.
How can I say goodbye without a fair amount of wistfulness? This year has been amazing. I met a terrific friend who will always be a huge part of my heart – even if we never see each other again. Life keeps on plugging along for each of us. I know what it’s like to be so busy you don’t even have time to eat or to pee. I know how to live at that pace; at 63, I no longer thrive at that insane pace. I’m too old for that shit.
Well, it’s 12:01, January 1, 2026, and I didn’t make the “deadline” – that’s alright, too. I let go of yesterday reluctantly. In retrospect, despite the blood, sweat and tears of graduate school, and internship, and a husband who ended the year in the hospital, last year (two minutes ago) was a marvelous year. If the goal is to grow into the finest version of yourself, then 2025 shot me closer to that goal, closer than I’ve ever been.
In 22 days, my son will be gone ten years. Unbelievable. I miss him, and I have never left him behind, even as the years march on. He is in my heart, and we share DNA; his is still with me; this comforts me as I carry him into the new year with me. Always in my thoughts, always.
I missed the deadline because I had to run into my husband’s office and kiss him into the new year. I traded in the crowded firework displays for our own pyrotechnics.
Happy New Year! May 2026 provide you with everything you need to be the finest version of yourselves.
24 days from today, I will navigate the tenth anniversary of my son’s passing: it’s a biggie. I’m not making light of it, trust me; for some reason, this one hits harder than even the first two anniversaries. I believe I was numb for the first two years, and then … I was angry, so angry, I couldn’t find a direction toward healing; I didn’t even see healing as a possibility. And here I am, ten years later, without my beautiful and tortured son, without his wit and without his zest for life, without his presence, without his infectious laughter, without my boy, and I’m thriving. How does one go from emotional paralysis to a life of quality and purpose? The amount of work I’ve done on myself as I’ve healed so I can be of service in a world whose common denominator is, “Everybody hurts sometimes.” (REM) is quantifiable and observable.
My husband was very ill this week, so ill, he was hospitalized. I thought I was going to lose him, and as is no one, I was not ready to lose someone I dearly love. I lost my son, my flesh and blood son. I carried him for nine months. I gave him life. We traveled together in the same tempest for thirty-two years. We knew each other’s secrets, some of them. My point is, I was afraid for my husband this week, as I prepared myself for the worst. But I wasn’t devastated, and I knew I’d be okay no matter what.
By the grace of the roll of the dice, my husband is on the mend, and it will be a very merry Christmas, indeed. We tend to get a bit romantic about life around this time of year, whether it is because we celebrate capitalist or religious Christmas/Xmas, or we just enjoy the buzz in the air; it’s absolutely electric. I look forward to the new year; the past two were rough. I completed four years of THE best academic experiences of my life, and of two years of an overwhelming, but richly rewarding internship.
People have entered and exited my life, each of them teachers, and whether the relationship endures or was here for only a couple of lessons, I’m so very grateful for all of them. For example, I recently joined a page of religious deconstructionists; I’m in great company, as I continue to pare away harmful untruths and build a life-enhancing theology as I travel toward a rich life here – despite our losses, even the most painful ones. Also, my spiritual awakening is personal and not universal. My hope is that through hell and high water, we each reach the apex of life experiences and transcend the veil of illusion (No, I’m not Buddhist) — , and hence, dispense with the separateness that has only hurt us since time immemorial.
This year has been rich with gifts on so many levels I can scarcely begin to leave an accounting of them as I leave it behind. How do I face another year without Rikki? I don’t know how I’ve managed the last nine; I really don’t know. I guess I booked myself solid on each anniversary/angelversary. I’m good, really good at overbooking myself so I don’t have to deal with things that hurt or that create a lot of discomfort.
Judge Dread said, “Emotions? I think there ought to be a law against them.” Perhaps hyperbole is a necessity when things become too absurd. Chance or Divine Intervention? Who knows? I don’t need to answer that question anymore. I know that each time I think I nail it, G_d, or truth, or spiritual wholeness, the dice roll as they may, and I’m forced to allow changes in my life because of lessons learned in myriad places and through myriad teachers. Those teachers help to guide me into a greater version of myself. No [wo]man is an island, entire to itself (Donne).
There’s so much to do, but I don’t care to stress myself out over busy tasks; I’m way out there on a plane of collective consciousness, and trying to solve social ills through divine inspiration in contemplative prayer; some call it G_d. I’m still working on it. Whatever it is that holds this universe together, if it’s external or is it through the collective will of humanity that agree we are here in this time space continuum, and we have the ability to singly, or collectively, change our living conditions, to optimize them for all living things, to find and to share wholeness, here, now.
Ten years ago, I could focus only on my pain; it was all consuming. I used to think I hadn’t accomplished anything during the first three and a half years of my grief process. I sobbed – and convulsively, too. The crying spells were exhausting physically. I often could not breathe and would have to put my head between my legs to come back to the present. I was lost and during that time, even in abject pain, I knew there was an answer that would satisfy my soul enough so that I could go on without my son.
So, what did I do? I educated myself through books on grief, loss, rediscovery, wonder, healing, and then…I went to seminary. Did I find the answer? No, I have not. But every day, I’ve healed a little more, all the way to the point where I’m now able to be present for someone who is in the same kind of pain I was in ten years ago. There was never calm before the storm; we were always deep in the tempest, and because of the turbulence, I now have peace. Does that make sense?
I’ve been trying to make sense of everything since I was first sentient and verbal. I have a voracious appetite for knowledge, and books are my addiction, well, and clothes. Trying to make sense of grief and trying to figure out what adaptive benefit it holds for us has been of great interest to me since I began to heal. Honestly, as I close out this year, I’m certainly going to grieve the loss of some amazing people who traveled 2025 with me. I release them to their own trajectories, and if we intersect at some point again, I’ll celebrate; if we don’t, I’ll celebrate because they did at one time, and I’m forever changed because of them.
My son changed my life. Both his birth and his death and all the days in between and all the days since he left us. I am not the same person I was before he passed and not since. I’ve grieved for the person who got me through so much of my life, and I welcome the new person who dances me into the next phase of my life.
I’ll be sixty-four in June, and I want to hear the chorus loudly, “Will you still need me, will you still feed me when I’m sixty-four.” My husband made me swear we wouldn’t sing it at his 64th. I will be starting a doctoral program in Fall 2026. I took a year off after seminary, and most especially, after a tough two-year internship. My “sabbatical” has been used researching my areas of interest, vegging, growing, getting in shape intellectually, spiritually, and physically.
Ten years ago, I was so focused on getting a handle on grief, I couldn’t see past my own pain. All the while, people were hurting all around me. People were angry. People were confused. And the hits just keep on comin’. I never had the clarity of mind to see past the illusion before my son died; I was very much a part of it. When you lose a child, well, I don’t know how much more reality one can cram in your face; things happen, terrible things, and there you have it.
How we handle them will determine their duration and their outcome.
As I think of Christmases past with my tiny boy, with tape and tinsel in his hair, and as I think about times when I got everything right, I am a bit wistful for Christmases – the ones I never had. As I wrap up another year of posttraumatic growth, I’m grateful for the chaos I grew through. I’m grateful for the polished and the inept teachers who graced (or dis-d) the last 365 days. I’m grateful for the gems found on the journey, even those I had to bleed for.
I have a caravan of loved ones cruising through on their way to other places. I’m grateful my holidays are no longer spent in the fetal position in our darkened bedroom. I’m also not ashamed there was a time when I found that position necessary; it’s the position of supreme pain; ask anyone. Even roly-polies curl up when threatened; it’s a great strategy for actual or emotional danger.
Anyhow, this word soup is my way of saying goodbye to a year filled with joy and frustration. I feel nothing but gratitude today, as I go into the new year, spiritually in the black, and for me, finding my peace through the pain I’ve navigated for too many years is the one package under the tree that I’ve waited for my entire life thus far.
I may, for the sake of nostalgia, find a Christmas Eve candlelight service to attend, or I may watch It’s a Charlie Brown Christmas, and reminisce about a handful of tender moments from my childhood, few and far between, but I’ll find some, if it’s the last damn thing I do.
I pray, yes, I really do, to the great whatever that holds us together in this great big universe, that your holidays are merry and bright, and that your Christmases are light. (I live in the desert; snow is a rarity).
Merry Holidays! As I await the brightest star in the sky, the one that speaks to me about the arrival of my own son, forty-two years ago, I’ll travel the pathway Mary rode along on her donkey only to find there was no place where she might give birth to the king of the universe — with dignity. I may interpret the story more deeply than before, but I’ve been there before, as have we all.
I remember my mother’s knack for wrapping presents and for making things pretty. My packages were wrapped up pretty much like this blogpost, bulky, and leaving the recipient with his head tilted asking, “What the hell could it be?” That’s okay, I’ve learned that I can’t have order all the time, and once I allow myself permission to just say, “fuck it” and move forward with the wonder of and in the universe in all its imperfection, I can breathe again.
Just like when Rikki died…I learned to navigate in messiness. If I’ve learned anything this year, it’s that life is messy and I can either deal with it or lapse into chronic neuroses and dysregulation.
I choose the former. I choose to feel every single emotion – even the really shitty ones. 2025 was messy, but oh so wonderful. I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.
Every Christmas for a few years now, I’d repost a missive I wrote for Christmas that actually received over 1K hits. I had been pulling away from the hold that vestiges of fundamentalism still had on me. I just remember in a home full of angst and violence, the holidays were still magical. We always had a tree, and I heard stories about how my poor, asshole father would get us a tree, sometimes the night before Christmas, and we’d wake up to a fully decorated tree my mom had created out of her imperfect love for her children. Our father didn’t get drunk on Christmas and the twinkling lights from Christmases past blend into my present — lights, with days and days of peace, something I wasn’t fortunate enough to find in my childhood home. Perhaps for this reason, I am wistful on Christmas Eve.
This is the ninth Christmas without my son. I feel it too.
I finished my four years of seminary, plus two process theology classes. My husband and I celebrated our twentieth anniversary as a couple, and on December 19, we’ll celebrate our seventeenth year of marriage. I don’t preach a “gospel” of “good news” for anyone but myself. I know there is a spark in each of us, even the worst among us that burns, even if it’s just barely keeping the ember alight.
I trust everyone will find herself amid a good life – if we can only let go of all the things that hurt us, people, places and things. Religion as viewed through the lens of a survivor of domestic violence, aka a former “victim”, will be a much different experience than someone who was loved throughout her formative years. A contrast that is sobering. How does one find the God of one’s understanding? Does one need a God to have a fully satisfying life? My husband is an atheist, who is not informed by a “god”. He was not raised with parents who “worshiped” a “god” – nor did they routinely attend church. Other than my father-in-law singing “The Old Rugged Cross” – there was no “Christianity” in his bones.
I’ve known hundreds of Christians throughout my religious deconstruction. I’ve known many who were deeply religious, and so, deeply tortured about their impotence to do God’s “will” – adequately, and if they didn’t win enough souls to their God of judgment, they could be cast into a fiery hell where they will burn for all eternity while never acclimating to the torturous heat. Sweet Jesus. I was such a “Christian” in my early life, but I had such low self-esteem, I needed a powerful God to hide behind. See, if I was “good” I wouldn’t go to hell, and there was something about knocking someone off her human pedestal and sending those “enemies” straight to hell – in my broken spirituality – that scared me even then. This behavior, this belief are not conducive to being able to extend grace to others.
I don’t know what it means to be “perfect” – I only know that I’ve made so many mistakes in my life, some from ignorance, some from adrenaline seeking and high risk behavior, and some from sheer willfulness. Guilt is also a strong guiding force – until you learn to let go of the illusion of perfection, of your perfection, and so, of others’ perfection too.
I find guilt to be a vestige of religiosity. Before I was even conceived, I was a fearfully and wonderfully made “sinner” who needed salvation from the get-go, or the consequences were that fiery pit of eternal torment. I knew this story since my early catechism days, and then I concretized and syncretized Catholicism with the Southern Baptist contribution by my mother. The confessional was a frightening room, dark as my secrets. As a sexual assault survivor of a Catholic priest, the bridge to Catholicism is one that I have burned, and I don’t wish to reconstruct that bridge; there’s nothing for me on the other side.
Guilt serves no purpose. I have remorse for when I’ve behaved badly, and I accept the consequences of my actions, she said blushing, because her misbehaviors have been many.
I’m very careful about how I present my spiritual location. Am I a Christian? I’m a Buddhist? Am I secularist? Am I humanist? Interesting intersections, if you’re open to finding connections between others, and within yourself. I wish I could say with definitiveness that I am a Christian, Buddhist, secularist, humanistic, but I can’t.
My parents imposed their “religious” traditions on their children, and as such, I know I have a part of my brain that was conditioned to believe in a Higher Power; not everyone is. I do have a template in my brain that is filled with so much knowledge, the connections I’m able to make with my fellow living organisms, especially with my fellow human beings, have been earth shattering. I’m grateful for the struggles, and I’m grateful for the victories.
The presentation of Jesus in the Christian New Testament, to me, illustrates a rational mind. You feed the poor and starving. You clothe those who have not. You take care of the widow and the orphan, and you love God and others as you love yourself. Jesus, to me, represents altruism, selfless behavior, with the expectation that people would heal enough to be responsible for their own healing, “Take up your bed and walk.” With all the self-help books on the market, the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Androcles and the Lion, Little Red Riding Hood, and the stories about Jesus are each and every one of them cautionary tales meant to highlight some aspect of our psyches that need changing or fine-tuning.
G_d is real to me – in a panentheistic way, i.e., G_d encompasses All That Is, and because of this, I feel the Wholeness and the Holiness of a Higher Power that informs my ability to love and to extend grace – even to the worst of us. I’m not saying that “forgiveness is necessary” to move forward in one’s life, or to have a spectacular life; it’s not. Grace is different than forgiveness. Forgiveness makes me think that by forgiving, all is forgotten; it’s not, nor will it ever be forgotten.
Grace requires understanding. Understanding is an outgrowth of healing. I get that my father was a terrible man, and I also know his father was, and so was his mother, and my mother’s grandmother and aunts were abusive to her. One became abusive and the other became a frightened shadow of what she could have been. I think genetic inheritance is kinder than emotional inheritance. We each, my siblings and I, got a little of each from my parents.
So, why do I need a G_d? I don’t know that I do; I mean, I don’t know that I “need” one, but I know one of the archetypes that speaks to me is the symbol of Jesus. I would love to be able to walk around just loving people and encouraging them to know they are worthy of whatever wholesome love is out there. I do this now, but only because of the archetypes with which I’m most familiar. Is Jesus an archetype or is he a real person to you? The Jesus model I got to know in seminary is a far cry from the one who had words put in his mouth and was interpreted through the eyes of judgment and imperialism.
I don’t know what I celebrate during the holidays anymore. I know I still have a soft spot in my consciousness when I see the twinkling lights, or the creche, or kids with eyes as big as the shiny globes on their trees. I love IT’S A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS and FROSTY THE SNOWMAN. I love Christmas carols.
Finally, I love that during what can be a good time of the year, we’re wishing peace and good tidings to all (except at the malls). I love the story of Jesus coming to the world to save it from the kind of religion that really hurts people and so, wreaks havoc on social systems.
Women, we’re still digging ourselves out from underneath the patriarchy.
Our grandson is too old to get excited about decorating the tree; he’s too cool for that. He is going up north to be with his mom, and we will celebrate the holiday with our son, and ring in the new year grateful for each other, and grateful for the coziness of a holiday that has largely become meaningless in America, but for the capitalistic conspicuous consumption – and the massive debt we go into as the new year begins – in the red.
I’ll read the passage in the Bible that Linus quotes*, and I’ll feel warm fuzzies, and a touch of wistfulness as I remember the Jesus about whom I used to be certain. I’m not sure if Santa was a necessary prototype, one that would prepare us for the unbelievable, but I learned Santa was my mom and dad when I was only four. I don’t know when I learned that Jesus was not a historical person, but a metaphorical one. I just know that I love what Jesus represents to me, a person with reason, a person with strong and healthy boundaries, and a person with empathy and love toward all living things. So, for Christmas, Xmas, Winter solstice, or just any other day, I hope the 25th going into the new year brings with it peace, joy, the messiah you need, especially the one within you.
Grief to Gratitude 