I Declare This a Year of Celebration!

I'm broker than I wanna be, my car still hasn't made it to the shop yet, and I'm gonna have to take another math class before the year is over, but you know what, it's all ok, because I plan to celebrate along the way.

The last real get-away that I went on happened to be the very first real get-away that I'd ever been on. My baby was not yet a toddler, and I almost decided not to go, because, 3 days was just too long for me to be away from her. In the end I was happy to have had the experience with a group of good friends. Fast forward 8 years later, and I'm way overdue for a vacation. And not just a formal one, but also overdue for celebrating the little and most present of things in my life. I want to make some changes this year by putting myself back into the mix. Like I said in an earlier post, I'm always moving myself down to the bottom of the list, and also allowing others to bump me down a few spaces. It has to stop. All a part of my quest to add more self care into my days.

I've been busy this week thinking and planning my mother's celebration. I've been able to chat with my aunts and grandmother to pinpoint the things that she would most enjoy, the things that were most important to her, and also getting a good idea of how to include everyone in the event. I feel like I'm off to a really good start, and feeling a lot better about the process today.

A Lifetime Ago

He said I'm gonna put my guns into the ground,
I can't shoot them anymore,
That long black cloud is comin' down
And I feel like I'm knockin' on Heaven's door.

My grandmother once told me that my mother was fond of this song.

She also told me that there was a time when my mother desired death.

That I was a gift, and she was to be the sacrifice.

I would be her greatest accomplishment.

At 27 years old, and 20 years after my mother's death, it's occurred to me that I've never once asked even the minimalist questions about her. I think I thought I knew her. I don't remember what she smelled like, but I know what she looked like. I don't remember what she sounded like, but I know what her smile looked like. I don't know what her passions and goals were, and nobody ever told me.

I don't know the true essence of the woman she was, but I do know that I've spent, at least, the last 19 years attempting not to become her, while subconsciously reliving many of her horrid life experiences. I knew, and ran from, and learn more about, her pain, but I've never been introduced to her happiness and joy. Without that simple knowledge, life has been at a standstill. Just when I had begun believing that I was no longer grieving, I learned that the grief of a loss of this kind of magnitude is endured in waves, and I'd just been lying in a valley.

Now is the time to reshape and reclaim. I am reshaping and reclaiming my relation to, and relationship with, my mother by rustling the family tree and the family's collective memory. I'm in the process of drafting every question that I've ever wanted to know about my mother, to be shared, and hopefully answered as honestly as possible. This will lead me to the ultimate climax the middle of this year - to bring the family together in celebration of my mother's life, to breathe new life into the memories that I have of her, and to further help me in my healing process.

Healing in Numbers

"When four or five motherless women sit together in a room, however, the camaraderie is nearly instantaneous. Finally, they say. Others who understand... They can detect the subtlest inflection in each other's behaviors, the tiniest insinuation in a gaze, the inaudible frequency of spirit that reveals: You are one of me." - From Hope Edelman's Motherless Daughters

I'll be stepping out next week, to step into a new circle of sisterhood. I'm not sure why it never occurred to me to seek out a Motherless Daughter's support group. In the mist of being the only motherless daughter in my immediate circle, I never considered the fact that I might ever be able to reach out to, and come together with, another woman who came of age under the same circumstances of loss. Such a woman reached out to me last week, and next week I will meet her at my very first Motherless Daughters meetup. I'm looking forward to all of the possibilities that this meetup will bring forth.

Journeying

Sometimes shared experience can be comforting. I keep this in mind as I journey through the lives of others and with others.

I was browsing the isles of my local library a couple of weeks ago when I came across a book that stopped me in my tracks. I think I probably stood and stared at its binding for a good five minutes before picking it up off the shelf. Any other day, I would have probably put it back, but this day, I it must have called to me. A few pages in, and I was glad to have been listening.


Motherless Daughters, written by Hope Edelman has been around ever since 1994. How could I have not known about this book? How could I have not been aware that, across the lands, many motherless daughters support groups have been gathering. Maybe, because in dealing with trauma, there are some forms of trauma that are acknowledged and dealt with on deeper levels. Just a couple of chapters in, and this book, what it has already revealed to me about being a motherless daughter, has gone to work on me. Its almost like my true self is being unmasked and explained to me for the very first time in my life.

Motherless Daughters is written from the viewpoint of having lost a mother in childhood or adolescence. This is the first time, written or otherwise, that I've engaged in or with conversation about mother loss that encompasses my own experience. Lossing a mother at any age is life changing, but to have a mother plucked away before she's been able to teach, to befriend, to comfort and nurture... that, so I've realized, is the straw that can break a daughter's back. As I work my way through this book, a weath of emotions become present - sadness, anger, empathy, relief - hopefully arriving at a the end of this book with a more genuine comprehension of the little girl within.

Reflection

A high school friend was laid to rest yesterday. She was 27 years old. Although we weren't extremely close, I've taken her death in a certain kind of way since making the connection - emotionally bound by limited details and a c/o 2002 bond. I read the news article, "Woman, 27, killed by Amtrak train." At the time I didn't know that this "woman" was my friend. And once I did, it was hard to fight the images in my head of her standing in the path of an oncoming train, because, once the face and name filled in the blanks, the words of that article were received much much differently.

I researched every article online that I could find written about the incident, I read the comments that people left, I stumbled upon an article from a year ago about two other people who were killed by an Amtrak train in the same place, I wondered if my friend's death was accidental or a conscience decision, I felt a need to react-to protect-to enact better safety measures at that particular section of track, I felt sorrow for her bffs and family, I felt sick and sad and sorry for ever considering the same fate, and then I made a last minute decision at 10:00 the night before to attend her homegoing with the rest of our local high school family, and then I made another last minute decision at 1:00 that morning that I just couldn't do it. And then someone posted a picture of the photo memorial from her service and I knew that I had made the right decision not to attend. At this time, I wouldn't have been able to handle the sadness nor the grusome images plaguing my mind.

If this was the outcome of her own free choice, I can honestly respect that, and I can only hope that she is truly at rest now. If it was not her choice to leave her son behind, and even if it was, I am still deeply moved to look into the ways in which this particular stretch of track can be made inaccesable to pedestrians in hopes that it will stop claiming lives.